Two dead dolphins were washed ashore by the sea in Batumi on May 8. The one meter-long sea pig dolphins were later found to have died as a result of the morbillivirus epidemi, Rustavi 2 channel reports. Head of the Flora and Fauna Association Archil Guchmanidze said ten cases of the sea washing dead dolphins ashore had been recorded this year on shores in Georgia.

Health officials have confirmed that the fox that attacked a Scotland County woman earlier this week had rabies.

The fox tried to bite the woman early Wednesday morning as she walked to her car. The incident occurred in the Leisure Living subdivision off Havelock Drive in Laurinburg.

County health officials did not name the victim, but said that state officials confirmed that the fox had been rabid. It is the first case of rabies in the county this year.

Ashley Cayton said she was headed out to work when she saw what she thought was a dog at the end of her driveway.

"I didn't pay any attention to it," said the 26-year-old Cayton, who works as a newspaper carrier for The Laurinburg Exchange. "The next thing I knew, the animal had grabbed me by the leg and ripped a hole in my jeans trying to bite me."

Cayton said she tried to shake the fox off her leg and finally got away by slamming her leg against the side of her vehicle.

"Once I got it off me, I jumped in my car and called my boyfriend and told him that I had been bitten," Cayton said. "I told him not to come outside, but he didn't listen. He thought it was a dog, but I was pretty sure that it wasn't."

Cayton said her boyfriend, who was armed with a baseball bat, whistled for the animal.

"Nothing happened the first time, but after a second whistle, the fox came out from in front of the car and went after him," Cayton said. "When the fox got close enough, my boyfriend hit it hard and killed him."

Cayton said that the fox "had only grazed her skin", but she immediately went to the hospital to begin rabies treatments. The couple also brought the body of the fox to the hospital so the animal could be tested by the state.

State health officials alerted Cayton and county health officials on Thursday that the fox was suffering from rabies.

Event Time
2013-05-14 00:32:25 UTC
2013-05-14 10:32:25 UTC+10:00 at epicenter

Location
18.753°N 145.261°E depth=603.4km (374.9mi)

Nearby Cities
42km (26mi) W of Agrihan, Northern Mariana Islands
395km (245mi) N of Northern Islands Municipality - Mayor's Office, Northern Mariana Islands
395km (245mi) N of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands
420km (261mi) N of JP Tinian Town pre-WW2, Northern Mariana Islands
578km (359mi) N of Yigo Village, Guam

Technical Details

A strange ghost town that spent a quarter century under water is coming up for air again in the Argentine farmlands southwest of Buenos Aires.

Epecuen was once a bustling little lakeside resort, where 1,500 people served 20,000 tourists a season. During Argentina's golden age, the same trains that carried grain to the outside world brought visitors from the capital to relax in Epecuen's saltwater baths and spas.

The saltwater lake was particularly attractive because it has 10 times more salt than the ocean, making the water buoyant. Tourists, especially people from Buenos Aires' large Jewish community, enjoyed floating in water that reminded them of the Dead Sea in the Middle East.

Then a particularly heavy rainstorm followed a series of wet winters, and the lake overflowed its banks on Nov. 10, 1985. Water burst through a retaining wall and spilled into the lakeside streets. People fled with what they could, and within days their homes were submerged under nearly 10 meters (33 feet) of corrosive saltwater.

For those of you who live in an area affected by Brood II of the periodical 17 year cicadas - see map here - they have started to emerge. During this past weekend, the loud and clumsy bug was observed in counties just to the south of Washington.

I had a camp out scheduled with my kids this past weekend in central Prince William County and I knew that my campsite was located in Brood II country. I packed my camera hoping to find and photograph cicadas.

Something very strange started oozing out of the streets in the Chinese city of Nanjing on Saturday night. Generally, when weird things start erupting from the ground in Asian countries it's in the form of a giant b-movie monster, but this invasion was a whole lot realer, and a whole lot smellier.

At around 9PM, pedestrians began to notice the pavement at the Wende Baiyun Lane cross intersection started to crack and split open, and before long, a foamy white substance was spewing from the cracks, brining with it a foul-smelling stench. Within a short time, the foam had spread to a 50 meter radius and stood a foot high.

According to the Chinese news outlet Longhoo, firefighters and police rushed to rope off the scene, evacuating civilians and helping redirect the flow of traffic from the flow of ooze.

The phone rang. Again.

I didn't want to answer it. The two previous calls were from people who had found dying bluebirds in their yards. They wanted to help, but they needed someone to help them help the birds.

Yesterday, the call was from someone who had found a dead bluebird. Three emails about bluebirds also came. One person had found a dozen dead or dying bluebirds in her yard. Another person recognized me at the coffee shop and wanted to relate yet another woeful bluebird tale.

The loss of a bluebird counts as nothing more than just one of those life and death things that happen in nature. But so much loss at once is stunning.

People everywhere love bluebirds, but Coloradans have special reason to esteem them.

The bluebirds are members of the thrush family. Considering we also have some blue warblers, blue buntings and blue jays the reality becomes obvious: all blue birds are not bluebirds. Just three species can claim the name "bluebird" and they are relatives of the robins, solitaires and thrushes.

Winnipeg police have blocked a large sinkhole at an intersection in the city's north end Sunday.

Officers were called to Airlies Street and Ashbury Bay at about 1 p.m.

City crews are currently on scene assessing the crater. The city said the sinkhole will be repaired Monday.

Homes in the area will not have water Monday, so crews can test for a possible leak.

Ice outs are still happening on lakes in northern Minnesota because of our cold and snowy spring.

Now, homes along the shore of Mille Lacs Lake are getting damaged because the ice is moving like a glacier, and pushing up against the homes.

In a video sent to us by KSTP viewer, Darla Johnson, you can see the ice making its charge onto shore. Then in a matter of minutes the wind pushes the ice about 15 feet from the shore to the doors of a home.

Government agency gets license to kill...owls

Usually we have to prioritize, and keep track of the big issues... which in politics means we don't deal with anything less than a trillion dollars. Bank bailouts, the various new and old undeclared wars, the Federal Reserve printing money to buy our own Treasury bonds; that sort of thing.

But today I'm going to look at the US government's approach to a small thing: an owl. Namely, the Barred Owl, which has through hard work, saving and investment (in-nestment?), managed to extend its range even in this recession. The owl is a great neighbor to humankind and a boon to our parks and forests, spending most of its time hunting and destroying rodents that carry bubonic plague fleas. It is a beautiful predator with a haunting, tourist-attracting call. So naturally, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (a bureau of the DOI) has started a million-dollar program to... terminate the owls and their owlets without mercy.

Yes, your taxes are even now paying for empty-eyed Department of the Interior owlinators to go from nest to nest with 12-gauge shotguns and copies of Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds, with the Barred Owl picture highlighted like Sarah Connor's name in an LA phone book. Night vision scopes, thermal imaging, and Predator drones (well, in this case, anti-predator drones) give the owls little chance. The first stage of the plan is to blast about 9,000 owls and their families into small bloody pieces of fluffy down, but the program is open-ended. Listen, and understand: The Department of the Interior is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until those owls are dead!