Fears of fresh eruption of Mount Zao, a volcano that sits on the border of the Yamagata and Miyagi prefectures, rattled Japan after the country's meteorological agency recorded 12 volcanic earthquakes on Tuesday.
The seismic activity prompted warnings of a volcanic eruption, with the agency asking the public to stay safe from falling rocks in a 1.2 km radius of the volcano, The Japan Times reported.
The agency said that ash from the eruption can even reach beyond the radius, causing panic after last year's deadly volcanic eruption of Mount Ontake, which erupted without warning on 27 September and killed 60 people.
The meteorological agency has advised neighbouring towns to raise alert levels in the areas close to the volcano.
The warning will affect business at a popular ski resort, as well as mountain trails and restaurants.
The National Weather Service confirmed a tornado, also known as a water spout, was sighted on Bull Shoals Lake during a severe thunderstorm Tuesday night in Marion County. Observation Program Leader Dave Scheibe from the National Weather Service Office in North Little Rock told KTLO Radio a weather observer reported seeing the tornado on Bull Shoals Lake four miles east of Diamond City at 7:11 p.m.
Marion County Director of Emergency Management Keith Edmonds says local citizens captured a photo of the funnel cloud.
Comment: To see a water spout in action, check out this video of one in Brazil:
A lightning strike killed six children and their teacher at a school in northwestern Tanzania on Tuesday, nearly two months after lightning storms caused deaths at another school in the area, a senior police official said.
Fatalities during lightning storms are common in northwestern regions of Tanzania during its two rainy seasons, which typically occur in October/November and March/April.
"The school children killed by the lightning strike were aged between seven and nine years old," Ferdinand Mtui, Kigoma regional police chief, told Reuters by telephone.
Mtui said 15 other people, including schoolchildren and teachers, were injured. Another person was killed by lightning at another location in the region on Tuesday, bringing the death toll to eight.
Biologists are heading to the San Mateo coast Wednesday morning to try and determine what killed an endangered sperm whale.
The 50-feet sperm whale was found bleeding from its head and into the water along at Mori Point on the south end of Sharp Park State Beach in Pacifica Tuesday.
On Wednesday, scientists from the Marine Mammal Center and the Academy of Sciences will perform a necropsy. They'll have their work cut out for them since adult sperm whales can get up to 50 tons in size.
It's unknown at this point if they will then leave the decomposing whale ashore or tow it out to sea.
Whale strandings are fairly rare. The Center said they do not see many stranded animals of this species, dead or alive, on shore.
Priscila Korb patch.com Wed, 15 Apr 2015 17:18 UTC
The dead whale on a Southampton beach
The whale was seen floating in the water on Monday and found on the beach on Tuesday.
A dead whale that was seen floating in the water on Monday, has washed up on a Southampton beach on Tuesday, according to the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation.
The foundation is working with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to assess the situation and will provide more details as they become available.
They also remind residents to report all sightings to their 24-hour hotline at 631-369-9829.
Australia wants its cats dead. But not because it's a nation of fanatical dog people — rather, the country's enormous feral cat population now constitutes a major threat to its biodiversity. To save the country's native wildlife, the cats need to go.
Due to hotter days, longer dry periods, and increasingly intense bush fires caused by climate change, Australia's biodiversity is diminishing. Despite being one of the world's 17 "megadiverse" countries, Australia has not done a bang-up job of protecting its wildlife. As mammalian extinction rates go, Australia's is pretty dang high: Twenty-one percent of Australian native land mammals are threatened.
Comment: Brush fires leave threatened species more exposed to feral cats.
But, shockingly, climate change is actually not the No. 1 enemy of koalas and kangaroos: Feral cats are the "single biggest threat" to protecting Australia's wildlife, according to a new piece from VICE News. There are about 20 million of these little cutthroat barbarians pawing, nuzzling, and murdering (in equal measure) their way across the continent, eating three to 20 animals each day — which adds up to a loss of 80 million native animals per week.
Comment: While the feral cat crisis is a CATaclysmic scenario for Aussie wildlife running out of control, this article doesn't mention the public health consequences of feral cat colonies, whose populations are rapidly increasing. Rabies, toxoplasmosis, cat scratch fever and other potentially serious infectious diseases can affect humans and other wildlife. Another solution is TNR (trap, neuter and release) however, this method is less reliable and discouraged by health and wildlife organizations.
The $2M pledged to slow biodiversity loss is not allocated to killing feral cats, per se, but to boost the recovery of threatened species in Australia's national parks via 10 projects targeting key species' habitats and threats, both flora and fauna. Specifically they will benefit Norfolk Island green parrot, Cocos buff-banded rail, long-nosed potoroo, southern brown bandicoot, northern quoll, partridge pigeon, brush-tailed rabit-rat, the plants of the Arnhem Plateau and the Kakadu Threatened Species Strategy. The feral cat massacre is the idea of Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt. According to the mammal action plan assessments, it will take decades. They are now working on an engineered virus. (Oh! Oh!... call David Lynch!!!)
The massive fires that swept through nearly 60 villages and towns in the Siberian republic of Khakassia have left 23 people dead, and more than 900 injured, according to an official committee investigating the tragedy.
"Currently the committee can confirm 23 deaths," head of the investigative committee Vladimir Markin was quoted as saying by TASS.
More than 1,400 homes were destroyed in the fire, leaving some 6,000 people homeless, according to regional governor Viktor Zimin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally coordinated emergency services operations in Khakassia, according to his spokesperson.
Some 5,000 firefighters as well as thousands of volunteers worked to contain the blazes through the night, extinguishing the fires by Monday morning. Temporary camps have been set up in the Beisky and Shirinksy districts nearby for those displaced by the fire.
The fires started after mass grass burning by residents in the region. Grass burning is a springtime tradition among farmers in some parts of Russia, meant to clear the fields of dry grass and prepare them for planting. Officials blamed the extreme severity of this year's fire on "uncontrolled burning, dry weather and uncharacteristically strong and rough winds."
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Sending more innocent men to lose their lives. This is a video of the military hardware retrieved on the battlefield from Ukraine, now on display...
Comment: For a look at the 58 sinkholes that have opened up in the past month, around the globe, check out SOTT Worldview: