Earth Changes
|
| ©The Canadian Press / Jonathan Hayward
|
| A massive rock slide blocks the Sea-to-Sky highway near Porteau Cove, B.C. after a cliff face collapsed onto the highway.
|
Peter Skeels's bus was lumbering up the highway that winds through British Columbia's breathtaking coastal mountains when he heard a roar that sounded like violent hail.
He drove through and it wasn't until a few minutes later, when Skeels pulled over and saw the bus covered in dents and its windows shattered, that he realized the hailstorm was really a massive pile of rocks and boulders raining down on the road.
"There was suddenly an unbelievable noise, it sounded like a hailstorm - you didn't really know what to make of it," said Skeels, who lives in Whistler and regularly drives the highway between Vancouver and the mountain resort community that will jointly play host to the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Pesticides called
neonicotinoids marketed by Bayer were banned in France in the 1990s because they were suspected of contributing to
mysterious bee die-offs. (The pesticides are applied to seeds, and may then travel systemically throughout the plant, including to the pollen.) Germany recently followed suit.
A painful sting for a Florida family whose beloved dog was attacked and killed by a swarm of bees. It happened in Largo, Florida Monday and authorities say the day's overcast skies may have stirred up the bee hive.
|
| ©Unknown
|
WSOCTVTue, 22 Jul 2008 17:51 UTC
Rowan County - A microburst, not a tornado, caused extensive damage to a building in southern Rowan County, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service said Tuesday.
Meteorologist Vince DiCarlo spent early Tuesday surveying the damage that happened around 6 p.m. Monday along Goodnight Road and Highway 29 in the China Grove area.
USGSTue, 29 Jul 2008 14:49 UTC
A (preliminary) magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck the greater Los Angeles area at 11:42 am local time.
The quake shook downtown L.A. buildings and was felt as far south as San Diego and as far east as Palm Desert.
A four-square-kilometre chunk has broken off Ward Hunt Ice Shelf - the largest remaining ice shelf in the Arctic - threatening the future of the giant frozen mass that northern explorers have used for years as the starting point for their treks.
Scientists say the break, the largest on record since 2005, is the latest indication that climate change is forcing the drastic reshaping of the Arctic coastline, where 9,000 square kilometres of ice have been whittled down to less than 1,000 over the past century, and are only showing signs of decreasing further.
Scientists generally agree that sonar can trigger strandings of certain whales, but no one really knows what leads these deep divers to the beach.
Off the eastern edge of Andros Island lies the Tongue of the Ocean, a hundred-mile, inky blue swathe of sea over the Great Bahama Canyon. Bounded on the south and east by the shallow sands of the Bahamas banks, the seafloor drops precipitously from 3 meters near shore to more than 2,000 meters farther out.
While the region boasts a colorful history of pirates and shipwrecks, scientists will head there this summer seeking treasure of a different sort: beaked whales, some of the deepest diving and least known animals on Earth. The research aims to solve one of the most contentious mysteries in marine biology today - the relationship between military sonar and stranded, dying whales.
Heavy rain set off powerful floods and mudslides across western Japan on Monday, killing at least four people as rivers overflowed in major cities, officials said.
The rain, which resulted from a powerful typhoon that pounded Taiwan and the Philippines, led authorities to urge some 70,000 people to evacuate in the historic areas of Kyoto and Kanazawa.
A ferocious torrent gushed through Japan's sixth largest city of Kobe, sweeping bystanders off their feet and into the water.
Four people were killed -- a 29-year-old woman, girls aged 12 and 5, and a 10-year-old boy. Another three people were rescued and rushed to hospital, a city official said.
Television footage showed a man wearing a helmet, apparently a construction worker, holding onto a stone bridge column in a desperate effort not to be swept away by the flash flooding.
Beijing -- At least 500,000 people have been evacuated or returned to port in eastern and southern China as Typhoon Fung-wong bore down on the coast, state media reported on Monday.
Xinhua news agency said the typhoon was expected to make landfall on the coast of China's Fujian province in the early hours of Tuesday after it left one dead and six injured in Taiwan.
Authorities in Fujian had already ordered the return to shore of more than 270,000 people to their fishing communities in advance of the storm, Xinhua said.
In neighbouring Zhejiang, 230,000 people had been evacuated and more than 26,000 boats had returned to shore, it said.
For the third time in a little over a year, residents of a Peabody apartment complex were forced to flee as their flame- plagued complex caught fire again. A three-alarm blaze broke out on the roof of a building at the Highlands at Dearborn yesterday after a lightning bolt struck.
"I feel stupid for not moving out," said Kristina DiLorenzo, 25, who called 911.
DiLorenzo said she can't return to her place and will spend the night in a hotel. "I don't know what I'm going to do yet," she added.
