Earth Changes
The enormous ribbons of eerie green light were caught in the skies above Finmark in Norway by Mark Humpage who trekked 200 miles in to the Arctic circle.
Aurora Borealis are a spectacular natural phenomenon caused by the interaction of solar winds with the earth's magnetic field - and the 44-year-old endured temperatures of minus 35 degrees in order to catch the images of the beautiful atmospheric effect.
The snow caused hundreds of road accidents in Serbia. Over the last 24 hours 289 road accidents have been registered. 2 people died and 44 were injured. The regional highways and roads are covered with a thin layer of snow, under which there is frosty sections. More than 30 villages are blocked. There are communities where power has been cut off. The situation is very serious in Central, Western and Southern Serbia.
The snow is 3 meters deep in some regions in Albania. At least five municipalities and some 10,000 people are blocked. Morina- Kukes highway is closed. There might be stranded cars.
The heavy snowfall hampers the traffic along the roads in Macedonia. For now railway and air transport do not encounter problems.
The birds, washed ashore in three distinct incidents, were covered in a slimy, pale yellow-green material. The material, whose pungent smell reminded researchers of linseed oil, dried out to leave a pale yellow crust. Cleaning the feathers of the survivors, feeding them and placing them in warm water helped them recover within 10 days.
The suspicion initially was that the mysterious deaths might be related to the Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay the same month, or to controversial aerial insecticide spraying on the Central Coast to control the light brown apple moth.
A team of scientists, speaking today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, called for new awareness of the potential for antibiotic-resistant illnesses from the marine environment, and pointed to the marine realm as a source for possible cures of those threats.
The group stated that newly completed studies of ocean beach users point to an increasing risk of staph infections, and that current treatments for seafood poisoning may be less effective due to higher than expected antibiotic resistance. The group also asserts that new research has identified sponge and coral-derived chemicals with the potential for breaking down antibiotic resistant compounds and that could lead to new personalized medical treatments.

BIRD IN THE HAND: SPCA field officer Jackie Poles-Smith said she could not believe it when the birds arrived.
Autopsies will be done on some of the dead birds to see if foul play was involved.
The Shampoo Shop and Salon owners Jane Moodie and Jan Bocock said waterlogged birds lined their shop front as they arrived at work about 8.15am.

A rare sea otter floats in the water below the U.S. 101 bridge in Depoe Bay.
A federally protected endangered species, sea otters went extinct off the Oregon coast in 1906 when the last one was confirmed killed. A reintroduction attempt failed in the early 1970s.
Since then, solo sea otters have been confirmed at Yaquina Head in the 1990s and at Cape Arago in February 2003.

Tree surgeons John Vine and Nick Cole captured this image of a paw print which they say was left by a giant cat
John Vine and Nick Cole were trimming the tree near Gloucester, when they saw the creature come out of thicket.
They managed to photograph the big cat's paw print following the sighting earlier this week.
Mr Vine, 49, said: 'I was working 50ft up in tree when Nick shouted to me to look down to my left.

The Splendeuptychia ackeryi butterfly, or Magdalena valley ringlet, whose distinguishing feature is unusually hairy mouthparts.
A curator found the disguised insect, initially collected from the dry Magdalena valleys of Colombia, among the 3 million butterfly specimens at the museum where it had lain undiscovered.
Blanca Huertas compared the mustachioed specimen with a recently found wild specimen, allowing her to identify the older specimen as Splendeuptychia ackeryi, or Magdalena valley ringlet, whose distinguishing feature is unusually hairy mouthparts. (The name ackeryi is dedicated to Phil Ackery, the former collection manager of the butterfly collections at the museum.)
The snow was a product of cloud-seeding, a method used by the Government to induce rain to try to end a three-month drought that has gripped at least 12 Chinese provinces.