Earth ChangesS


Attention

Shallow magnitude 5.2 earthquake in southern Peru kills at least four


Hindustan Times
Mon, 15 Aug 2016 12:43 UTC
earthquake graph
A 5.2 magnitude earthquake in Peru has left at least four people dead and 40 injured, a civil defence official said.

The toll from Sunday night's quake in the southern Arequipa region might rise after about 50 homes collapsed and roads were cut off, the official told AFP.

Earthquakes are fairly common in Peru but this one hit at a shallow depth of eight kilometers so damage could be heavy near the epicenter.

The epicenter was 10 kilometers from the city of Chivay, capital of Caylloma province, according to the Geophysical Institute of Peru.

Two aftershocks hit Monday morning.

The quake caused damage throughout an area of Arequipa called the Colca Valley, and several villages have been cut off.

"We are asking for heavy machinery to gain access. There are fatalities," the mayor of Caylloma, Romulo Tinta, told RPP radio.

More than 80 homes have been left uninhabitable, but crews cannot reach the epicenter, said the governor of Arequipa region, Yamila Osorio.

Source: AFP
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Arrow Down

Truck falls into sinkhole in Sandwich, Massachusetts


CapeCod.com
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 13:31 UTC
Sinkhole
A sinkhole opened up in a Sandwich parking lot Friday morning, trapping a catch-basin cleaning truck.

The pavement gave way in the parking lot of Horizons on Cape Cod Bay near Town Neck Beach around mid-morning.

Reports from the scene indicate the truck was working in the lot when the rear wheels began to sink.

There were no injuries. Crews were on scene late in the morning working to remove the truck and fix the sinkhole.

The parking lot and nearby road remained open. The cause of the sinkhole was not immediately known.
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Cloud Precipitation

Disaster declared for 'historic' Louisiana floods; five killed, 7,000 rescued

Byrn Stole
Reuters
Sun, 14 Aug 2016 21:58 UTC
People rescued from Louisiana floods
© Ted Jackson/AP Rescuers and civilians work to pull people from their flooded homes near Amite in Louisiana, where a state of emergency has been declared.
U.S. President Barack Obama issued a disaster declaration on Sunday for flood-ravaged Louisiana, where at least five people have died and emergency crews have rescued more than 7,000 people stranded by historic flooding.

Governor John Bel Edwards said residents had been pulled from swamped cars, flooded homes and threatened hospitals across the southern part of the state. The already soaked region is expected to get more rain from a storm system stretching from the Gulf Coast to the Ohio Valley.

While the brunt of the storm that brought torrential rains was moving west toward Texas, Louisiana residents should remain cautious, the governor said at a news conference.

"Even with the sunshine out today intermittently, the waters are going to continue to rise in many areas, so this is no time to let the guard down," Edwards said, calling the flooding unprecedented.

Obama issued the disaster declaration after speaking with Edwards, the White House said in a statement.

The initial declaration makes federal aid available in the parishes of East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Helena and Tangipahoa. Edwards said in a statement that other parishes could be added to the list.

Emergency officials still were working on strategies to rescue an undetermined number of people trapped by the waters.


Comment: Governor Edwards declared a state of emergency over the weekend, calling the floods 'unprecedented' and 'historic'. Some other 'historic' flooding in the United States in recent times include:

June 2016: 23 deaths as West Virginia swamped

March 2016: more 'historic' flooding in the southern states

January 2016: massive flooding and mudslides in southern California

November 2015: record rainfall in Texas

October 2015: "once-in-a-thousand-year" flash flooding in South Carolina

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Wolf

Elephant washed from India to Bangladesh is back on dry land

Elizabeth Roberts
CNN
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 00:00 UTC
elephant flooded
© UnknownThe tranquillized elephant lies on the ground after being pulled from a pond by forest officials and villagers
It's said that elephants never forget -- and one Indian mammoth swept by flood waters all the way to Bangladesh should have no trouble remembering this dramatic adventure.

The four-ton female was separated from its herd in floods in northeast India in late June. It is thought to have traveled around 620 miles, a journey that included crossing the mighty Brahmaputra River, on its way to northern Bangladesh. The animal first became separated from the herd in Assam, India. The weak and exhausted beast spent several weeks stranded in a flooded area and nearly drowned in a rescue attempt Thursday. But Friday -- World Elephant Day -- the pachyderm finally set its feet back on dry land.
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Attention

5.9 magnitude earthquake near Sakhalin, Russia


Earthquake Track
Sun, 14 Aug 2016 20:26 UTC
Graph
© Dimas Ardian, Getty Images
5.9 magnitude earthquake 52 km from Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinskiy, Sakhalin, Russia

2016-08-14 11:15:14 UTC

UTC time: Sunday, August 14, 2016 11:15 AM

Your time: 2016-08-14T11:15:14Z

Magnitude Type: mb

USGS page: M 5.9 - 52km S of Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinskiy, Russia

USGS status: Reviewed by a seismologist

Reports from the public: 9 people
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Cloud Lightning

Lightning bolt kills couple in Moulvibazar, Bangladesh


en.prothom-alo.com
Sun, 14 Aug 2016 19:40 UTC
lIGHTNING
A couple were killed by a lightning strike at Jalalpur village in Kamalganj upazila of Moulvibazar district on Saturday night.

The deceased were identified as Azir Ali,38, and his wife Alima Akter,24, of the area.

Adampur union parishad chairman Abdal Hossain said a streak of thunderbolt struck Azir and his wife around 8:00pm while they were working in their courtyard, leaving them critically injured.

They were admitted to Kamalganj Upazila Health Complex where they succumbed to their injures at about 9:25pm.
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Cloud Lightning

Lightning strike kills 1 and injures 2 swimming in Beltzville State Park, Pennsylvania

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann
The Express-Times
Sun, 14 Aug 2016 19:28 UTC
lIGHTNING
A 38-year-old Camden, N.J. man was killed and two others were hurt when lightning struck as they were swimming in a lake at Beltzville State Park.

Jose Lopez-Hernandez, of the 300 block of Grand Avenue in Camden, was joined by a 33-year-old man, his 12-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter at 7:36 p.m. Saturday at the lake, authorities said.

Terry Brady, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, said a park ranger at the time saw lightning and went over a speaker system to alert swimmers to get out of the lake.

Within minutes, lightning was reported to have struck the water, but no individual swimmers directly, Brady said.

A preliminary investigation showed Lopez-Hernandez managed to get out of the water, but collapsed in the beach area, according to Brady. He was "unresponsive, blue and had no pulse," Brady said.
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Attention

Black bear attacks girl in Port Coquitlam, Canada

Maryse Zeidler
cbc.ca
Sat, 13 Aug 2016 19:16 UTC
Black bear
Black bear
A 10-year-old girl is in hospital with critical injuries after a bear attack in Port Coquitlam, B.C., Saturday.

Conservation Office inspector Murray Smith said the girl was attacked by a female black bear with her cub.

The incident took place near Shaughnessy Street and Lincoln Avenue at about 5 p.m. PT., according to B.C. Ambulance, not far from a popular trail along the Coquitlam River that leads to a nearby watershed and wilderness area.

Smith said conservation officers killed the sow when they found her.

"The bear wouldn't leave the location with a lot of human presence at that spot, and so the bear was destroyed," he said.

The cub is still at large, he said, and people are being asked to stay away from the area for the time being.
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Arrow Down

Bayer AG makes honeybee contraceptives: Study confirms pesticides significantly reduce reproductive capacity and lifespan of bees

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Sat, 13 Aug 2016 00:00 UTC
honeybee
Most will wonder what I mean when I say Bayer AG, the German chemicals and drug company, the same one that just absorbed Monsanto, makes bee contraceptives. This is precisely what a newly-published, peer-reviewed scientific study confirms. Contraceptives for bees are not good for the world, no better than another product invented in the labs of Bayer, namely heroin. Bayer makes a class of insect killers known as neonicotinides. Their free use worldwide threatens bee pollination and the entire food chain.

A study just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences), identifies a dramatic reduction in sperm count in bees exposed to two of Bayer AG's most widely used pesticides—thiamethoxam and clothianidin. They found that those two neonicotinoids, "significantly reduce the reproductive capacity of male honeybees (drones), Apis mellifera. Drones were obtained from colonies exposed to the neonicotinoid insecticides or controls, and subsequently maintained in laboratory cages until they reached sexual maturity...the data clearly showed reduced drone lifespan, as well as reduced sperm viability (percentage living versus dead) and living sperm quantity by 39%."

The study continues: "Our results demonstrate for the first time that neonicotinoid insecticides can negatively affect male insect reproductive capacity, and provide a possible mechanistic explanation for managed honeybee queen failure and wild insect pollinator decline... As the primary egg layer and an important source of colony cohesion, the queen is intimately connected to colony performance. Increased reports of queen failure have recently been reported in North America and Europe; however, no studies have so far investigated the role of neonicotinoids and male health to explain this phenomenon."

Comment:
The death and global extinction of honeybees

Perhaps the biggest foreboding danger of all facing humans is the loss of the global honeybee population. The consequence of a dying bee population impacts man at the highest levels on our food chain, posing an enormously grave threat to human survival. Since no other single animal species plays a more significant role in producing the fruits and vegetables that we humans commonly take for granted yet require near daily to stay alive, the greatest modern scientist Albert Einstein once prophetically remarked, "Mankind will not survive the honeybees' disappearance for more than five years."


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Tornado2

Tornado strikes Manila as heavy rain swamps Filipino capital


RT
Sun, 14 Aug 2016 12:10 UTC
Manila tornado
© shinshenanigans / Instagram
A tornado has reportedly made landfall in the Philippines as severe monsoon flooding that has already killed at least five people continues to threaten the island's capital Manila.

Torrential rainfall in recent days has plagued an area known as Metro Manila, which is home to more than 12 million people and a number of the nation's major cities.

Five people have been killed and thousands forced to leave their homes due to the storms, so far.
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