Earth ChangesS


Cloud Lightning

US: Deadly winter storm leaves 900,000 without electricity

Philadephia - A destructive winter storm that has left more than 900,000 customers in the dark barreled into the Northeast on Wednesday, delaying flights and turning the morning rush into the morning slush as communities braced for the worst.

The storm has been blamed for at least 21 deaths and a glaze of ice and snow that caused widespread power failures from the Southern Plains to the East Coast. Authorities said it could be a week before some communities have electricity again.

Tree limbs encased in ice tumbled onto roads and crashed onto power lines in hard-hit Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma on Tuesday and overnight. In Arkansas - where ice was 3 inches thick in some places - people huddled next to portable heaters and wood-burning fires as utilities warned electricity may be out for a week or more.

Fish

Bottlenose dolphin shows off her butchering skills

bottlenose dolphin
© unknown

Considering they can't wield a knife or cleaver, dolphins make impressive butchers. Researchers in Australia recently observed a bottlenose performing a precise series of manoeuvres to kill, gut and bone a cuttlefish.

The six-step procedure gets rid of the invertebrate's unappetising ink and hard-to-swallow cuttlebone.

"The behaviour seems so obviously related to making the item more palatable," says Tom Tregenza, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Exeter, UK.

Colleague Julian Finn, a marine biologist at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, observed a single female dolphin performing the underwater move in 2003 and again in 2007. At the time, he was studying mating in cuttlefish, which breed in large swarms off the coast of South Australia.

Better Earth

Kupang Jolted by 6.0 Magnitude Earthquake

A tectonic earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale jolted East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) provincial city of Kupang at 2:53 local time on Wednesday afternoon, the national meteorology and geophysics agency (BMG) has said.

BMG said the epicenter of the earthquake was located between 9.49 degrees southern latitude and 124.19 degress eastern longitude at a depth of 10 kilometers under the seabed, or 101 kilometers north east of Kupang.

There was no immediate report so far about fatality or material damages in the earthquake.

Better Earth

4.7 Quake Hits Philippines

A 4.7 magnitude earthquake struck the southern island of Mindanao at 6:18 p.m. Wednesday, the US Geological Survey said.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The undersea quake was located 90 kilometers south-southeast of Hinatuan, in Surigao del Sur province at a depth of 78.7 kilometers.

Better Earth

Earthquake In Southern Kentucky

People in one part of eastern Kentucky woke up to a strange feeling Tuesday morning.

Believe it or not, officials say there was a minor earthquake centered near Williamsburg.

It was enough to make for some scary moments for those who experienced it.

People across the mountains were expecting wintry weather this morning, but at six-twenty, people across Whitley County got something else.

One bus driver had just shut down his bus after hearing that school was called off.

Better Earth

Turritopsis nutricula: the world's only 'immortal' creature

Turritopsis nutricula may be the world's only "immortal" creature.

Jellyfish usually die after propagating but Turritopsis reverts to a sexually immature stage after reaching adulthood and is capable of rejuvenating itself.

Bizarro Earth

Evacuations begin near Colombian volcano

Bogota -- Colombian emergency officials have begun evacuating 800 families from an area at high risk from the expected eruption of a volcano that killed at least six people in November.


Bizarro Earth

Scientists Fear Volcano Could Bury Anchorage, Alaska in Ash

It's been nearly 20 years since Alaska's Mount Redoubt erupted, but that time of tranquility might end.

Recent seismic activity could be a prelude to an eruption, "perhaps within hours to days," said geologists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Igloo

US: Thousands blacked out as ice storm wreaks havoc

Little Rock, Arkansas - Tree limbs snapped with a sound like gunshots, blacking out thousands of homes and businesses, and schools and government offices were closed Tuesday as a major storm spread a glaze of ice and snow from the southern Plains to the East Coast.

At least 15 deaths had been blamed on the weather.

Phoenix

China: Mysterious Mountain Fire Burning for Over a Month

Image
© The Epoch Times
A mysterious fire has been burning for more than a month within a mountain in China's southwestern Guizhou Province. The fire has been burning with increasing intensity, alarming and frightening local villagers. The cause of the fire has not been identified.

Villager Li Qingliang said that this fire initially began in the middle of December, 2008 when locals noticed plumes of smoke emerging from the mountain. A few days later, flames emerged. The temperature in the area has been very low, and it has also been raining steadily for the past month, yet the fire remains burning and only continues to grow. And now Li says that thick smoke is also coming from a location near his home. He worries that the fire might emerge even closer to him.