A rather whiffy mystery surrounds a pervading pong hanging over Sutton Coldfield, Great Barr and Walsall.

The strange stench started nostrils twitching last afternoon on Friday and sparked a volley of tweets ranging from the curious to - some might say - the downright offensive.

No official explanation has been given for the smell, although a similar foul "farmyard" waft detected in 2008 was blamed on strong easterly winds wafting it from across the Channel.

Back then, it was dubbed the "Euro-whiff" by the Met Office - and could it now be back?

Whatever the cause, Twitter has been alive with people kicking up a stink across Walsall, Sutton and Great Barr.

After an eighth body was extricated from the rubble of two buildings in East Harlem that were leveled by an explosion, fire and safety officials began on Friday narrowing in on what caused the blast.

With all of those missing now accounted for, investigators revealed that combustible levels of gas had been detected underground near the site on Park Avenue, a few hours after the explosion on Wednesday morning. Crews from Consolidated Edison drilled 50 holes in the ground and, in five of them, found air containing from 5 percent to 20 percent methane, said Robert Sumwalt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

"That's a pretty good concentration of natural gas," said Mr. Sumwalt, whose agency is investigating the explosion, which also injured roughly 60 people. "It further leads to our hypothesis that this may well have been a natural gas leak."

Normally, no methane would be found in New York City's soil, he said.

The source of any leak, however, was still unknown.

It was late afternoon on Lake Kariba when the thunderclouds started forming like ominous grey monsters on the horizon.
We were photographing a fish eagle perched on a dead stump, the amazing colours of the bird glowing in the soft afternoon light over Matusadona National Park in Zimbabwe. Beyond the fish eagle, the storm grew darker and we could see the rain coming down over the lake in torrents.

Suddenly, what seemed like a large tornado began to form at the base of the clouds, growing bigger and bigger as it reached the water. Roger de la Harpe was lucky enough to capture this sighting with amazing skill, the regal fish eagle providing the context and foreground of this rare African phenomenon.

Event Time
2014-03-15 23:51:30 UTC
2014-03-15 18:51:30 UTC-05:00 at epicenter

Location
5.566°S 80.879°W depth=9.8km (6.1mi)

Nearby Cities
6km (4mi) W of Sechura, Peru
19km (12mi) SSW of Vice, Peru
23km (14mi) SW of La Union, Peru
39km (24mi) SSW of Catacaos, Peru
645km (401mi) SSW of Quito, Ecuador

Technical Details

A large sinkhole has forced the Road Commission for Oakland County to close Drake Road just north of Maple Road in West Bloomfield Township for at least two weeks, it reported Friday.

In a press release, the road commission said it closed the road Thursday and it will remain closed as the county department works to repair the road.

During the closure, the detour route for through traffic is Maple Road to Farmington Road to Walnut Lake Road and vice versa.

This is the third reported sinkhole in Oakland County this week. Sinkholes were reported Tuesday in Royal Oak and Farmington Hills.

Event Time
2014-03-15 08:59:20 UTC
2014-03-15 03:59:20 UTC-05:00 at epicenter

Location
14.107°S 76.324°W depth=15.0km (9.3mi)

Nearby Cities
27km (17mi) SSW of Paracas, Peru
46km (29mi) SSW of Pisco, Peru
48km (30mi) SSW of Villa Tupac Amaru, Peru
52km (32mi) SSW of San Clemente, Peru
240km (149mi) SSE of Lima, Peru

Technical Data

Inclement weather, blowing dust expected to continue till Sunday

A rare hail storm pounded parts of Dubai, Sharjah and Ajman on Friday night, forcing some residents hanging out to run to run for cover as pea-sized pieces of ice started peppering them for an intense few minutes.

"It's the first time I experienced this kind of hail storm in the eight years I've been here in Dubai," said an Asian resident of Abu Hail.
"I was swimming in the pool on our building's rooftop with friends at around 9pm, and I thought someone was pelting us with pebbles," he added.

The hailstorm forced many to a safer ground.

"I was walking on the road with my children when the hailstorm suddenly came," said a father of two. "We had to run for some cover because we're not used to it -- and I thought it won't stop anytime soon. But it's nice to see this once in a while."

The hailstorm was intense, but brief, said a resident of Al Zafrana Building in Deira.

Weathermen from National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS) had reported on Thursday that an upper air cold mass hovered over the UAE.

Meanwhile, residents welcomed the moderate rains in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and parts of the northern emirates from around noon.

The mercury dropped in the last two days of drizzling while blowing fine dust in certain areas affected visibility. Strong north-westerly wind generate high waves lashed the Arabian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

Doctors also advised people with breathing problems to stay indoors.

Weathermen had raised the red flag on fishermen, advising them stay away from the sea due to the inclement weather, since Wednesday night due to a surface trough coming in from the Red Sea area.

Cloudy, windy and dusty conditions spread across the emirates as forecasters repeated a severe weather warning.
Light rainfall was felt in Dubai, Sharjah, Al Hamra in the western region of Abu Dhabi on Friday.

Weathermen expect unstable weather over a huge swathe of the UAE, with a probability of rain clouds accumulation over the eastern mountain region.

This weather pattern was expected to remain until Sunday, with a drop in temperature likely to continue.

The severe droughts now affecting California and the Colorado River basin suggest that we may be at a tipping point in our ability to continue to manage the water systems that are needed to power agriculture and support Western development. According to The New York Times, many experts believe the current drought that is drying up the Colorado River "is only the harbinger of a new drier era in which the Colorado's flow will be substantially and permanently diminished." Already, the drought in California is threatening the state's water supply - a harbinger of the enormous conflicts that are now on the horizon - conflicts between states and regions, urban residents and farmers, developers, farmers and environmentalists. With global warming now reducing the Sierra snowpacks, whose runoff has been irrigating the country's breadbasket, we could be facing rising food prices and even food shortages into the future. It is within the realm of possibility that we could see - even in the United States - the kinds of conflicts that are roiling parts of the developing world.

How is it that we have allowed a significant proportion of the nation's food supply to be located in a region that is part semi-desert and dependent on irrigation? Why have we allowed one of the fastest-growing regions of the country to depend on a water source - the Colorado - that historically received little rainfall and for whose use there has been little coordinated planning?

It is not as if we were not forewarned. As early as 1878, John Wesley Powell, the one-armed geologist and Western explorer and the second director of the US Geological Survey, submitted a Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States to Congress. The report contained a careful survey of the rainfall patterns of all the land from the middle of the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean, the land Powell termed the "Arid Region." Powell concluded that only a minority of this land received enough rainfall each year to support agriculture and warned that "many droughts will occur; many seasons in a long series will be fruitless; and it may be doubted whether, on the whole, agriculture will prove remunerative." If these lands were to be cultivated, they would have to be irrigated. Such irrigation, he proposed, would require enormous amounts of capital and would have to be carefully managed to prevent the kinds of conflicts over scarce water that are now becoming apparent - the classic dilemma of the "tragedy of the commons." Powell's revolutionary proposal was that the irrigable lands be divided into semi-autonomous hydrological districts, structured around local water sources. Communities sharing a common water source were to be entrusted with the responsibility of its use and were to set up cooperatively managed and funded governing systems. Powell was also concerned that forests be managed cooperatively. "If they permit the forests to be destroyed, he said, "the source of their water supply is injured and the timber values are wiped out."

Dead whale floated to the beach of Dickwella, Sri Lanka. Video shows you people trying to remove the animal from the beach to a grave yard.

Sink hole behind Fed Courthouse Northern Av pic.twitter.com/aN6BYFCRHe
- John GrelandBPD (@captaingreland) March 12, 2014

The weather in New England has been chaotic over the last few months, but there hasn't been anything that really qualifies as a natural disaster. Until Wednesday.

Several news outlets reported that a large sinkhole appeared behind Joe Moakley Federal Courthouse on Northern Avenue in South Boston.

No injuries were reported and that the area was fenced off as a crew worked to contain and repair the damage. A 30-foot sinkhole certainly isn't the worst this country has seen, but for Boston, that's pretty bad.

BostInno said that Boston Police Captain John Greland's tweet (see above) was the first report of the sinkhole. But Wednesday night, local news outlets were on scene with live coverage.