Killings of endangered elephants are rising in Indonesia as authorities fail to stop poaching
Poisoning or shooting killed many of the 129 critically endangered elephants that have died on Indonesia's Sumatra island in less than a decade, highlighting weak enforcement of laws against poaching, an environmental group says.
WWF Indonesia said killings of Sumatran elephants are on the rise, with 29 either shot or poisoned last year, including 14 in Aceh province. The group said Tuesday that no one has been convicted or jailed in the deaths that were counted in Riau province since 2004.
The report came three days after two dead Sumatran elephants were found near a paper plantation in Riau, allegedly poisoned by poachers. Another elephant was killed last month near Tesso Nilo national park and its tusks were hacked off. An autopsy found a plastic detergent wrapper in its belly filled with poison.
The group said 59 percent of the dead elephants were definitely poisoned, 13 percent were suspected to have been poisoned, and 5 percent were killed by gunshots. Others died from illness or other causes, or the reason for their death was unknown.
Earth Changes
A raging flood wave that inundated parts of Prague is now heading north toward Germany, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people and leading to concerns about the safety of chemical plants.
More than 19,000 people have been evacuated from the flooding that has affected half of the Czech Republic, said firefighters spokeswoman Nicole Zaoralova. Some 3,000 people had to leave their homes in Usti nad Labem on the Elbe river near the German border where the waters were still on the rise Wednesday. High waters have already submerged parts of the city as well many other towns along the Elbe, the biggest river in the country.
They are also threatening major chemical factories, including one that released toxic chemicals into the Elbe during the devastating floods of 2002. The plants have been shut down as a precaution and chemicals removed, authorities said. Czech public television said a barrier that protects one chemical plant in Lovosice was leaking Wednesday and it was not immediately clear if it might be completely flooded.
© Associated Press/Markus Schreiber
Two men in a boat cross the flooded market place of the city of Wehlen at the river Elbe , Germany, Tuesday, June 4, 2013. After heavy rainfalls, swollen rivers flooded areas in Germany, Austria , Switzerland and Czech Republic.
Two men in a boat cross the flooded market place of the city of Wehlen at the river Elbe , Germany, Tuesday, June 4, 2013. After heavy rainfalls, swollen rivers flooded areas in Germany, Austria , Switzerland and Czech Republic.
They are also threatening major chemical factories, including one that released toxic chemicals into the Elbe during the devastating floods of 2002. The plants have been shut down as a precaution and chemicals removed, authorities said. Czech public television said a barrier that protects one chemical plant in Lovosice was leaking Wednesday and it was not immediately clear if it might be completely flooded.
Record floods in southern Germany have subsided to some extent in certain areas. Other parts of the country continue to hold their breath as the worst flooding may still be to come.For some residents in southern Germany, Wednesday marks the first day they can begin assessing the damage of the floods that have hit wide swathes of the country. For others, Wednesday could see the worst flooding yet.
The eastern German city of Dresden is one of the places where citizens are bracing for the worst. Over 600 people have been evacuated there as water levels are expected to rise to 8.27 meters (27.1 feet) - well above normal levels of around two meters.
Across the border in the Czech Republic, the story is the same: the cities of Usti-nad-Labem on the Elbe river are also expected to see peak flood stages. The same rush of water is expected to hit Dresden downriver on the Elbe.
Magdeburg, which also lies on the Elbe, is expecting water levels to rise nearly 5 meters (16.4 feet) above normal. A state of emergency has been declared there, and other cities along the Elbe in German state of Saxony are taking similar precautions.
Across the border in the Czech Republic, the story is the same: the cities of Usti-nad-Labem on the Elbe river are also expected to see peak flood stages. The same rush of water is expected to hit Dresden downriver on the Elbe.
Magdeburg, which also lies on the Elbe, is expecting water levels to rise nearly 5 meters (16.4 feet) above normal. A state of emergency has been declared there, and other cities along the Elbe in German state of Saxony are taking similar precautions.
The U.S. Geological Survey is revising the magnitude of an earthquake off the southeast coast of Hawaii to 5.3.
Tuesday afternoon's earthquake was centered about 34 miles (55 kilometers) southeast of Pahala on the Big Island, at a depth of about 25 miles (40 kilometers). Officials say it did not expected to generate a tsunami.
"The earth is very sound down there there's not a lot of cracks, therefore waves travel very efficiently through the material," USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory Seismic Network manager, Wes Thele told KHON2.com.
Hawaii County Civil Defense Director Darryl Oliveira says there are no immediate reports of damage.
The USGS reported earlier that the quake's magnitude was 5.6.
People as far away as Maui and Oahu reported weak shaking to the USGS. The Oahu Department of Emergency Management says some areas may have experienced strong shaking.
Kevin Dayton, the executive assistant to the mayor, says he felt a large jolt in the county building in Hilo.
Tuesday afternoon's earthquake was centered about 34 miles (55 kilometers) southeast of Pahala on the Big Island, at a depth of about 25 miles (40 kilometers). Officials say it did not expected to generate a tsunami.
"The earth is very sound down there there's not a lot of cracks, therefore waves travel very efficiently through the material," USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory Seismic Network manager, Wes Thele told KHON2.com.
Hawaii County Civil Defense Director Darryl Oliveira says there are no immediate reports of damage.
The USGS reported earlier that the quake's magnitude was 5.6.
People as far away as Maui and Oahu reported weak shaking to the USGS. The Oahu Department of Emergency Management says some areas may have experienced strong shaking.
Kevin Dayton, the executive assistant to the mayor, says he felt a large jolt in the county building in Hilo.
© YouTube/Creative Commons
Hail coats Cape Town, South Africa as a cold front hit on Sunday, June 2, 2013.
Hail coats Cape Town, South Africa as a cold front hit on Sunday, June 2, 2013.
Wilfred Solomons-Johannes of Cape Town Disaster Management told the media that 2,266 people have been affected by floods on the Cape Flats. Around 550 houses have been damaged in Bishop Lavis, Guguletu, Hout Bay, Khayelitsha, Philippi and Strand.
In Athlone, Elsies River, Langa and Parow Valley, roofs were blown off houses.
Cape Town mayor, Patricia De Lille called for "extraordinary emergency arrangements".
Eleven years after an eruption of Mount Nyiragongo devastated the sprawling lakeside city of Goma, killing hundreds of people, eastern Congo's armed conflict is preventing scientists from predicting the volcano's next deadly explosion. With its plume of ash and steam reaching high into the sky, the brooding Nyiragongo is one of the world's most active volcanoes and a constant menace to the city of 1 million people, whose streets are still scarred by solidified lava. Attempts to monitor the volcano's activity have been dangerously curtailed by the M23 rebel group which has controlled its lush, forested slopes for the past year. Observation equipment has been looted by armed groups and the area around Nyiragongo is off-limits as rebel fighters defend their strategic positions overlooking Goma.
"What happened in 2002 will happen again. We just don't know when," Celestin Kasereka Mahinda, a volcanologist at the Goma observatory and head of a national committee charged with planning for natural disasters. Kasereka and his colleagues gave two months' warning before the last eruption but authorities ignored them. People only began to evacuate as the first fingers of lava probed their way into the town's densely populated residential areas. Goma's airport is still surrounded by lava blocs as big as cars, excavated after the runway was swallowed by molten rock. Kasereka used to conduct weekly checks on Nyiragongo, one of only three volcanoes in the world to have a permanent lava lake. "Surveillance is very reduced so the risk has become very big," he said.
© USGS
2013-06-05 04:47:29 UTC
2013-06-05 15:47:29 UTC+11:00 at epicenter
Location
11.408°S 166.265°E depth=64.7km (40.2mi)
Nearby Cities
89km (55mi) SSE of Lata, Solomon Islands
466km (290mi) NNW of Luganville, Vanuatu
725km (450mi) ESE of Honiara, Solomon Islands
734km (456mi) NNW of Port-Vila, Vanuatu
1057km (657mi) N of We, New Caledonia
Technical Details
The tornado that killed nine and injured about 50 people near Oklahoma City on Friday has been rated a top-of-the-scale EF5, the National Weather Service said Tuesday.
It also had a record-breaking width of 2.6 miles, double the size of the 1.3-mile-wide tornado that devastated Moore, Oklahoma last month.
The National Weather Service posted this graphic to its website illustrating the path of the huge tornado.
EF5 tornadoes are extremely rare, and the Oklahoma City area seems to have bad luck with them. On May 3, 1999, an EF5 tornado hit the same area and killed 46 people. The Moore tornado last month killed 24 people and destroyed thousands of homes.
The death toll was lower for Friday's tornado because the area it hit wasn't as heavily populated as Moore, which is about 11 miles south of Oklahoma City. El Reno, where the EF5 tornado hit on May 31, is about 30 miles west of Oklahoma City.
There have been only eight tornadoes rated an EF5 in Oklahoma since 1950, meaning a quarter of them have hit near Oklahoma City in the past two weeks alone, according to a tweet from a Weather Channel meteorologist.
It also had a record-breaking width of 2.6 miles, double the size of the 1.3-mile-wide tornado that devastated Moore, Oklahoma last month.
The National Weather Service posted this graphic to its website illustrating the path of the huge tornado.
The death toll was lower for Friday's tornado because the area it hit wasn't as heavily populated as Moore, which is about 11 miles south of Oklahoma City. El Reno, where the EF5 tornado hit on May 31, is about 30 miles west of Oklahoma City.
There have been only eight tornadoes rated an EF5 in Oklahoma since 1950, meaning a quarter of them have hit near Oklahoma City in the past two weeks alone, according to a tweet from a Weather Channel meteorologist.
Yukon River flooding that knocked out power to the Alaska village of Galena has brought on a number of secondary problems, including how to keep bears away from hundreds of pounds of game meat that has spoiled in residents' refrigerators and freezers.
The flood caused by ice clogging the Yukon submerged some homes and washed out the road to the community's landfill. On Monday, emergency responders were developing plans to collect spoiled meat and fly it by helicopter to the dump, said Jeremy Zidek, spokesman for the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.
"All the freezers filled with game began to get pretty bad," Zidek said.
Plans called for meat to be collected in one central location, loaded into a sling and lifted to the dump, he said.
Many Galena residents remain evacuated to other communities, and Zidek was unsure who would be doing the collecting. In rural Alaska, freezers often are kept in arctic entryways where it's cold in the wintertime and where they're accessible without entering a home.
© Associated Press/National Weather Service, Ed Plumb
In this May 27, 2013 photo released by the National Weather Service, ice and water are shown flooding homes and other buildings in Galena, Alaska. Several hundred people are estimated to have fled the community of Galena in Alaska's interior, where a river ice jam has caused major flooding, sending water washing over roads and submerging buildings.
In this May 27, 2013 photo released by the National Weather Service, ice and water are shown flooding homes and other buildings in Galena, Alaska. Several hundred people are estimated to have fled the community of Galena in Alaska's interior, where a river ice jam has caused major flooding, sending water washing over roads and submerging buildings.
"All the freezers filled with game began to get pretty bad," Zidek said.
Plans called for meat to be collected in one central location, loaded into a sling and lifted to the dump, he said.
Many Galena residents remain evacuated to other communities, and Zidek was unsure who would be doing the collecting. In rural Alaska, freezers often are kept in arctic entryways where it's cold in the wintertime and where they're accessible without entering a home.
Mississippi River communities scrambling Tuesday to fend off the rain-engorged waterway got discouraging news: More rains looming across much of the nation's midsection threatened to slow the potential retreat of the renegade river.
Such an outlook may not be welcomed in the northeast Missouri town of West Alton, where a makeshift levee's breach Monday fanned worries that the 570-resident town - which was mostly swept away by a flood in 1993 - would be inundated again. A voluntary evacuation advisory before the breach was fixed was heeded by just 15 percent of the town's residents, but "everyone else is ready to go at a moment's notice" if the hastily shored-up barrier shows signs of gives way, Fire Chief Rick Pender said Tuesday.
For now, he said, "everything is stable," with much of the flooding corralled in a railroad bed acting as a town-protecting channel.
"There are some spots not looking pretty (as defenses), but they're still holding the water back," Pender told The Associated Press by telephone. "Everyone is just monitoring the sandbags and barriers, waiting for this water to come down." The latest National Weather Service forecasts suggest that was to happen later Tuesday. But more rains expected in coming days, from St. Louis north to Minnesota and westward across some of the Great Plains, stood to drop another inch of precipitation here and there, adding more water to the Missouri River and the Mississippi River into which it feeds, National Weather Service hydrologist Mark Fuchs said.
Such an outlook may not be welcomed in the northeast Missouri town of West Alton, where a makeshift levee's breach Monday fanned worries that the 570-resident town - which was mostly swept away by a flood in 1993 - would be inundated again. A voluntary evacuation advisory before the breach was fixed was heeded by just 15 percent of the town's residents, but "everyone else is ready to go at a moment's notice" if the hastily shored-up barrier shows signs of gives way, Fire Chief Rick Pender said Tuesday.
For now, he said, "everything is stable," with much of the flooding corralled in a railroad bed acting as a town-protecting channel.
"There are some spots not looking pretty (as defenses), but they're still holding the water back," Pender told The Associated Press by telephone. "Everyone is just monitoring the sandbags and barriers, waiting for this water to come down." The latest National Weather Service forecasts suggest that was to happen later Tuesday. But more rains expected in coming days, from St. Louis north to Minnesota and westward across some of the Great Plains, stood to drop another inch of precipitation here and there, adding more water to the Missouri River and the Mississippi River into which it feeds, National Weather Service hydrologist Mark Fuchs said.
