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Avalanche blankets entire Afghan village, kills at least 37

Mohammad Hamid
Reuters
Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:47 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Kunduz - At least 37 people died and hundreds were still trapped in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday when a snow avalanche covered an entire village near the northern border with Tajikistan, local officials said.

Afghan army helicopters descended on the remote village in the north of Badakhshan province to try rescue families, the latest victims to Afghanistan's worse winter in 30 years.

"The way to the village is closed, it is covered in snow," provincial governor spokesman Abdul Marof Rasikh said of the village of around 300 people, located in the Shikai district.

Though avalanches are fairly common in the mountainous north, Tuesday's deaths were seen as particularly painful for a country that has experienced its worse winter in decades, killing dozens in the capital Kabul and creating further food shortages in one of the world's poorest countries.
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Bad Guys

BP's Macondo Well in Gulf of Mexico Still Leaking According to Witnesses

Dahr Jamail
Al Jazeera
Sun, 04 Mar 2012 09:38 UTC
owner and pilot of On Wings of Care
© Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera
A retired career physicist with NASA, Bonny Schumaker, now the owner and pilot of On Wings of Care, has logged more than 500 hours surveying the area of the seep in question
As BP settles out of court for the first phase of thousands of lawsuits that could cost the company tens of billions of dollars, Al Jazeera has spotted a large oil sheen near the infamous Macondo 252 well.

In September 2011, Al Jazeera spotted a large swath of silvery oil sheen located roughly 19km northeast of the now-capped well.

But now, on February 29, Al Jazeera conducted another over-flight of the area and found a larger area of sea covered in oil sheen in the same location.

Oil trackers with the organisation On Wings of Care, who have been monitoring the new oil since mid-August 2011, have for months found rainbow-tinted slicks and thick silvery globs of oil consistently visible in the area.

"This is the same crescent shaped area of oil and sheen I've been seeing here since the middle of last August," Bonny Schumaker, president and pilot of On Wings of Care, told Al Jazeera while flying over the oil.

Schumaker has logged approximately 500 hours of flight time monitoring the area around the Macondo well, and has flown scientists from NASA, the US Geological Survey (USGS), and oil chemistry scientists to observe conditions resulting from BP's oil disaster that began in April 2010.
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Bizarro Earth

Lava Destroys Last Home in Hawaii's Royal Gardens Subdivision

Peter Sur
Hawaii Tribune Herald
Sun, 04 Mar 2012 01:10 UTC
Image
© Ã Leigh Hilbert/hawaiianlavadaily.blogspot.com
Lava nears the home of Jack Thompson on Friday in the Royal Gardens subdivision. The home was destroyed Friday after years of near-misses.
Pele's destruction of Royal Gardens is complete. The last resident of the last home in the beleaguered, besieged Puna subdivision evacuated just an hour before a vigorous flow of lava came down the hill and burned it to the ground.

Jack Thompson, looking at the unstoppable river of molten rock bearing down at his home of nearly 30 years, delivered the epitaph on Friday: "This is probably the grand finale."

He was reached Saturday evening from his other home in Ainaloa.

"I got as much stuff out there as was practical and everything else, had to leave it. It (the lava) was pretty much coming in the back as we were going out the front," Thompson said. "We left about 6 o'clock it was still light."

He took whatever he could stuff into two empty choppers from Paradise Helicopters. An hour later, some of Thompson's friends in Kalapana Gardens (near the county's lava viewing area several miles away) saw a bright light go up from what used to be a bed and breakfast.

It was the final act in the destruction of a vast but sparsely populated neighborhood dating back to the earliest phases of the Pu'u 'O'o-Kupaianaha eruption in 1983. Over the years, flows from Kilauea had burned his neighbors' homes and cut off the roads leading to Royal Gardens. In 2008, his last neighbor's home succumbed. Thompson began walking the 3 or 4 miles to Highway 130 over rough lava rock, hauling a backpack heavy with brown rice and beans. Those days appear to be over.
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Bizarro Earth

USGS: 4.0 Bay Area quake felt from Santa Cruz to Santa Rosa


Los Angeles Times
Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:29 UTC
San Fransisco - Four small earthquakes were recorded this morning north of San Francisco, but only one was widely felt, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

A shallow magnitude 4.0 earthquake hit the El Cerrito area at 5:33 a.m.

According to the USGS' "Did You Feel It?" service, the temblor was felt from Santa Cruz to beyond Santa Rosa. It was particularly reported by Oakland, Berkeley and other East Bay communities close to the epicenter.

BART temporarily halted service for track inspection but the transit service quickly resumed.


According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the epicenter was a mile from East Richmond Heights, two miles from Richmond, four miles from Berkeley and 13 miles from San Francisco City Hall.

There were several smaller temblors before and after in nearby Richmond.

In the past 10 days, there have been two earthquakes magnitude 3.0 and greater centered nearby.
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Bizarro Earth

USGS: Santiago Del Estero, Argentina - Earthquake Magnitude 6.1


US Geological Survey
Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:17 UTC
Argentina Quake_050312
© USGS
Earthquake Location
Date-Time
Monday, March 05, 2012 at 07:46:09 UTC

Monday, March 05, 2012 at 04:46:09 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
28.227°S, 63.242°W

Depth
550 km (341.8 miles)

Region
SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO, ARGENTINA

Distances
47 km (29 miles) WNW of Anatuya, Santiago del Estero, Argentina

112 km (69 miles) ESE of Santiago del Estero, Argentina

250 km (155 miles) SE of San Miguel de Tucuman, Tuc., Argentina

828 km (514 miles) NNW of BUENOS AIRES, D.F., Argentina
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Snowflake

Ice dam collapses at Argentine glacier


Agence France Presse
Sun, 04 Mar 2012 16:00 UTC

An ice dam at Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier collapsed early Sunday, creating an impressive spectacle not seen since July 2008, although few tourists were actually awake to experience the moment.

Several tons of ice fell off the 60-meter (200 foot) ice dam into Lago Argentina at the national park in southern Santa Cruz province.

Some 5,000 tourists had been in the park Saturday awaiting the ice show, park rangers said, but the slight movement of ice which began Wednesday turned into an avalanche at around 4:00 am (0700 GMT), leaving visitors disappointed.

Only a group of rangers witnessed the collapse, which created a crash heard several kilometers away, accelerated by heavy rainfall overnight.

"The noise was very great, it was coming down in buckets," said park ranger Carlos Corvalan.

Perito Moreno, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Argentina, is one of the largest glaciers on the Patagonian ice cap.

The glacier has a travel speed of 1.7 meters (5.5 feet) per day in its central part and periodically creates an ice dam which collapses from the pressure of the advancing glacier.

The glacier was named after one of the first explorers in Argentine Patagonia.
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Bizarro Earth

Entire Month's Worth of Tornadoes Strike in One Day

Brett Israel
Live Science
Sat, 03 Mar 2012 12:32 UTC
Severe Weather
© NOAA
This high resolution infrared imagery of the severe weather outbreak was taken around noon on March 2, 2012. Yellow, orange, and red areas indicate the coldest, highest cloud tops. By pairing precise color scales with this high resolution imagery, meteorologists can weed out the extraneous cloud information and focus on the most threatening features in this massive storm system. Major connective storm outbreaks can be seen dotting the Midwest in this image.
In what may be the biggest daily tornado outbreak on record for March, an entire month's worth of twisters struck in a single day.

The nation's Storm Prediction Center received 81 reports of tornadoes yesterday (March 2), according to data filtered to remove duplicate reports of tornadoes. For the entire month of March, the 10-year average number of tornadoes is 87, according to the Weather Channel's severe weather expert Greg Forbes. The National Weather Service's storm survey teams have not yet confirmed the tornado reports, so these numbers could change. But if the numbers hold, the outbreak could go down as the largest single-day outbreak in March history.

But today, the focus is on recovery efforts, said Craig Fugate, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Figuring out where this outbreak ranks among other huge outbreaks will wait for another day.

At least 33 people died during yesterday's severe weather, according to news reports. In Kentucky, at least 17 people died. A suspected EF-4 twister, the second highest strength on the tornado damage scale, hit Indiana, where at least 14 died.
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Cloud Lightning

Storms Demolish Small Towns in Indiana, Kentucky; 38 Dead

Roger Alford and Jim Suhr
The Associated Press
Sat, 03 Mar 2012 10:27 UTC
Image
© unknown
Wreckage left behind by one of the Indiana tornadoes
US: Kentucky, West Liberty - Across the South and Midwest, survivors emerged Saturday to find blue sky and splinters where homes once stood, cars flung into buildings and communications crippled after dozens of tornadoes chainsawed through a region of millions, leveling small towns along the way.

At least 38 people were killed in five states, but a 2-year-old girl was somehow found alive and alone in a field near her Indiana home. Her family did not survive. A couple that fled their home for the safety of a restaurant basement made it, even after the storms threw a school bus into their makeshift shelter.

Saturday was a day filled with such stories, told as emergency officials trudged with search dogs past knocked-down cellphone towers and ruined homes looking for survivors in rural Kentucky and Indiana, marking searched roads and homes with orange paint. President Barack Obama offered federal assistance, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich declared an emergency Saturday.

The worst damage appeared centered in the small towns of southern Indiana and eastern Kentucky's Appalachian foothills. No building was untouched and few were recognizable in West Liberty, Ky., about 90 miles from Lexington, where two white police cruisers were picked up and tossed into City Hall.
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Beaker

Un-Earthed: Is Monsanto's glyphosate destroying the soil?

Sayer Ji
Activist Post
Sat, 03 Mar 2012 22:57 UTC
plant in barren soil
© Shutterstock
The nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself. -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

In light of this quote, had Monsanto been around during Roosevelt's time, he would not have taken too kindly to their business strategy. After all, in 2007, 176 million lbs of an extremely toxic herbicide known as glyphosate,1 first created by Monsanto, was sprayed onto the soil (and everything standing between it) in this country, with untold environmental and human health fallout.

Untold, that is, until now...

Roundup (Glyphosate): The Science Vs. Marketing

2011 was a watershed year, as far as scientific revelations into the nature and extent of the damage associated with glyphosate-based herbicide usage and exposure is concerned.

An accumulating body of peer-reviewed and published research now indicates glyphosate may be contributing to several dozen adverse health effects in exposed populations.
      Read More...
Nuke

Tokyo Bay Radioactive Cesium Deposits Now Over 10 Inches Deep

Alexander Higgins
Alexander Higgins Blog
Sat, 03 Mar 2012 22:22 UTC
Scientists measuring Fukushima nuclear fallout in Japan report radioactive cesium deposits in Tokyo bay are now up to 26 centimeters deep

Map of Tokyo Bay Cesium Radiation Levels
© n/a
Map of Tokyo Bay Cesium Radiation Levels
The Fukushima Diary reports a survey of Tokyo Bay being performed by Kinki University scientists shows level of radioactive contaminates on the bottom of Tokyo bay is steadily.

In samples of mud take 5 centimeters deep at 36 different points the latest survey showed 511 Bq/Kg of average Cesium contamination.

That represents a sharp increase from a survey taken last August which averaged 308 Bq/Kg and another taken in October which measured 476 Bq/Kg.
      Read More...
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