When UC Botanical Garden's rare titan arum, Amorphophallus titanium (corpse flower), blooms this week, the flower will both attract and repel visitors. When the plant opens to a diameter of three to four feet, titan arum looks visually arresting, but it's best known for a characteristic that can only be experienced firsthand after it blooms: its distinctive odor.
"It really does smell like there's a dead body in the room," says Garden Director Paul Licht, recalling his experience with Trudy, another corpse flower that blossomed in the garden's Tropical House in July 2005. The odor helps the plant attract insects that carry its pollen to other titan arums, since corpse flowers can't pollinate themselves.
Alex Johnson and Jay Gray
NBCFri, 17 Aug 2007 12:21 UTC
The heat wave sweeping through the South has been blamed for at least 33 deaths this month and created potentially ruinous drought conditions.
Relentless sunshine has sent temperatures to record highs across the region, topping 100 degrees in some areas for the 10th straight day. Temperatures soared in Tennessee, where late-afternoon readings reached 109 in Smyrna, 105 in Clarksville and 103 in Nashville. Huntsville, Ala., North Little Rock, Ark., Bowling Green, Ky., and Woodward, Okla., also hit 103.
Lightning strikes have killed 306 villagers in China over the past three weeks as severe weather continues to batter the countryside, the Xinhua news agency said Friday.
Heavy rains have already unleashed numerous mudslides and floods in southern and central China, with damage estimated in the billions of dollars.
All the victims have been rural residents, and 79% of them were killed while working in the fields.
JOHN PORRETTO
APFri, 17 Aug 2007 01:34 UTC
The tropical weather season revved up Thursday as the Atlantic's first hurricane formed and quickly strengthened, and as Tropical Storm Erin's remnants soaked rain-weary Texas, snarling rush-hour traffic and killing at least two people.
Michael Christie
ReutersFri, 17 Aug 2007 01:34 UTC
Hurricane Dean strengthened and threatened to become a dangerously powerful storm as it plowed toward the Caribbean and aimed for Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula or the Gulf of Mexico beyond, forecasters said on Thursday.
More immediately in the path of the 2007 Atlantic storm season's first hurricane were the Lesser Antilles, in particular the islands of Dominica and St. Lucia and the French territories of Martinique and Guadeloupe, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
APFri, 17 Aug 2007 01:34 UTC
A major undersea earthquake rocked eastern Indonesia on Friday, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
According to the USGS, the magnitude 6.2 earthquake hit Banda Sea at 12:04 a.m. It was centered 2,520 kilometers northeast of Jakarta and 10 kilometers under the seabed.
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Paul Eccleston
TelegraphThu, 16 Aug 2007 22:16 UTC
Pacific coral reefs are dying at an unprecedented rate, scientists have found. Almost 600 square miles of reef have disappeared every year since the late 1960s - twice the rate of rainforest loss.
Coral loss had become a global phenomenon caused mainly by climate change, rising sea temperatures and man-made nutrient pollution.
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ICA, Peru - The death toll rose to 450 on Thursday in the magnitude-8 earthquake that devastated cities of adobe and brick in Peru's southern desert. Survivors wearing blankets walked like ghosts through the ruins.
A giant mountain of mud found under the Indian Ocean's Nicobar Islands is being closely monitored by geologists who fear a tsunami could be triggered by a massive landslide. Smith Dharmasarojana, chairman of the National Disaster Warning Centre Committee, said the geologists from India recently discovered the giant mud mountain, and some parts of it measured more than seven kilometres high.
He conceded there was little information on the mud formation but it is widely believed it was formed by sediment transported by rivers for over a thousand years accumulating under the sea.
Flood victims fought off hungry animals and battled waterborne diseases in South Asia on Thursday as unrelenting monsoon rains caused fresh flooding in the region, already battered by weeks of bad weather.
The death toll in eastern India alone rose by over 100 in the past week with thousands more marooned or made homeless as bloated rivers burst mud embankments.
