South Korea confirmed an additional bird flu case at a duck farm in the central part of the country on Saturday.

Tests showed that the 12,400 birds at a poultry farm in Cheonan, 92 kilometers south of Seoul, were infected with the virulent H5N1 strain of the avian influenza (AI), the National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service (NVRQS) said.

This is the second case of the highly pathogenic avian influenza reported in the country this month as the number of AI cases has started to fall off in recent weeks. It is also the first AI confirmation in Cheonan in 33 days.

All ducks on the farm will be culled with quarantine authorities asking nearby farms to be vigilant on protecting their birds.

A flock of 2,000 turkeys has been diagnosed with the H5N1 "bird flu" virus in the northern West Bank village of Silat Al-Harithiya near Jenin, government officials said.

The veterinary department of the Palestinian Authority Agriculture Ministry said it had managed to prevent an epidemic.

Director of the department in Jenin Jamil Makhamra told Ma'an that government and private vets examined the flock on Feb. 27 after many of the birds died.

Samples were examined at the veterinary medicine center in Ramallah, where it was confirmed that the birds had influenza A subtype of H5N1, also known as "bird flu."

Dhaka, - Around 2,000 chickens have been culled in Gazipur and Noakhali following the detection of H5N1 virus, commonly known as bird flu.

Gazipur Sadar Upazila livestock officer Mohammad Shamsur Rahman on Saturday told bdnews24.com that the bird flu infection was confirmed by the Central Diseases Investigation Laboratory in Dhaka.

Some 1, 137 chickens were executed around 10pm on Friday, when 205 eggs were also destroyed.

Apart from this, in the last two days, over 13,000 chickens were executed in the district.

The official said the district livestock department on Friday sent a sample tissue of a dead chicken to the laboratory for tests after some of the chickens of Bushra Poultry Farm in Taratpara area died on Thursday.

A direction was immediately passed to the Upazila livestock department to cull the infected chickens in a bid to stop the infection spread in the surrounding areas.

Agartala: The mysterious deaths of two leopards and some birds sent the Sepahijala zoo authorities into a tizzy. In the last four days, two leopards and as many as 11 birds of various species including night herons, pond herons, eagles, owls, kites, small cranes and white and black-necked storks have died in the zoo.

Besides the two leopards, another wild cat was found dead in the zoo area. A vulture was also found sick and immediately shifted to the intensive care unit. Vultures are now considered an extremely endangered species.

The wildlife conservator and director of Sepahijala Wildlife Sanctuary, Ajit Bhowmik, confirmed the deaths of the birds and the cats.

"Today, we found one black-necked stork dead," he said, adding that the cause of the deaths could not be ascertained as yet.

Nevertheless, the zoo administration has already quarantined the aviary and other animal enclosures, putting a complete restriction on visitors.

Weeks after a story shot across the Web claiming that the imminent explosion of a nearby star would result in the appearance of a second sun in the sky - a story that was later debunked - two suns were caught on camera yesterday in China. The suns - one fuzzy and orange, the other a crisp yellow orb - appeared side-by-side, one slightly higher than the other.

What's going on? Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to Space.com, asked Jim Kaler, the University of Illinois astronomer who squelched the excitement over the aforementioned exploding Betelgeuse and who has written books on the day and night sky. The double sun image is an effect of optical refraction, Kaler said, but it's a "pretty darn rare" one, and one not fully explained by science.

"I doubt it's been computer modeled," he said. "There must have been some blob of atmosphere somewhere that caused this truly spectacular phenomenon, which in a sense is a mirage."

Several homes damaged; natural gas leaks prompt evacuations

Rayne - A suspected tornado hit the southwestern Louisiana town of Rayne on Saturday, injuring 12 people, leveling homes and causing natural gas leaks that prompted evacuations.

Of the 12 injuries, one was severe, a spokeswoman for the Rayne sheriff's office told msnbc.com.

Donald Jones, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles, said Saturday that a crew is headed to the scene to determine if the high winds were a tornado. The destruction hit the Acadia Parish town of about 8,500 around 10 a.m. as a line of violent thunderstorms moved through the area.

State Police Trooper Stephen Hammons said several houses have been destroyed or damaged, and the area has been evacuated because of natural gas leaks. Utility crews were going door-to-door to check for leaks, and residents were sent to a fire station to take shelter.

There were reports of at least two ruptured gas lines, Jones said.

Trees and power lines had been knocked down across about an eighth of a mile, said Acadian Ambulance supervisor Troy Guidry. He said nine people have been taken to area hospitals, one with serious injuries and eight with minor injuries.

The astronomer Richard Nolle coined the term "Super Moon" which means a new or full moon at 90% or greater of its closest perigee to Earth. Well on March 19th the moon will be at perigee (its closest position in its orbit to Earth). This will be the closest perigee in 18 years.


The largest effect will be on the tide which occurs at the full moon every month as the closer to the earth the moon orbits, so the effect on tides increases. A 5% increase in proximity makes about 20% difference in the power the moon exerts so those in coastal regions should anticipate stronger tides.

After almost 24 hours of work, personnel from the Mexican Navy floated a humpback whale about a year old, 9.40 meters long and weighing six tons, which was stranded on the beach Eden , south of Punta Campos, in Manzanillo.

Over 100 men were involved in the rescue along with two bulldozers belonging to the company DRAGAMEX, which made pools on the beach to provide buoyancy.

Within eight days Mexico's Department of the Navy has made the rescue of two whales stranded on the coasts of Colima. Biologists report that this situation occurs due to changing sea temperatures when the whales look for warmer water near shore.

On February 22nd, 2011 a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the center of Christchurch, New Zealand. The force from the earthquake popped glass from windows, leveled buildings and laid waste to almost half of the city. New Zealand's former premier, Helen Clark, has even remarked that "[t]he building damage [she's] seen compared with Haiti." People are now evacuating the city in droves, with thousands forced to relocate, and the remaining citizens are without water and sewerage in some parts. Unspeakable tales have found their way into the media of people, trapped under buildings, sending text messages in desperation to the outside world, pleading for help, help that was ultimately too late. At this point all hope is given up for finding any more survivors; the families of the missing are just looking for closure now. The citizens of Christchurch are beat, shell-shocked, and some are only able to cope in the lowest possible ways. The situation in Christchurch is beyond tragic.

According to geologists, the fault that set off the Christchurch earthquake had laid dormant for thousands of years and only recently awoke last September when a magnitude 7 earthquake struck the outer regions of the city. This initial jolt caused considerable damage, but nothing on the scale of what was experienced recently. These earthquakes in Christchurch have caught geologists by surprise, since the major New Zealand fault, the Alpine faultline, is nowhere near Christchurch. Something is definitely going on here. The planet seems to be in the grips of a veritable pandemic of earthquakes occurring all over the globe - in places we never thought possible before. It's as if this recent earthquake in Christchurch sprung from the shadows of the past: a traumatic past that humanity has largely forgotten.

A storm, moving at a snail's pace, will produce heavy, flooding rain from the Ohio Valley into New England Friday through next Monday. In many areas, the storm will be responsible for producing the amount of rain typically observed during an entire month of March in just a few days.

A heavy rain-making storm will organize over the Midwest Friday before arriving in New England by the latter half of the weekend.

Many rivers and streams are already swollen or exceeding flood stage from southern Illinois to Indiana and Ohio.

In the flood weary city of Findlay, Ohio, residents are just recovering from flooding earlier this week.

"Every time it rains I get nervous," Sharon Hill told TheCourier.com in Findlay, Ohio. With more rain in the forecast for Ohio, a mutual feeling may be felt across other cities.