At least 145 people are missing and "presumed dead" after an avalanche hit a remote village in Afghanistan's northeastern Badakhshan province last week, the United Nations said Saturday.

Afghan officials had earlier in the day put the death toll from a series of avalanches in the province's Shekay district at 56.

The UN said an avalanche in the area on March 4 claimed 50 lives and warned of severe flooding over coming weeks due to melting snow.

Afghanistan's harshest winter in 15 years has claimed scores of lives, with the avalanches taking the toll to more than 90 in the mountainous province of Badakhshan alone, according to officials.

Rescue teams have so far been unable to reach the disaster-hit areas.

"Access to Dispay village is possible only by road from neighbouring Tajikistan but it has been severely hampered by snow-blocked roads," the UN's Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan said in a statement.

"Helicopter access is not possible as there is a high risk of triggering further avalanches."

A tourist has captured on camera the frenzied rescue of a pod of beached dolphins on a beach north of Rio de Janeiro.

The footage shows over 20 dolphins trapped in the surf and thrashing their flippers in distress.

Realising the dolphins' plight, a dozen beachgoers began to pull the dolphins back into deeper water by their tails.

A town in northern Australia has been invaded by more than 250,000 bats, prompting warnings of a potentially fatal disease related to rabies.

The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) warned residents in Katherine to stay away from the fruit bats, which could carry the Australian Bat Lyssavirus.

The disease can be transmitted to people if they are bitten or scratched.

Authorities have closed down the main sports ground in the town 300 km south of Darwin in the Northern Territory.

The colony of fruit bats - little red flying foxes - arrived in the town late last month. In recent days numbers have begun to fall but large numbers continue to roost on the outskirts of town, reports the BBC's Phil Mercer.

They are one of the least attractive of all fish species and are normally found lurking in oceans and rivers.

But when part of New Zealand was hit by a 'weather bomb' recently, a number of eels suddenly sprung up in some surprising locations.

Residents in one street in Masterton, Wellington, were left shocked to discover dozens of the slimy creatures swimming in large puddles and gutters in the road.

People could be spotted in the streets attempting to help the eels back into deeper water as a number became stranded on the side of the road.

It follows days of appalling weather in the region.

"The most difficult thing of all is to see is what is right in front of your eyes." Goethe.

As we approach the tragic one-year anniversary of Fukushima's multiple nuclear reactors' accident on March 11, that initially affected the entire Japanese population, we now know that this nightmare has engulfed all of us. Let us also not forget that this is the third nuclear attack on the Japanese (the first two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Given what has not been done to ensure public safety, we cannot think of it any other way. From the very first day, there were lies and a massive cover-up of the extent of the destruction and the inherent radioactive dangers - not just from Japanese officials and TEPCO corporate reports, but also from the US. The Mark 1 reactors, built by General Electric, have design flaws. There are many of these same-designed reactors in the US.

A year later, much of the corruption, deceit, and careless practices have been documented extensively here at Global Research - while mainstream news continues Orwellian doublespeak. Last month, in a rare but very belated mainstream account, CBS News reported that after the tsunami and nuclear accident: "The normal lines of [government] authority completely collapsed in Japan." See this.

Early on, even essential radioactive monitoring was shut down. In May 2011, the prestigious Norsk Institute's online site was blocked from the US. They had been monitoring on a daily basis the worldwide radioactive contamination to which we were all - and continue to be - exposed. Conveniently, any early radiation monitoring in the US was inconsistent, with numerous sites supposedly not working for one or another reason. Then the so-called "acceptable" radiation levels in food were raised in the US and EU.

Scientists have announced the discovery of a new species of spotted, bottom-dwelling shark near the Galapagos Islands, where astonished researchers saw it from a submersible.

The newly named species, Bythaelurus giddingsi, is a kind of catshark. Such animals had never been seen near the famed Eastern Pacific archipelago until researchers descended some 1,600 feet (500 meters) to the ocean floor.
"We looked out the window and saw this spotted catshark and said, 'What the heck is that?'" recalled John McCosker, chairman of aquatic biology at the California Academy of Sciences, and lead author on a paper describing the shark. "It was very exciting because we didn't expect that that genus had a species of shark living in the Galapagos."

Friday saw a new eruption of the Bezymianny volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East.
Earlier in the day, the volcano spewed ash up to 8 kilometers high, seismologists said, adding that the eruption does not pose a threat to population centers in the area.

One of the most active volcanoes in the world, Bezymianny is located 350 kilometers northeast of the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

Date-Time:
Friday, March 09, 2012 at 07:09:53 UTC
Friday, March 09, 2012 at 06:09:53 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
19.115°S, 169.643°E

Depth:
31.7 km (19.7 miles)

Region:
VANUATU

Distances:
61 km (37 miles) NE of Isangel, Tanna, Vanuatu

206 km (128 miles) SE of PORT-VILA, Efate, Vanuatu

325 km (201 miles) NE of Tadine, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia

1934 km (1201 miles) ENE of BRISBANE, Queensland, Australia

An earthquake has struck the far west of China but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Friday that the 5.8 quake struck about 7 a.m. (2300 GMT) in the southern part of Xinjiang region.

An official from the Communist Party Propaganda Department in Luopu county, where the earthquake hit about 175 miles (280 kilometers) northeast of Hotan, said the epicenter was in the desert and no reports of injuries had been made. The official refused to give his name.

Iliamna volcano experienced several episodes of increased earthquake activity over the last three months, according to a news release issued Wednesday by Alaska Volcano Observatory officials. One of the episodes is currently ongoing and is characterized by numerous small earthquakes.
The increase in activity may be related to movement of magma at depth and additional observations, including an airborne gas sampling and observation flight, are being planned to help constrain this interpretation, according to the release. A similar but longer episode of increased earthquake activity occurred from September 1996 to February 1997 and likely was related to the intrusion of new magma at depth. That incident did not result in an eruption.