Police are working to pinpoint the source of a mysterious vapor cloud that made a group of senior citizens sick on Sunday night.

9NEWS received a newstip that half a dozen seniors became ill while standing outside the Commerce City Recreation Center at 60th and Monaco.

The senior citizens were about to board a bus at the rec center to listen to children sing Christmas carols.

The incident is puzzling for police and alarming for the seniors who got sick, including a 70-year-old grandmother named Mary who asked 9NEWS not to show her face or give her last name citing safety concerns.

Over a week after a huge sinkhole on a city street nearly swallowed a pickup truck, another sinkhole on the same street caused a stream of water to shoot out of the ground.

A water main break caused a sinkhole to emerge on Monday along the 900 block of Randolph Street in Northern Liberties. According to one resident, the sinkhole caused a shooting water stream that "reached three stories high for an hour and a half."

Kate Somerville recorded Monday's sinkhole. Water from the latest main break flooded her basement as well as her neighbors'. Residents say it took the Philadelphia Water Department several hours to respond.

"They said they'd come," Somerville said. "They said that about three hours ago."

It's a long way from the Arctic to Bermuda, but scientists think the mass migration may have been caused by a scarcity in the owls' main sources of food.

Snowy owls - large, fluffy, white birds typically found in the Arctic and rarely seen south of the Great Lakes - have swooped down upon the eastern United States in greater numbers than at any time in at least 50 years, one bird expert says. The owls have been spotted as far south as Bermuda, the Carolinas and Missouri, according to news reports.

This migration of snowy owls southward is called an irruption, and this is the "largest of its kind in recent memory," said Kevin McGowan, a bird expert at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University.

The grim inflation numbers increase the likelihood that India's central bank will raise interest rates.

India's worrisome core inflation rose to 7.52 percent in November, driven by soaring food and fuel prices, government data showed Monday. The highest level in more than a year increases pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates once again this week.

The wholesale price index was up from 7 percent in October. The sharp increase was the highest since September 2012 and was led by food prices jumping by 19.9 percent over the previous November, dashing hopes that favorable monsoon rains would slow the runaway food inflation. Prices for fuel were also up 11.1 percent. Higher prices for food and fuel hit the hundreds of millions of poor Indians living on $2 per day particularly hard because they spend roughly half of their income on the staple items.

Rajbiraj: The death of scores of goats in the past two weeks in Rajbiraj has got farmers of Saptari worried.

The goats have suddenly started dying one after another in Sitapur, Tairahauta, Prasabanni, and Pato among other VDCs in the district.

According to Dik Bahadur Moktan, a farmer of Tairahauta-5, the goats die within two to three days after they start a fever.

"Their chins are swollen, they salivate excessively, and accumulate water in their lungs before they die," he added. Though we have informed the livestock service centre, they have not taken any initiative so far, he said.

Moktan, who has lost three dozen goats within a fortnight, said his family depended on the income from goats. "I don't know how to pay back the loan and feed my children now."

Likewise, Bishwonath Mandal has lost more than half-a-dozen goats in two days. "When we reported to the Livestock Service Sub-Centre Pato, they said there was no medicine available," he said. About 100 goats have died in the past two days in Pato VDC.

Rajlal Pandit, a technician at the centre, said the situation would not have gotten so bad if the goats had received timely treatment. He suspects the cattle might be suffering from PPR.

Mumbai: A cold wave continued to grip Mumbai for the second consecutive day with Santa Cruz recording a minimum temperature of 15.6 degrees Celsius on Monday.

On Sunday, Mumbai had recorded the first coldest day of this season with a minimum temperature of 15.7 degrees C. This sudden drop in temperature is due to the northerly cold winds, said V K Rajeev, director, India Meteor-ological Department (IMD), Mumbai. The temperature is currently 2-3 degrees below normal, and would continue for the next two-three days. "After that, the city might witness a slight rise in temperature."

IMD officials said that as the northern parts of the country cool further, the temperature in the city might drop a bit more towards the end of the year or early in January. "The temperature is likely to stay between 15 and 16 degrees C for the next few days," said an official.

If other parts of the country get even cooler, Mumbai might see some drop in the maximum temperature in the coming few days," said an official from the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

Officials said that last December, the maximum temperature in the city had dropped to about 30 degrees C around this time of the year giving Mumbaikars a respite from the heat during the day. Currently, the maximum temperature is a little above 32 degrees C. "Other parts of Maharashtra are already much cooler. Bur Mumbai's proximity to the coast adds to the humidity and keeps the maximum temperature high," said an official.

IMD officials said morning haze will be a fixture till the end of January adding to the coolness. "Earlier, the haze would lift by 7am. Now, it stays till about 8.30am. In December, more than 75% of the days witness a visible haze," the IMD official added.

On par with a mammoth influx of juvenile Snowy Owls in North America (involving at least 750 so far), the UK has experienced its largest-ever influx of first-year Ivory Gulls from the Arctic ice-shelf.


Following the first off Seaburn (County Durham) on 30th November, an unprecedented five more have been discovered since......

Heavy snow has damaged large areas of crops while stopping traffic on many roads in Sa Pa district, the northwestern mountainous province of Lao Cai.

According to the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Sa Pa, more than 100 hectares of chayote and another 100 hectares of flowers were buried under snow.

Thick ice also blocked about 10 kilometres of Highway 4D linking Lao Cai and Lai Chau provinces. Efforts have been made by local authorities to clear the roads.

Freezing temperatures have also forced more than 8,500 pre-school and primary school students to cease their schooling.

According to the Lai Chau Department of Education and Training, thousands of students in the hard-hit districts of Sin Ho, Phong Tho and Tam Duong have had to stay at home. Students in 63 schools in Sa Pa, including 20 nursery, 22 primary and 21 secondary schools, have been allowed to stay at home on December 16 and 17.

A local airport in Italy remained closed after Mount Etna's latest eruption.

The volcano shot lava and ash into the sky throughout the weekend.

Catania's airport, located in eastern Sicily, shut down on Monday -- a number of flight departures and arrivals canceled.

At least two flights were diverted to the airport in Palermo, located in the western part of Sicily.

• 'National emergency' declared in Costa Rica, one of the biggest suppliers

• Country produces 1.2 million tons of bananas each year - one in five could be ruined by plagues of mealybugs and scale insects

• Elsewhere, banana-eating fungus from Asia and Australia is spreading

Plagues of insects and a spreading fungus are threatening the world's supply of bananas, researchers have warned.

A state of 'national emergency' has been declared in Costa Rica, one of the world's biggest suppliers, while separately a banana-eating fungus from Asia is believed to be spreading.

Officials in the Central American country of Costa Rica fear that one in five bananas could have been ruined by insects this year. The country last year supplied 1.2 million tons of the fruit worldwide.