A 5.6-magintude earthquake struck the Gulf of Aden on Tuesday morning, with authorities confirming the UAE was not impacted by any seismic activity.

The incident occurred at 8.03am UAE time, with the head of the country's seismology centre telling 'Emirates24|7', the epicentre of the tremblor was 10 kilometres deep in the Gulf of Aden, the body of water between Yemen and Somalia.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) posted the epicentre was near Qalansiyah, Socotra Island, Yemen.

"The 5.6-magnitude tremblor is what we call a moderate earthquake, which are regular occurrences in the Gulf of Aden," said Khamis Al Shamsi from the National Centre for Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS).

Multiple earthquakes were recorded Tuesday morning in Oklahoma.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, at 1:33 a.m., a 3.6 magnitude earthquake was recorded 14 miles west of Waukomis, and 16 miles west, southwest of Enid. It was about two miles deep.

At 4:22 a.m., another 3.3 magnitude earthquake was recorded nine miles east, northeast of Cherokee, and 34 miles north, northwest of Enid. It was about four miles deep.

At 7:29 a.m., another 3.1 magnitude earthquake was recorded 12 miles west of Perry and 21 miles east, southeast of Enid. It was about three miles deep.

No injuries or damage were immediately reported following these earthquakes.

Chaos has erupted this morning as some of the roads in Dover, Deal and Sandwich have become flooded due to heavy rain.

The downpour has been constant since before 6am, leaving country roads such as the Alkham Valley a difficulty to drive through.

The Met Office issued a weather warning for rain at about 7am and the deluge is not expected to ease until 3pm.

Surface water has forced motorists to slow down, especially in busy parts such as Dover's London Road and in Walmer, Lord Warden Avenue took the brunt, as pictured here in Angela Barron's pictures.

Floods caused by torrential rains over the past few days killed four people in the central province of Nghe An as of September 21, the provincial Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Search-and-Rescue reported.

Flooding also wrecked nine houses, swamped nearly 2,500 hectares of rice and food crops, and damaged 14 irrigation works and 40 kilometres of roads, with property losses amounting to 191 billion VND (8.4 million USD).

Although the rain has eased, Nghe An is facing a high risk of landslides at mountains and river banks.

The committee, together with People's Committees of Nghe An city and towns and districts, is working around the clock to update information about flooding and promptly take countermeasures.

Officials say a 13ft tiger shark bit a Hawaii man's leg as he spearfished off the northern tip of the Big Island.

The state department of land and natural resources said in an early Monday press release that the 27-year-old man, from Kapaau, swam to shore after the shark attack on Sunday afternoon. His fishing companion called 911.

The man was flown by helicopter to a hospital for surgery. His condition is not immediately known.

State officials say they did not close beaches because the attack happened in an isolated area off Upolu Point. They warned people not to go into the ocean after heavy rains because muddy water can attract sharks.


Source: Associated Press

Two very recent 'home gas explosions' have added to the growing list of mysterious 'gas' explosions that have destroyed residential homes and other buildings around the world in recent years.

Two days ago an explosion and fire severely damaged a single home in a quiet cul-de-sac in Derbyshire, England. Husband and wife Simon and Shelley Saxton-Cooper were both killed in the blast.

A large tornado reported to be up to 50 metres in diameter has touched down in West Sussex.

These photos were taken by Andy Coupland who saw it from his home in Poynings six miles away.

He took the photographs just after 11.30am and said the tornado appeared to have touched down on farmland close to the A283.

"The tornado is seen to be at the base of a classic funnel cloud.

Given the range at which these photographs were taken - the diameter of the rotating column would have been huge, possibly greater than 50 metres.

The speed of rotation was quite rapid.

This was one impressive tornado, even from six miles away!"

Andy Coupland

It's beautiful, it's tranquil, but you really should hear a deep symphony of lush sounds. And it's getting weirdly quiet

Brutal wildfire images too much to bear? Fatigued by non-stop news of extreme weather, record-low snowpack, emaciated polar bears, unprecedented this and fast-receding that, a natural world that appears to be going more or less insane?

Maybe you need some quiet. Get outside, sit yourself down and let nature's innate healing powers soothe your aching heart.

Sounds good, right? Sounds refreshing. Sounds... well, not quite right at all. Not anymore.

Have you heard? Or more accurately, not heard? Vicious fires and vanishing ice floes aside, there's yet another ominous sign that all is not well with the natural world: it's getting quiet out there. Too quiet.

Behold, this bit over in Outside magazine, profiling the sweet, touching life and times of 77-year-old bioacoustician and soundscape artist Bernie Kraus, author of The Great Animal Orchestra (2012), TED talker, ballet scorer, and a "pioneer in the field of soundscape ecology."

Krause, last written about on SFGate back in 2007, is a man whose passion and profession has been making field recordings of the world's "biophony" for going on 45 years, setting up his sensitive equipment in roughly the same places around the world to record nature's (normally) stunningly diverse aural symphony - all the birds, bees, beavers, wolves, babbling streams, fluttering wings, the brush of trees and the rush of rivers - truly, the very pulse and thrum of life itself.

A bird in the hand is very sad indeed

One of his most favorite spots to record? Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, in the Mayacamas Mountains, in Sonoma. It's here he discovered something very disquieting indeed: The wonderfully diverse sounds of nature are no longer changing and evolving as usual. They are actually diminishing. Thinning out. And in many cases, vanishing completely.

This is the chilling news: Bit by bit, bird by bird, species by species, gurgling brook by gushing river, the song of wild nature is, in many places, falling deathly silent. The reasons? You already know: Real estate development, mining, logging, habitat destruction, climate change, drought.

Between 2004 and 2015, the [Mayacamas] site's biophony (totality of sounds produced by living organisms) dropped in level by a factor of five. "It's a true narrative, a story telling us that something is desperately wrong," Krause says.

In short: What once was a rich, varied symphony of sound has become a far more subdued chamber orchestra, with large spaces of eerie silence where there was once a vast natural racket, signifying everything.

It's not just Sonoma. The weird hush is surely spreading, becoming more and more familiar all over the world. It's not hard to figure out why: We've successfully wiped out fully half the world's wildlife, in the just last four decades alone. Songbird populations in particular, for a variety of (mostly terrible, mostly human-caused) reasons, have been decimated all over the world. The skies just aren't as musical as they used to be. Ecosystems are sputtering, shifting violently, dying away completely, as pathways to life are being choked off.

I recently wrote about the week I spent at my family's getaway cabin in northern Idaho ("Everything is on fire and no one cares"), a normally pristine, sublime summertime experience, this year ominously altered by the sheer density and persistence of smoke from all the regional wildfires.

The light was different, the air charred and dry. But perhaps most disquieting of all, was the sound - or rather, the lack of it.

When the wind died down and the smoke really gathered in, the sky would turn a more sickly yellow. The birds seemed to stop singing entirely. The bees fell silent. The normally vibrant background cacophony of the natural world flattened out. It wasn't just eerie, it was psychically disturbing. You could feel the lack of healthy sound vibration in the air.

Of course it's not that way everywhere. Wildlife still teems and flourishes in many parts of the world where humankind's reach hasn't penetrated as fully; in some places, due to the self-same climate change, there is bizarre excess, abnormal surges in animal population, even as overall biodiversity continues to decline. There is perhaps too much sound in some areas, as nature's recoil to our abuses takes different forms - hurricanes, thunder, earthquakes.

But overall, the tonal shift is undeniable, and deeply unsettling: There is now less birdsong than at any time in human history. Fewer lions' roars, beehive hums, elephant rumbles, frog croakings, simply because we've killed off so many of them, and show no signs of slowing. One by one and species by category, the orchestra's players are exiting the stage. The concert will never be over, but at this rate, it might be a very bleak final movement indeed.

At least 2,000 houses in some parts of Kaduna State, Northwest Nigeria, have been submerged by flood as a result of a heavy rainfall.

The flood was said to have been caused by an unusual heavy downpour that lasted for over 48 hours.

The rainfall which started on Saturday night till Monday morning, caused massive floods at Abubakar Kigo road new extension, Barnawa, Ungwar-Rimi, Gonin-Gora, Karatudu, Kachia, Romi among others.

Pemberton area hardest hit, heavy rains more damaging than normal after a dry, hot summer

Heavy weekend rains, flooding and landslides have emergency responders attending to multiple locations in the Pemberton and Squamish areas.

Ryan Wainwright, Emergency Program Manager for the Squamish Lillooet Regional District, is asking those still affected by the storm to be patient.

"Understand that recovery takes a lot longer than the disaster itself," he said.

Twenty-four people have been stranded in the back country in the upper Squamish Valley, and another 20 are stuck near Pemberton due to the washout of the Lillooet Forest Service Road.