A strong typhoon has hit South Korea, killing at least 15 people and leaving 10 others missing at sea.
Typhoon Bolaven, which is considered the strongest to hit the Asian country in about a decade, left damage in the country's southwestern and south-central regions.

The storm smashed two Chinese vessels off the southern island of Jeju on Tuesday. South Korean coast guard rescuers saved 12 fishermen, and they recovered five bodies from the sea. Search was also underway for 10 missing crewmen.

According to South Korea's public administration ministry, the typhoon snapped 235 traffic lights, caused 7,857 trees to collapse and damaged 42 ships or boats, 35 houses and 1,195 greenhouses.

The strong pacific storm also damaged 6,418 hectares (15,852 acres) of farmland.

Peruvian geologists have revealed that recent activity at El Misti signal that the volcano is active.

Last Thursday researchers at the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP) found that El Misti - located 17km outside the city of Arequipa - had recently recorded the highest amount of seismic activity than in the past five years.

Engineer Orlando Macedo told El Comercio that 224 earthquakes were registered at El Misti - an event known as an earthquake swarm - and which signaled that the volcano was no longer dormant.

El Misti, he said, experienced 143 volcano tectonic earthquakes, which were caused by the fracture of rock inside the volcano, due to sudden changes in pressure and temperature.

Despite the recent increase in activity, the IGP said there were still no conditions for an eruption to occur at El Misti, which last erupted sometime between 1450 and 1470.

For an eruption to happen, Macedo said, El Misti would have to experience continued earthquakes, which "would have to occur after long-term movements of magma, and causing these earthquakes known as tremors, with lava."

In a season of growing concern about the West Nile Virus, a mysterious illness that has killed millions of mosquito-eating bats has added to the worry about that infection, and about bats in general.


It's called white nose syndrome, a fungal growth on the noses and wings of many species of bats, some of them already endangered. It was first observed in a cave in New York in 2006 and has spread throughout much of the northeastern United States.

A powerful storm bearing down on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans is now a hurricane, US forecasters say.

Hurricane Isaac, boasting winds of at least 75mph (120km/h), is likely to make landfall by Tuesday night.

The storm is expected to hit New Orleans seven years after the much stronger Hurricane Katrina.

US President Barack Obama has warned residents in the path of the storm they should not "tempt fate" and should heed evacuation warnings.

Families face punishing food price rises triggered by a catastrophic U.S. drought, experts warned yesterday.

They said the American crisis is forcing up the global price of crops used to make staples such as bread and pasta.

Meat is also tipped to cost much more because animal feed costs have soared, again because of the drought.

The miserable summer in the UK has made the situation worse because even common vegetables such as potatoes and peas are having to be imported from as far away as South Africa, Guatemala and Israel.

British farmers say heavy rain and lack of sunshine has decimated or delayed harvests.

In the U.S., more than 35 states have declared disaster areas due to drought. Arable land covering an area larger than Belgium and Luxembourg combined has been abandoned.

At least five Chinese fishermen have been killed and 10 others are missing after their boats capsized as Typhoon Bolaven hit South Korea, officials say.

The two boats were just off Jeju island when they capsized. The South Korean coast guard rescued 12 crew members, while six others swam to shore.

Three other people have also died in separate incidents in the country.

The typhoon has cut power to tens of thousands of homes. Trees have been felled and many flights cancelled.

A total of 33 people were on board the two ships when they were hit by high waves and winds, the coast guard said.

Several crew members were hauled to safety by rescue personnel using ropes. A search is continuing for those still missing, emergency personnel said.

Best view of damage @03:44. A mini tornado tears through the Municipal Cemetery in Guatemala City, with strong winds lifting roofs and pulling trees. No major injuries or deaths were reported.

Source: Reuters

It has been a turbulent day that started with a band of heavy rain lined up on the west side of the Chesapeake Bay through Annapolis before dawn. There was a short break, but storms began spinning up rapidly around lunchtime. Literally. Please note that a storm does not have to have a warning to be deadly. Lightning kills!

A storm spinning over Virginia has a tropical depression type of feel to it. This is what led to the incredible storms on the Delmarva Saturday. We had evening views from Ocean City, which got their flooding at night. Consider that 4-8 inches of rain fell on the Delmarva Saturday, and that could repeat for us today.

While the original system is well inland, a new wave of Low Pressure has formed near the coast. Combine that with High Pressure in New England, and the funneling of very humid winds off of the Atlantic Ocean is helping to generate widespread storms. Enough circulation in the atmosphere is helping a few of these storms to spin up rapidly.

A "swarm" of earthquakes that touched off Sunday morning in southern California was still rolling along Monday afternoon, registering more than 300 small to moderate quakes that could be felt from Arizona to San Diego. The swarm is unusual but not as rare as you might think.

During an earthquake swarm, an affected area experiences a rapid-fire series of temblors that are all similarly proportioned, so that no one shock emerges as the obvious source of the rest. According to Julie Dutton, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, diffuse clusters like these are far less common than earthquakes that arrive as one big shake followed by a series of smaller aftershocks.

Dutton estimates that the USGS records about 30 to 40 notable swarms a year, compared with 20,000 to 30,000 total earthquakes. Because swarms are rooted in the same kind of plate movements and stresses that cause more traditional quakes, she thinks that a large part of the phenomenon's apparent scarcity is based on semantics.

Swarms "are really hard to characterize," she told Life's Little Mysteries. "It's all the same mechanisms. It's just a different way of finding equilibrium in the environment."

Where did the swarm start?

The current swarm originates just outside of the small farming town of Brawley, Calif., about 30 miles (45 km) north of the state's border with Mexico. According to Dutton, swarms with magnitude ranges close to the current one arrive in that area at the rate of one or two per decade, with the most recent one hitting in 2005.

The 2005 swarm, which topped out with a 5.1-magnitude event, was surpassed by yesterday's high of 5.5, the cut-off magnitude at which seismologists expect to start seeing casualties in developed countries, according to USGS geophysicist Paul Caruso. But there have been no reported injuries from the Brawley quakes, and Caruso said Monday morning saw a considerable slowing in the area's seismic activity.

Cyclone Beatrice struck northern Italy on Sunday, causing light flooding, storms and a mini-tornado but also providing much needed cooling after a weeks-long heatwave.

Farmers and vintners hampered by the drought looked forward to Beatrice, which succeeded Lucifer, an anticyclone with winds that spiral out from a high-pressure centre, which had brought hot air from the Sahara Desert.

The cyclone is expected to move slowly toward the south of Italy, lowering temperatures and causing storms next weekend.

Some roads and highways were flooded in the centre-north of the country, causing delays for Italians returning home from summer holidays.

A mini-tornado also ravaged the renowned botanical gardens of Villa Taranto on the shore of Lake Maggiore, uprooting 250 plants and destroying others at the arboretum visited by 150 000 people each year.