About 300 people were evacuated from a flooded and crocodile-infested town in the Northern Territory after the deluge from Cyclone Carlos caused the Daly River to rise to 14.9m.

Authorities estimate nearly every resident of the town of Daly River, located 200km south of Darwin and named after the creek that runs through its centre, had been moved by boat to a school at nearby Woolianna.

The river is expected to remain above 14m for a week. The Northern Territory Emergency Services director, Peter Davies, said buses had started moving people from the school.

"From there, those who don't have anywhere else to go will be taken to Batchelor College," Mr Davies said yesterday.

"We offered people the opportunity to evacuate on Saturday and they said no. But this morning, when the same offer went up, pretty much the whole community wanted to leave."

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Ashley Patterson said 355mm of rain fell from Thursday to Sunday morning at nearby Mount Nancar.

But just 2mm was recorded yesterday, providing psychological relief for locals -- despite the river height nearing 15m last night.

The National Environmental Management Authority (Nema), Public Health Ministry and Kenya Wildlife Service are investigating the deaths of fish in Mara River. Conservationists suspect the deaths that started last week might have been caused by agro chemicals from farms, that drain into the river. Hoteliers in Masai Mara Game Reserve are now expressing fear that the chemicals might kill animals that depend on the river.

"The deaths could have been caused by agro chemicals from large scale farms on the upper side of the river. The chemicals might also kill hippos, crocodiles and other animals that drink water from the river," said Ben Kipeno, a conservationist from the northern side of the reserve. Mr Kipeno said on Wednesday there were unconfirmed reports that apart from fish, a crocodile and a hippo have already succumbed to effects of the chemicals. He urged the Government to rein in farmers along the river who use potent chemicals and claimed that despite several complaints to Nema no action has been taken. Officials from KWS who were dispatched from Nairobi took samples of the fish to the Government Chemist for further tests to ascertain the cause of the deaths. When The Standard visited the river, dead fish were floating with scavengers, including the Marabou stork, feeding on them. The Narok South Nema officer in charge Gabriel Tambushi said initial reports had indicated that more than five million fish were killed at the confluence of the seasonal Moyan River in Transmara with the Mara following a heavy flood.

NASA and the ESA agree, and so does the Russian space agency, Roscosmos - the sun is headed for a Grand Solar Minimum and a Grand Cooling will commence.

The aptly named Grand Cooling is exactly what it implies: the sun is going to cool. That cooling will also cool off the Earth. It will last from 30 to 50 years.

What exactly does global cooling mean? Well for one, Al Gore was sure wrong! The Earth isn't going to warm, it's going to get colder. Much colder. So cold a little or full-blown Ice Age will ensue. As a matter of fact, some scientists claim we're already in the early stages of an Ice Age.

Maybe the Nobel Committee and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should ask Mr. Gore to return his awards.

Dutch Professor Cees de Jager, a prominent astronomer and solar expert, forcefully asserts that we the world is indeed entering for a long period of very low solar activity. The professor and his colleagues are certain Earth is heading for a "long Grand Minimum" - defined as either a Solar Wolf-Gleissberg or a Maunder Minimum - "not shorter than a century." His 2010 paper, "The forthcoming Grand Minimum of solar activity," outlined the extended period of time that the diminished solar radiation would affect the Earth.

Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a scientist's video and slides that demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

At a science conference in Washington, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

"There's some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn't seem to be degrading," Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil.

"Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 percent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don't know," Joye said, later adding: "there's a lot of it out there."

The "Butterfly Effect" the idea that on a global scale, even small events can have a ripple effect around the world is demonstrated in the work of a Russian family in Siberia that have for three generations studied Lake Baikal -- one of the most biologically diverse of the world's oldest and deepest lakes. In the 1940's, Mikhail Kozhov began taking detailed measurements of the lake's temperature. His granddaughter, Lyubov Izmest'eva, continues the family tradition.

Izmest'eva ventures out onto the water, or ice in the winter, to collect water samples and measure temperatures, just like her mother and grandfather before her.

Along with a team of scientists from the University of California at Santa Barbara, Izmest'eva recently co-authored a study of Lake Baikal. The research sheds light on the way climate change is affecting temperatures in large bodies of water.

Nearly 60 small and moderate earthquakes struck Arkansas since Feb. 15, 2011, the most recent a magnitude 4.3 earthquake this morning 37 miles away from Little Rock. Many of the earthquakes are large enough to be felt.

"These earthquake swarms are not that unusual for the region," said Harley Benz, scientist in charge at the U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center. "Central Arkansas has a history of earthquake activity with a swarm of thousands of earthquakes smaller than magnitude 4.5 in the early 1980s and another swarm in 2001, known as the Enola earthquake swarms."

Citizens are encouraged to report any experience feeling the earthquake(s) at the USGS Did You Feel It? website. The earthquake swarm that began Tuesday may continue. This area is slightly south of and most likely related to similar ongoing activity involving hundreds of small earthquakes near Guy, Ark., from August 2010 to present.

Scientists do not know why swarms start, why they stop, or how long to expect them to last. The possibility of a larger earthquake cannot be discounted, but none of the other swarms have caused any reason to expect a future earthquake large enough to cause significant damage in central Arkansas.

USGS scientists have been working with their partners at the Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI) at the University of Memphis and the Arkansas Geological Survey (AGS) to carefully monitor this situation. They have deployed a local network of stations - an array - that measure seismicity in the Greenbrier-Enola area to augment regional seismic stations. The CERI and AGS array and personnel are the best source of the most current information about the new earthquake swarm. The AGS and CERI are investigating whether the earthquakes occur naturally or are related to human activities.

Authorities say a 3.5-magnitude earthquake has shaken southern Alabama, and people have reported feeling the quake as far away as Birmingham, Ala.

Residents in the Pensacola area of the Florida panhandle also say they felt the quake, according to reports from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Information from the Geological Survey indicates the quake happened at 5:15 p.m. Friday.

Officials say the epicenter was near the tip of the Fort Morgan Peninsula at the mouth of Mobile Bay in Baldwin County.

An article on Bardarbunga, the volcano behind the recent Iceland eruption scare, written by geologist Ari Trausti Gudmundsson.

This past spring, while the eruption at Eyjafjallajokull was taking place, there was large scale earthquake activity at Bardarbunga. The increased seismic activity in the area then, and again just a couple of weeks ago, created a lot of discussion and deliberation. Bardarbunga is a big volcano under the Vatnajokull ice cap with a large ice-filled caldera some 6-700 metres deep and a lateral volcano at Hamar to the south of the main crater. Bardarbunga is a central volcano in the Icelandic volcano system. The system's fissure swarm stretches from the northeast to the southwest from the central highlands under the glacier; all the way from Tungnaa in the south to the lava fields west of Askja in the north. The system is over 100 kilometres long.

Aftershocks from Monday's 4.3 magnitude earthquake northwest of Mount St. Helens have continued all week, but most of them have been too small to be felt any distance away.

The most recently recorded shock occurred at 8:07 a.m. Friday about six miles from the volcano, the same vicinity as the temblor that jolted a broad area of Southwest Washington and Northwest Oregon at 10:35 a.m. Monday, according to the University of Washington geophysics lab in Seattle. Two quakes measuring 2.4 and another hitting 2.3 occurred late in the week.

None of the earthquakes is known to have caused any damage or injuries.

Increased volcanic activity continues at the summit of Kilauea and at the Puu Oo vent.

Lava is flowing from another east cone and a vent on the east wall of Puu Oo into the crater. Hawaii Volcano Observatory released a video Wednesday of the activity in the crater. The flow continued, off and on, Thursday and yesterday.

A lava lake in Halemaumau is also active.

A section of rock above the summit vent collapsed into the lake Monday, sending gas and ash into the air and creating loud popping that could be heard by visitors at the Jaggar Museum overlook in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Lava ash and "Pele's hair" - fine strands of cooled lava - dusted cars in the parking lot.