A 20-year-old man and two boys were killed after being struck by lightning in a village in Uttar Pradesh's Banda district on Saturday afternoon, police said
Shiv Pujan Pal, Kamlesh Pal (12) and Vinod Pal (8) were grazing their cattle in the jungle when the incident took place, Circle Officer (CO) Siyaram said
All the three suffered serious burns and were rushed to government hospital where they died during treatment, the CO said, adding the bodies have been sent for post-mortem.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) on Saturday updated data of human and financial losses caused by the rains and floods during the recent monsoon season, raising the death toll to more than 300, including over 100 children.
The NDMA said the countrywide death toll stood at 310 - 135 men, 107 children and 70 women. The report said that Sindh was worst affected province with 136 fatalities, followed by 116 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 16 in Punjab, 21 in Balochistan, 12 in Azad Kashmir and 11 in Gilgit-Baltistan.
The NDMA said that 239 people - 6 women and 142 men and 41 children - were injured in the rain-related incidents, while 78,521 houses were destroyed and another 139,102 were damaged. Rains also damaged 13 roads, 10 bridges, 3 hotels, 3 shops, 5 mosques and 7 powerhouses.
Winter is coming: Scotland's first snow of the season grazes summit of Ben Nevis as summer officially ends
The first snow of the season has fallen in Scotland just weeks after summer officially ended.
Keen climbers took to Ben Nevis on Saturday afternoon to find snow on the ground at the summit.
Pictures from the Abacus Mountain Guides team show the tell-tale signs of a chilly, Scottish winter on the tip of the UK's highest mountain in Lochaber.
And one member of the group even appears to be wearing shorts while experiencing the country's first snow of the season.
Farmers in a five-parish area in Louisiana have probably lost 300 to 400 cattle
Swarms of mosquitoes have killed cows, deer, horses and other livestock in Louisiana after rain from Hurricane Laura led to an explosion in the pests' population.
Thousands of mosquitoes have attacked animals as large as bulls, draining their blood and driving the massive creatures to pace in summer heat until they were exhausted, according to a Louisiana State University AgCenter veterinarian, agent and press release.
While recent aerial spraying efforts have helped bring the outbreak of mosquitoes under control, residents and animals in a portion of the state faced clouds of the bloodsucking insects in the days after Laura made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Aug. 27.
Farmers near where the storm made landfall have probably lost 300 to 400 cattle, said Dr. Craig Fontenot, a large-animal veterinarian based in Ville Platte.
Susan Smillie The Guardian Sun, 13 Sep 2020 11:25 UTC
In the deep: a pod of highly intelligent killer whales, or orcas.
Reports of orcas striking sailing boats in the Straits of Gibraltar have left sailors and scientists confused. Just what is causing such unusually aggressive behaviour?
When nine killer whales surrounded the 46ft boat that Victoria Morris was crewing in Spain on the afternoon of 29 July, she was elated. The biology graduate taught sailing in New Zealand and is used to friendly orca encounters. But the atmosphere quickly changed when they started ramming the hull, spinning the boat 180 degrees, disabling the autohelm and engine. The 23-year-old watched broken bits of the rudder float off, leaving the four-person crew without steering, drifting into the Gibraltar Straits shipping lane between Cape Trafalgar and the small town of Barbate.
The pod rammed the boat for more than an hour, during which time the crew were too busy getting the sails in, readying the life raft and radioing a mayday - "Orca attack!" - to feel fear. The moment fear kicked in, Morris says, was when she went below deck to prepare a grab bag - the stuff you take when abandoning ship. "The noise was really scary. They were ramming the keel, there was this horrible echo, I thought they could capsize the boat. And this deafening noise as they communicated, whistling to each other. It was so loud that we had to shout." It felt, she says, "totally orchestrated".
The crew waited a tense hour and a half for rescue - perhaps understandably, the coastguard took time to comprehend ("You are saying you are under attack from orca?"). To say this is unusual is to massively understate it. By the time help arrived, the orcas were gone. The boat was towed to Barbate, where it was lifted to reveal the rudder missing its bottom third and outer layer, and teeth marks along the underside.
A rare sandstorm engulfed Polatlı and Haymana districts in the capital Ankara on Sept. 12 which left six people wounded.
A sandstorm hit the Turkish capital Ankara on Saturday, affecting daily life in the city.
According to initial reports, six people were mildly injured after being hit by "flying objects," Vasip Sahin, the governor of the capital, said on Twitter.
"There is no immediate report of loss of life or property for now," he said.
The sandstorm first hit Polatli district of the capital and then engulfed the entire city.
Mursel Yildizkaya, mayor of Polatli, said the entire district was covered with a cloud of dust and small-scale fires broke out due to lightning strikes, but the fires were put out.
Despite unfavorable conditions, the three Greenland expeditions are progressing across the Inland Ice.
Norwegian sisters Aase and Hanne Seeberg are performing strongly on their east-to-west traverse. After 22 days, they are due to arrive at DYE II, an old radar station about three-quarters of the way along their 600km route.
"They have found deep snow but have skied a regular 20km every day," reports expedition liaison Lars Ebbeson. "They cleared the Summit [the apex of the Ice Sheet] before the last storm on the east side, so have been able to progress over the last few days."
I'm going to file this under "I've never seen this in my career, but I probably should have expected it this year" as some of this thick smoke from the historic fires burning in Oregon and California is now getting sucked right into a Pacific storm.
Watch:
OK this seems very 2020: The offshore smoke is now getting sucked into that swirling storm out in the Pacific:
Comment: On the same day strikes caused the death of 2 individuals in West Bengal while
another was also fatally hit in Pakistan.