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Landslides leave 20 dead in northwest Philippines


Press TV
Wed, 25 Sep 2013 03:01 UTC
Flooded street in Manila
© Unknown
A Filipino banana vendor crosses a flooded street in Manila, Philippines Sunday September 22, 2013.
Deadly landslides triggered by torrential monsoon rains have killed 20 people in northwestern Philippines, raising the death toll from storms across Asia to 47.

Soldiers and villagers were also looking for at least seven people missing in mountainside villages struck by the landslides in the province of Zambales, Philippine officials said on Monday.

According to Subic Mayor Jeffrey Khonghun, 15 people died in two landslide-hit villages in his town. Five people were also killed in landslides in two other towns in Zambales.
"This is the first after a long time that we were hit by this kind of deluge," Khonghun said.
Meanwhile, Chinese officials said that Typhoon Usagi, which hit the country after passing by the Philippines, killed 25 people in China's southern province of Guangdong.

Two other people also died after their boat capsized in northeastern Aurora province in the Philippines late on Sunday.
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Alarm Clock

At least 16 dead, others missing in Bolivia landslide


Press TV
Wed, 25 Sep 2013 02:42 UTC
Bolivia's Cajones river
© Unknown
File photo of Bolivia's Cajones River
At least 16 people died and a dozen others went missing after a mudslide triggered by heavy rainfall swept vehicles off a road and into a river in Bolivia's northeastern Amazon region, officials say.

A bus, a minibus and a car were swept off the road on Monday near the village of Caranavi, about 180 kilometers (110 miles) north of La Paz, Colonel Juan Cuevas, a traffic police official, said Tuesday.

The vehicles were travelling along Bolivia's "Death Road" before falling down a 100-meter ravine and into the Cajones River, the official said.

The persistent rain has complicated rescue efforts, though officials marked the death toll as high as 16, stressing that it could rise further due to fears that more bodies are buried under the landslide.

Around 10 people have survived the accident.

The event marked the latest landslide disaster in Bolivia. In February 2011, over 300 homes were destroyed by a massive landslide in the country's capital city, La Paz.
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Camera

Something the entire world should see - most of us are simply unaware

Arjun Walia
Collective Evolution
Mon, 23 Sep 2013 17:36 UTC
Image
© uncw.edu
North East of Hawaii, the ocean currents form a giant whirl pool of debris from around the Pacific, the scientific name is called the North Pacific Gyre. It's one of the largest ecosystems on Earth, comprising of millions of square kilometres. Today it's better known as "The Great Garbage Patch," an area the size of Queensland, Australia where there is approximately one million tonnes of plastic spread throughout the ocean. Drag a net in any area of this part of the ocean and you will pick up toxic, discarded plastic.

Photographer Chris Jordan has documented this phenomenon.
I had been studying for quite a while the phenomenon called the Pacific garbage patch. I was looking for a way to visualize it, it was really surreal to land on Midway, seeing that my worst hopes of what I would find there are true. These are all albatross chicks, hatched out of their eggs and the very first meal they got was deadly to them. What happens is, when the eggs hatch one of the parents goes out and flies looking for food. They search over this vast area of the pacific and when they come back with is a belly full of toxic plastics, and they feed that to their babies. They die of starvation, malnutrition and chocking. Simply allow yourself to feel whatever it is you feel about this, without jumping to the way to solve it. Because I think we really need to feel these things, even if the feelings are uncomfortable, because those are the feelings that will turn into the fuel and drive passionate action - Chris Jordan

Comment: Most of us are simply unaware.... that our ocean is being used as a trash can!

The Biggest Dump in the World
What is the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch?
Are We Witnessing the Death of Our Planet?
Pacific Ocean garbage patch worries researchers
The world's rubbish dump stretches from Hawaii to Japan
Plastic Trash in Oceans May Be 'Vastly' Underestimated
'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' Plastic Has Increased Hundredfold Since the 1970s
A Passion to Clean up the Pacific Ocean's Great 'Garbage Patch'

See for yourself...
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Bug

As superbugs rise, new studies point to factory farms

Peter Lehner
LiveScience
Tue, 24 Sep 2013 15:22 UTC
Cow
© Eans/Dreamstime

When Russ Kremer, a fifth-generation hog farmer from Missouri, was gored in the knee by one of his Yorkshire boars, he figured it was a routine injury. But the cut got infected. His knee swelled up to twice its normal size, and his life hung in the balance as multiple courses of antibiotics over two months proved ineffective.

Finally, treatment with a potent form of the antibiotic cephalosporin managed to beat back the multidrug-resistant superbug.

Research shows that people who work with livestock, like Kremer, are more likely to carry antibiotic resistant bacteria on or in their bodies, posing a risk of a serious infection. But they're not the only ones at risk. Two million Americans are sickened by antibiotic-resistant bacteria every year, and 23,000 die from these infections, according to a landmark U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report published last week.

Another recent study from Johns Hopkins University, published on the heels of the CDC report, showed that anyone who lives near industrial livestock operations, or fields fertilized with pig manure, is also at greater risk of getting infected by a superbug.
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Bizarro Earth

Wild hogs roam streets, scare people near Atlanta


CBS Atlanta
Tue, 24 Sep 2013 15:15 UTC
Image
© SVEN HOPPE/AFP/Getty Images
File photo of a wild hog.
Police have enlisted the help of a trapper to round up a group of feral hogs scaring residents of a subdivision in suburban Atlanta.

Some parents fear sending their children to a school bus stop in the Lithonia area, where up to four of the hogs are roaming the streets and eating trash in front yards.

Authorities hope the hogs can be trapped in cages by Wednesday morning, DeKalb County police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said.

"They're causing quite a stir to say the least," Parish said shortly before noon Tuesday, as she headed out to the neighborhood, about 17 miles east of downtown Atlanta.

The police department's animal control officers were at the scene, but the plan was for a volunteer trapper to actually capture the animals.

"My children are petrified," Taneisha Danner told WSB-TV.
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Bullseye

Met Office global warming figures 'are fatally flawed and could result in millions being squandered'

Fiona McCrae
Daily Mail
Tue, 24 Sep 2013 12:56 UTC
Lord Lawson
© Getty Images
Lord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation say the Met Office's predictions are biased

The Met Office's global warming predictions are flawed and could result in millions of pounds being squandered, it is claimed.

A report for a think tank led by former Tory chancellor Lord Lawson says a computer programme behind figures that shape climate change policy is biased in favour of higher temperatures.

Large sums of public and private sector money could be 'malinvested' in everything from wind farms to heat-proof road surfaces as a result, it claims.

Lord Lawson, chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: 'The Government's policy of abandoning cheap conventional energy and moving to expensive (and unreliable) renewable energy has always been of dubious merit.

'The fact that it now emerges this policy has been based on projections by a computer model which has been found to be fatally flawed means that an independent expert review of the model and its projections is both essential and urgent.'

The claim, hotly disputed by the Met Office, comes as scientists and officials meet in Stockholm to finalise a major report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Comment: The prediction of arctic sea ice is a great example, showing how completely useless the Met Office' models are and how much their models are based on policy and not science.
In June they made the lowest prediction of just 3.4 million square kilometers. It ended up at 5.1 million square kilometers. It was based on modeling. In July they stuck with their prediction of 3.4 million square kilometers. More can be read on Sea Ice News Volume 4 number 6.

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Bizarro Earth

7.7 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan just created a new island


io9.com
Tue, 24 Sep 2013 13:08 UTC
A massive, 7.7 magnitude quake struck south-central Pakistan on Tuesday afternoon local time. The USGS warns that there will high casualties and economic losses, requiring international response. Seismologists have also confirmed that the quake raised a new island, about 30-40 feet high, off the coast.

The island is about half a mile off the coast of Gwadar, in the Arabian Sea. Already, reports the International Herald Tribune, crowds have gathered to see the mountainous, rocky island. Some are claiming it is 100 feet long.

Image
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Bizarro Earth

USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 7.7 - 66km NNE of Awaran, Pakistan


US Geological Survey
Tue, 24 Sep 2013 10:24 UTC
Image
© USGS
Event Time:
2013-09-24 11:29:48 UTC
2013-09-24 16:29:48 UTC+05:00 at epicenter

Location:
27.000°N 65.514°E depth=20.0km (12.4mi)

Nearby Cities:
66km (41mi) NNE of Awaran, Pakistan
116km (72mi) NW of Bela, Pakistan
172km (107mi) NW of Uthal, Pakistan
175km (109mi) S of Kharan, Pakistan
791km (492mi) ENE of Muscat, Oman

Technical data
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Bizarro Earth

30 large dolphins beach themselves in northeastern Brazil; 7 die, news reports say


StarTribune
Mon, 23 Sep 2013 15:35 UTC
Rio De Janeiro - Around 30 large dolphins beached themselves in northeastern Brazil over the weekend, and news reports said Monday that at least seven of them had died.

The dolphins, known as false killer whales, ran aground early Sunday on the shallow sands of Upanema beach in Areia Branca, roughly halfway between the cities of Fortaleza and Natal.

Images distributed by the environmental police of Rio Grande do Norte state show beachgoers and passers-by attempting to aid the animals, which lay stranded in inches- (centimeters-) deep water. Most of the animals were still, occasionally twitching their tails, as beachgoers swabbed them with wet T-shirts.

O Globo newspaper reported Monday that at least seven on the animals died, six of them on the Upanema beach. O Globo said one animal died following an apparent shark attack after it was returned to the ocean. The report stressed that the dolphin was likely attacked in very deep waters and that area beachgoers needn't worry about shark attacks.

The paper said it was not immediately known why the animals beached themselves, but biologists were examining whether the pod leader might have been ill. Another hypothesis is that the dolphins were pursuing a school of fish and were trapped on Upanema's high sand banks.

O Globo said it was among the largest collective beachings in Brazil in recent decades. In 1991, around 19 whales beached themselves on the sands of the nearby town of Sao Miguel do Gostoso, the report said.

Source: Associated Press
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Cow Skull

World's top climate scientists told to 'cover up' the fact that the Earth's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years

Tamara Cohen
Daily Mail
Mon, 23 Sep 2013 05:03 UTC
The earth from space
© Alamy
Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed.

A leaked copy of a United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft.

Published next week, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record and world temperatures have not yet exceeded it, which scientists have so far struggled to explain.

The report is the result of six years' work by UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it - on which governments including Britain's base their green policies.

But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.

Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was 'misleading' and they should focus on decades or centuries.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has changed its tune after issuing stern warnings about climate change for years

Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change.

Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat - and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve.
      Read More...
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