The Daily Telegraph fishing columnist Al McGlashan discovered the remains of the ocean titan - so fresh it still carried its ruby red colouring - about 50km off Jervis Bay.

The carcass of the giant measured about 3m long, even though most of its tentacles had been bitten off, possibly in a fight to the death with its only known predator, a sperm whale, hundreds of metres below the surface.

"It must have died not that long before we found it because it didn't smell at all and its colours were still strong - most giant squid remains are smelly and rotten and just off-white by the time someone finds them," Mr McGlashan said.

Hardly a day goes by in Sochi, Russia's picturesque Black Sea resort, without a dead dolphin washing up on the beach. With the tourist season just kicking off, the unexplained deaths have yet to draw much scrutiny. But environmentalists are increasingly alarmed. The dolphin carcasses are also turning into a real holiday spoiler for vacationers drawn to the region's scenic beaches and pristine vistas. Russian tourist Aida Kobzh was shocked to discover a group of dead dolphins last week at her local beach in Sochi.

"Everyone stood there and stared at the dead little dolphins lying belly up. Poor creatures!" Kobzh says. "There were some on the beach but also in the water, they were floating there, dead." The dolphins started washing up along Russia's Black Sea coast several weeks ago. They have also been spotted on Ukrainian shores. Environmentalists are now talking about the biggest dolphin die-off to date in the region, with an estimated 300 animals dead so far. Local authorities have made no serious attempt to investigate the deaths, saying the animals are too decayed by the time they reach the shore for laboratory tests to be conducted.

Jakarta, Indonesia - , Indonesia - A strong earthquake swayed tall buildings in Indonesia's capital Monday afternoon but caused no tsunami or apparent damage.

Office workers said the swaying was felt for about 10 seconds in high-rise buildings around the city of 9 million people. Even two-story homes shook strongly.

No damage or casualties have been reported. Earthquakes occur frequently across the sprawling archipelago nation, but it is uncommon for tremors to be felt in Jakarta.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 5.9-magnitude quake hit in the Indian Ocean 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of Sukabumi, a town in West Java province. It was about 171 kilometers (106 miles) from Jakarta and 67 kilometers (41 miles) beneath the ocean floor.

A plan to disperse the waste to incineration facilities across the country, meant to instill national unity, is doing the opposite, and further delaying Japan's ability to move beyond Fukushima.

Disposing the more than 20 million tons of rubble caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami is proving to be a difficult problem for Japan, not least because much of the rubble has been irradiated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The government's plan -- to destroy 4 million tons of potentially radioactive earthquake debris in garbage incinerators around the country -- is dividing the nation and further delaying the country's ability to put Fukushima behind it.

More than a year after the disaster, over 90 percent of the debris from disaster-stricken areas is still sitting around, waiting for disposal. Under a government pledge to clear the rubble entirely by 2014, the Ministry of the Environment is leading an effort to distribute the rubble to municipalities around Japan for speedy incineration and burial. But people across the country have met the plan with strong opposition, objecting that it needlessly spreads radiation to unaffected areas.

Last week, trucks carrying earthquake debris from northeastern Japan arrived in the south-western island of Kyushu, as part of the national government's plan to disperse and destroy debris. Protestors blocked the road for 8 hours over fears that incinerating the debris would spread radiation to areas that have not yet been contaminated by the nuclear disaster. The waste was burned last Thursday in the first "trial burn" of radioactive tsunami debris to be conducted in this part of Japan.

The protest in front of the main gate of Hiagari Incineration Facility in Kita Kyushu City was the latest in a divisive debate over the effort to ship roughly 20 percent of earthquake debris from the Tohoku region (where Fukushima is located) to municipalities around Japan for incineration. The plan, which calls for shipping the debris as far as the southern most island of Okinawa, has been promoted as a symbol of Japan's national unity and collective reconstruction effort.

US, Florida - A Naples church and daycare were forced to be held outside on Sunday. The pastor of Faith Community Church says a growing sinkhole underneath the building is to blame.

"It's heartbreaking. There's nothing we can do about it," says Pastor Roy Shuck.

Shuck says the sinkhole may be shifting tiles near the church's nursery and splitting walls where they pray.
The ground has shifted so much that Shuck says it now slopes four inches down.

On Thursday, Collier County officials deemed the church unsafe for the congregation. That forced Sunday services to be held outside.

Date-Time
Monday, June 04, 2012 at 03:15:25 UTC

Sunday, June 03, 2012 at 10:15:25 PM at epicenterTime of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
5.508°N, 82.468°W

Depth
9.7 km (6.0 miles)

Region
SOUTH OF PANAMA

Distances
323 km (200 miles) S of David, Panama

330 km (205 miles) SSW of Santiago, Panama

347 km (215 miles) SW of Las Tablas, Panama

501 km (311 miles) SW of PANAMA CITY, Panama

Parts of Europe are being gripped by unusual cold, even though the calendar says it's meteorological summer. Now children in Sweden are finding out what snow is like - in June! Strangest warming I've ever seen.
The English language The Local here writes that "Stockholm broke an 84-year-old cold record on Saturday, as the capital's temperature only reached 6 degrees Celsius, the lowest June maximum daily temperature the city has seen since 1928."

"Indeed, you could be excused for thinking that the current chill is more like winter than summer. It was actually colder in the capital yesterday than on Christmas Eve. 'The temperature was a degree lower than it was at Christmas in Stockholm, so it is colder. And it's windier, too,' said SMHI's meteorologist Lisa Frost to newspaper Dagens Nyheter."

Just two days ago The Local here reported that snow blanketed northern parts.

Date-Time
Monday, June 04, 2012 at 00:45:15 UTC

Sunday, June 03, 2012 at 06:45:15 PM at epicenterTime of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
5.287°N, 82.580°W

Depth
9.7 km (6.0 miles)

Region
SOUTH OF PANAMA

Distances
346 km (214 miles) S of David, Panama

356 km (221 miles) SSW of Santiago, Panama

372 km (231 miles) SW of Las Tablas, Panama

526 km (326 miles) SW of PANAMA CITY, Panama

Firefighters battling New Mexico's largest-ever blaze gained ground on Sunday and officials said they would begin to allow evacuated residents to return home on Monday.
The Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire, which has burned 241,701 acres in the Gila National Forest, is now 17 percent contained with progress being made by the hour, said Fire Information Officer Heather O'Hanlon.

Residents of the historic mining town of Mogollon, which was evacuated last Saturday, will be allowed to return starting on Monday, she said.

Los Angeles, California - Years of ferocious storms have threatened to gnaw away the western tip of a popular beachfront park two hours drive north of Los Angeles. Instead of building a 500-foot-long wooden defense next to the pier to tame the tide, the latest thinking is to flee.

Work is under way to gauge the toll of ripping up parking lots on the highly eroded west end of Goleta Beach County Park and moving a scenic bike path and buried utility lines inland away from lapping waves.

Up and down the California coast, some communities are deciding it's not worth trying to wall off the encroaching ocean. Until recently, the thought of bowing to nature was almost unheard of.

But after futile attempts to curb coastal erosion - a problem expected to grow worse with rising seas fueled by global warming - there is growing acknowledgment that the sea is relentless and any line drawn in the sand is likely to eventually wash over.

"I like to think of it as getting out of the way gracefully," said David Revell, a senior coastal scientist at ESA PWA, a San Francisco-based environmental consulting firm involved in Goleta and other planned retreat projects.