A mudslide has killed five children in northern Afghanistan, where weeks of heavy rain has killed about 150 people and destroyed hundreds of houses, officials said on Saturday.
The children, aged between seven and 10, died in the northern province of Balkh late on Friday when they were buried by earth and stones as they were playing and watching animals graze, deputy provincial governor Abdul Satar Barez said.
The earth had been loosened by construction and days of downpour, he said.
Earth Changes
© BOM
Latest colour mean sea level pressure analysis for Australia and New Zealand
Latest colour mean sea level pressure analysis for Australia and New Zealand
The Bureau of Meteorology says there are strong easterly winds in excess of 35 kilometres per hour going right through the ranges, northern tablelands and central tablelands, with the strongest winds in Wagga.
© Jurgen Freund / Nature Picture Library / Rex Features
This fan coral is in good health, and many of its relatives may stay healthy if they can upgrade their in-house algae.
This fan coral is in good health, and many of its relatives may stay healthy if they can upgrade their in-house algae.
"The most exciting thing was discovering live, healthy corals on reefs already as hot as the ocean is likely to get 100 years from now," says Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University.
Corals have a symbiotic relationship with tiny algae called zooxanthellae. The corals give the algae a home and, in exchange, the algae provide the corals with food. When water temperatures get too hot, the corals expel the algae. This is what is known as coral bleaching and it is expected to kill coral reefs around the world as global temperatures rise.
© AP
Iron oxides stain the snout of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica
Iron oxides stain the snout of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica
The bugs, believed to be descended from ocean-dwelling organisms, have evolved a unique ecosystem in a briny pool under 400 meters of ice.
There they have flourished for at least 1.5 million years, transforming sulfur and iron compounds to fuel their growth.
© US Geological Survey
Friday, May 22, 2009 at 02:24:18 PM at epicenter
Location 18.347°N, 98.267°W
Depth 56 km (34.8 miles) set by location program
Region PUEBLA, MEXICO
Distances 75 km (45 miles) NW of Huajuapan de Leon, Oaxaca, Mexico
80 km (50 miles) S of Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
90 km (55 miles) W of Tehuacan, Puebla, Mexico
150 km (95 miles) SE of MEXICO CITY, D.F., Mexico
© Agence France-Presse/Torsten Blackwood
Australia's Tasmanian devil, the world's largest surviving marsupial carnivore, will be listed as endangered because of a contagious and deadly cancer, the government said
Australia's Tasmanian devil, the world's largest surviving marsupial carnivore, will be listed as endangered because of a contagious and deadly cancer, the government said
"This disease has led to the decline of about 70 percent of the Tasmanian devil population since the disease was first reported in 1996," Environment Minister Peter Garrett said in a statement.
Devil facial tumour disease, which is spread through biting, kills the animals usually within three months by growing over their faces and mouths, preventing them from eating.
© BOM
Latest infrared satellite image from MTSAT-1R
Latest infrared satellite image from MTSAT-1R
At least 9,000 Grafton residents have been told to leave, with the town predicted to flood tonight.
However, there are differing reports about the number of residents being asked to evacuate, with the SES putting the figure at about 20,000.
© cairns.com.au
Cooktown - north of Cairns, Australia
Cooktown - north of Cairns, Australia
Cooktown, north of Cairns, was 10 degrees Celsius at 6:00am AEST - two degrees below its previous record low.
© Eric Montie
Atlantic white-sided dolphin and her calf.
Atlantic white-sided dolphin and her calf.
Eric Montie, the lead author on the study currently in press and published online in Environmental Pollution, performed the research as a student in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution-MIT Joint Graduate Program in Oceanography and Ocean Engineering and as a postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
The final data analysis and writing were conducted at College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, where Montie now works in David Mann's marine sensory biology lab.
It was a dark and stormy night.
Ha ha ha! Just kidding. It was a dark and stormy afternoon. As hard as this is to believe, it was almost the end of (bad word) May.
Throughout the kingdom, the people were royally bummed out, partly because the economy was spinning slowly into the toilet, partly because everyone was terrified of catching a really nasty flu from pigs, but mainly because their land had been bewitched.
Once upon a time -- as all good stories are supposed to begin -- their kingdom was a place of warm and beautiful springs, the kind of springs you only read about in stories that begin with the words "once upon a time."
But now there was a darkness upon the land and their dreams of backyard barbecues and digging in the garden and going to the beach and baking their pasty white skin were being snowed under by The Winter That Refused To End.
Ha ha ha! Just kidding. It was a dark and stormy afternoon. As hard as this is to believe, it was almost the end of (bad word) May.
Throughout the kingdom, the people were royally bummed out, partly because the economy was spinning slowly into the toilet, partly because everyone was terrified of catching a really nasty flu from pigs, but mainly because their land had been bewitched.
Once upon a time -- as all good stories are supposed to begin -- their kingdom was a place of warm and beautiful springs, the kind of springs you only read about in stories that begin with the words "once upon a time."
But now there was a darkness upon the land and their dreams of backyard barbecues and digging in the garden and going to the beach and baking their pasty white skin were being snowed under by The Winter That Refused To End.
