This beautiful lightning display appeared today over Cologne, Germany. I don't think I've ever seen lightning behave like this.

This was the scene above the Midlands today, as an unusual cloud formation brought thunder and lightning as well as torrential downpours to the region.

The "Undulatus Asperatus" clouds turned the sky dark during the unseasonal June weather. There were reports of localised flooding as heavy rain was interspersed with sunshine as the weather turned distinctly sour.

People were still recovering from Saturday's stormy weather when more storms hit Bridgnorth today.

The National Police Air Service, based at Halfpenny Green Airport near Bridgnorth, was set to be deployed to help to look for a missing person in the town. But the service had to be grounded due to lightning strikes around the airbase.

The storms also delayed the start of practice rounds for the PGA Euro Pro Tour at Astbury Hall Golf Course, near Bridgnorth.

An international team of researchers has shown that circulating avian influenza viruses contain all the genetic ingredients necessary to underpin the emergence of a virus similar to the deadly 1918 influenza virus.

Searching public databases, the researchers, led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, identified eight genes from influenza viruses isolated from wild ducks that possessed remarkable genetic similarities to the genes that made up the 1918 pandemic flu virus. The 1918 or "Spanish flu" pandemic was one of recorded history's most devastating outbreaks of disease, resulting in an estimated 40 million deaths worldwide.

The new work was published today (June 11, 2014) in the journal Cell Host and Microbe. It shows that "there are gene pools in nature that have the potential to cause a severe pandemic in the future," says Kawaoka, an international authority on influenza and the senior author of the new report.

To assess the risk posed by a virus that could acquire all eight of the 1918-like genes, the team used reverse genetics methods to generate a virus that differed from the 1918 virus by only 3 percent of the amino acids that make the virus proteins. The resulting virus was more pathogenic in mice and ferrets that an ordinary avian flu virus, but was not as pathogenic as the 1918 virus and it did not transmit in ferrets via respiratory droplets, the primary mode of flu transmission.

Since pandemic risk escalates when a virus become transmissible, Kawaoka's group then conducted additional experiments to determine how many changes would be required for the avian 1918-like virus to become transmissible in ferrets, a well accepted model for influenza transmission studies. The researchers identified seven mutations in three viral genes that enabled the pathogen to transmit as efficiently as the 1918 virus. The resulting virus, composed of genetic factors circulating in wild and domesticated birds, demonstrates that the genetic ingredients for a potentially deadly and pandemic pathogen exist in nature and could combine to form such a virus, according to Kawaoka.

A group of neighbours are at their wits end after being plagued with a mysterious screeching sound for two years - but still no one can tell them what is causing it.

Residents on the Stoke Grange estate in Aylesbury are subjected to the unidentified high-pitched sound - which can still be heard with the windows shut - on an almost daily basis, but despite several complaints to the authorities, they are no closer to finding out where it is coming from.

Loré and Nigel Reece, of David Close, say that their double glazing is no match for the 'irritating' sound, which occurs any time of day or night.

Loré, 62, said: "We endure it in the winter months, because you can still hear it with the windows and doors closed.

"It is shrill and very, very annoying. It's very hit and miss but it can go on constantly for anything from ten minutes right up to an hour and a half. It happens at five in the morning, late at night, during the weekends and over bank holidays. It's inconsistent."

The fifth installment in our new monthly series, the following video compiles footage of 'signs of the times' from around the world during May 2014 - 'earth changes', extreme weather and planetary upheaval.

Highlights this month include: wildfires breaking out in places where snow is falling a.) nearby, and b.) way further south. Several huge dust storms smothering cities in the U.S., the Middle East and Central Asia, while up near the Arctic Circle, Alaska's largest ever forest fire consumed over 200,000 acres. A record-breaking spring heatwave in southwestern U.S. combined with incredibly destructive wildfires to San Diego into a warzone. 150,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes as multiple 'fire-nadoes' torched suburbs.

Unbelievable quantities of hail were dumped in tropical Sao Paulo, Brazil, as well as across the U.S., while record-breaking rainfall led to flooding in many places throughout the U.S., the Middle East, southern China, Africa, and Europe. Spectacular electrical storms swept across the U.S. and Europe, while over 3,000 occurred in the Balkans following the worst flooding since record-keeping began, and a horrific 'double-landslide' in Afghanistan buried 2,700 people alive.

Notable mass fish kills happened in New Jersey, Los Angeles and Texas, while ice was still floating on the Great Lakes despite a spring heatwave. Three feet of snow hit Denver despite massive wildfires breaking out elsewhere in the Rockies. Two tornadoes touched down in Ukraine, two days apart, and a number of massive sinkholes opened up, including one that nearly swallowed traffic on a busy street in Russia.

Connecting the dots...

Have proponents of man-made global warming been proven correct?

Or is something else, something much bigger, happening on our planet?

While mainstream science claims the phenomena covered in this video series are unrelated, they in fact appear to stem from a single common cause.

In times past, people understood that the human mind and states of collective human experience influence cosmic and earthly phenomena.

Historical records reveal a strong correlation between periods of authoritarian oppression with catastrophic and cosmically-induced natural disasters.

© SOTT.net/Red Pill Press

Published by Red Pill Press, Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection is the third installment in the 'Secret History of the World' series, a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the signs of our times.

Available in Kindle and paperback format on Amazon.com

Thwaites Glacier, the large, rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is not only being eroded by the ocean, it's being melted from below by geothermal heat, researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin (UTIG) report in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings significantly change the understanding of conditions beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet where accurate information has previously been unobtainable.

The Thwaites Glacier has been the focus of considerable attention in recent weeks as other groups of researchers found the glacier is on the way to collapse, but more data and computer modeling are needed to determine when the collapse will begin in earnest and at what rate the sea level will increase as it proceeds. The new observations by UTIG will greatly inform these ice sheet modeling efforts.

Using radar techniques to map how water flows under ice sheets, UTIG researchers were able to estimate ice melting rates and thus identify significant sources of geothermal heat under Thwaites Glacier. They found these sources are distributed over a wider area and are much hotter than previously assumed.

* In Duesseldorf, two men and a woman were killed when a large tree fell on them

* Police say two bicyclists were killed when hit by falling tree limbs in separate incidents in Cologne and Krefeld

* A man in Essen collapsed and died near midnight as he was working to clear debris from a street

* Storm front moved further northeast and there are weather warnings for regions including Hanover and Bremen

Heavy rains, hail and high winds have left at least six people dead in western Germany after violent storms battered the region.

In the North Rhine-Westphalia capital of Duesseldorf, police said two men and a woman who had sought refuge in a garden house were killed late Monday when a large tree fell on the building, the dpa news agency reported Tuesday.

Firefighters were able to rescue six others, who were taken to hospitals.

It's not just the U.S. that has suffered a damaging onslaught of massive, wind-driven hails lately. On Sunday and Monday, powerful thunderstorms erupted across France and Belgium, dropping baseball to tennis-ball-sized hail near Brussels as well as the French countryside. Hail also fell in Paris overnight Sunday. These hailstones formed inside massive supercell thunderstorms, which are long-lived storms that feature rotating updrafts, which allows them to produce large hail, damaging winds, and in some cases, tornadoes.

While thunderstorms are typical in France during the summer, this storm outbreak has produced unusually large hail for the region, and it has hit Paris particularly hard.

As of Monday evening in France, Meteo France had posted an "Orange Alert" across west-central and northern parts of the country, with the threat of severe weather stretching northeastward into Belgium and the Netherlands. Meteo France is urging people to take "special vigilance" as the country faces yet another stormy night.

Temperature in the Capital touched 45.1 degree Celsius on Sunday while it was 47.8 degree C in and around Palam airport making it the hottest day in 62 years giving no respite to people reeling under a blistering heat wave.

Adding to the woes of heat-ravaged Delhiites, frequent power cuts across the city aggravated the situation and made life miserable.

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said there is no relief likely from the heat wave on Monday and similar weather conditions will continue.

Flooding caused by torrential rains over the weekend has killed at least nine people and left three missing in southern Brazil, officials said Monday, declaring an emergency in 77 towns.

The flood-hit areas include the state of Parana, whose capital, Curitiba, is one of the 12 host cities for the World Cup, which opens Thursday.

The worst-affected areas however are located around 300 kilometers (185 miles) from Curitiba.

More than 55,000 people's homes were flooded in the 77 towns where Parana Governor Beto Richa declared a state of emergency.