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50-Foot Sperm Whale Dies After Beaching in Northern Spain

Harold Heckle
The Associated Press
Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:40 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/AMBAR
A dead sperm whale is seen beached in Zarautz, Spain. A marine scientist says the 15 meter (50 feet) sperm whale beached and died on the sands of the northern seaside resort town.
A 50-foot (15-meter) sperm whale died Friday after washing up on a beach in a resort in northern Spain, and it was so big that a tug boat was unable to pull it back out to sea.

The whale was still alive when it was discovered early in the morning stranded on the sands of Zarautz town, but it soon died, said marine scientist Enrique Franco.

The cause of the whale's demise was not known, but Franco said: "It almost certainly came here to die. It's not uncommon for such animals to beach when they are very ill."

Despite its large size, the whale had not yet reached maturity, said Franco, vice president of the Society for the Study and Conservation of Marine Fauna in Spain's Bay of Biscay.
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Attention

US: Irene Evacuations, Subway Shutdown Ordered in New York City

Michael Virtanen and Samantha Gross
The Associated Press
Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:02 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Jin Lee
Tracy Spinney of New York, left, help secure a sail boat at the Manhattan Sailing club marina on Friday, Aug. 26, 2011 in New York.
More than 300,000 people were told Friday to evacuate and New York ordered buses, planes and its entire subway system shut down as Hurricane Irene marched up the East Coast.

It was the first time part of the nation's largest city was evacuated. And never before has the entire mass transit system been shuttered because of a storm. Despite not knowing how the city would react, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was confident people would get out of the storm's way.

"Waiting until the last minute is not a smart thing to do," Bloomberg said. "This is life-threatening."

Irene was expected to make landfall in North Carolina on Saturday, then roll along the East Coast before hitting near Manhattan on Sunday.

Several New York landmarks were under the evacuation order, including the Battery Park City area, where tourists catch ferries to the Statue of Liberty on the southern end of Manhattan and Coney Island, famed for its boardwalk and amusement park. The beachfront Rockaways community and other neighborhoods around the city were also told to be out by Saturday at 5 p.m.
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Bizarro Earth

Italy: Increased Activity At Stromboli Volcano, No Tourist Trips


Agenzia Giornalistica Italia
Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:20 UTC
Stromboli volcano
© CanStock Photo
Stromboli volcano - Strombolian eruption at the Stromboli...
Palermo - Stromboli volcano has intensified its activity over the last 24 hours.

There have been explosions, with smoke and lapillus and other lava material billowing out. The monitoring network of the Vesuvius Observatory of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology recorded a total of 11 seismic signals associated with landslides on the Sciara del Fuoco, the stratified magma canyon that slides down towards the sea and along which the lava flows.

Tourist trips to the volcano's crater have been suspended for now as a precautionary measure. . .
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Bad Guys

Millions in China at Risk From Run-Down Dams


Agence France-Presse
Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:14 UTC
Dams
© Terra Daily

More than a quarter of Chinese cities are at risk from tens of thousands of run-down reservoirs, prompting the government to speed up efforts to make repairs, state media said Friday.

More than 40,000 reservoirs around the country have been in use longer than their design life and are poorly maintained due to a lack of funds over the past few decades, the state-run Global Times reported.

As a result, more than 25 percent of Chinese cities and vast rural areas are at threat from potential devastating floods if dams break, it said, citing the state-run China Economic Weekly magazine.

"These reservoirs are running high risks, and will ruin farmland, railways, buildings and even cities when they collapse," said Xu Yuanming, an official in charge of reservoirs at the water resources ministry, according to the report.

The ministry was not immediately available for comment.
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Cloud Lightning

US: New York City, Mid-Atlantic Brace for Irene's Violent Strike

Kristina Pydynowski
AccuWeather
Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:04 UTC
Irene remains on a path that will take the hurricane dangerously close to, if not over, the mid-Atlantic coastline and New York City Saturday night into Sunday, posing a serious danger to millions of people.

Irene could be "once-in-50-year" hurricane for the Northeast from the standpoint of power outages caused by downed trees alone.

The AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center is confident that Irene will strike the Outer Banks of North Carolina on Saturday as a strong Category 3.
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Eye 1

Scientists: Oil fouling Gulf matches Deepwater Horizon well

Ben Raines
al.com
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:00 UTC
bp oil
© Press-Register/Jeff Dute
Oil bubbles to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico within one mile northeast of BP's Macondo well on August 23, 2011.

Mobile, Alabama -- Scientific analysis has confirmed that oil bubbling up above BP's sealed Deepwater Horizon well in recent days is a chemical match for the hundreds of millions of gallons of oil that spewed into the Gulf last summer.

The Press-Register collected samples of the oil about a mile from the well site on Tuesday and provided them to Ed Overton and Scott Miles, chemists with Louisiana State University.

The pair did much of the chemical work used by federal officials to fingerprint the BP oil, known as MC252.
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Bizarro Earth

Irene's First Rains Reach Threatened US East Coast

Mitch Weiss
The Associated Press
Fri, 26 Aug 2011 08:10 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
A message is left for Hurricane Irene on one house, left, as a resident boards up another in anticipation of the arrival of Hurricane Irene in Nags Head, N.C., Thursday, Aug. 25, 2011 on North Carolina's Outer Banks.
Hurricane Irene's rains began reaching the U.S. East Coast on Friday ahead of a weekend of punishing weather from the Carolinas to as far north as Massachusetts, with at least 65 million people in the storm's track.

Rain began falling along the coasts of North and South Carolina as Irene trudged toward the coast from the Bahamas.

Swells from the hurricane and 6 to 9-foot waves were showing up in North Carolina's Outer Banks early Friday and winds were expected to begin picking up later in the day, said Hal Austin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Meanwhile, the hurricane warning area was expanded and now covered a large chunk of the East Coast from North Carolina to Sandy Hook, N.J., which is south of New York City. A hurricane watch extended even farther north and included Long Island, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, Mass.

For hundreds of miles, as many as 65 million people along the densely populated East Coast warily waited Friday for a dangerous hurricane that has the potential to inflict billions of dollars in damages anywhere within that urban sprawl that arcs from Washington and Baltimore through Philadelphia, New York, Boston and beyond.
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Newspaper

US: Irene Conjures Memories of "Great" Storm of 1938

Erika Niedowski
The Associated Press
Fri, 26 Aug 2011 03:13 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Boston Public Library/Leslie Jones
This September 1938 photo provided by the Boston Public Library shows a damaged ferry boat sitting in shallow water in Providence, R.I., following the deadly hurricane of 1938 that hit the Northeast. It's been nearly 73 years since the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 _ one of the most powerful, destructive storms ever to hit southern New England, as another massive storm bears down.
What Evelyn Katzman remembers most about the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 are the floating store mannequins.

A self-described Army brat, she had recently moved to Providence with her parents from Atlanta. She was 30, newly employed at Cherry and Webb, a specialty store downtown. It was Sept. 21, a Wednesday.

The elevator wasn't working - the power had just cut out - so she went to tell her supervisor. That's when she saw them: two human forms, from the coat shop across the way, floating down Westminster Street.

The manager of another department store had just called to sound a warning.

"He said, 'Lock the doors, the water's coming in,'" said Katzman, now 103 and living in Providence at an assisted living facility not far from the head of the Narragansett Bay.
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Cow Skull

Temperatures soar in eastern Europe


News AU
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:49 UTC
Image
© unknown
Officials in the Balkans are trying to cope with a near-record heat wave as temperatures soar across much of eastern Europe, with wildfires raging and people fainting on the streets.

Authorities in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Albania issued heat warnings today for people to stay indoors and drink water to avoid hyperthermia.

Doctors in Belgrade said emergency teams have received over 600 calls since Wednesday from residents feeling sick from the heat.

"People are collapsing and falling on the streets," said emergency clinic doctor Zeljko Bacevic.

One of the hottest spots was in Montenegro, where temperatures in the past few days reached more than 40 degC, prompting authorities to recommend working hours be cut to skip the midday heat.
      Read More...
Sun

US: Two Tourists Killed by Heat Stroke After Getting Out of Car to Go for Help in California Desert

Wil Longbottom
The Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:47 UTC
Image
© The Daily Mail
Victim: Augustinus Van Hove, 44, and his girlfriend Helena Nuellet were found dead on Black Eagle Mine Road in Joshua Tree National Park, California
A Dutch music promoter and his German girlfriend died from heat stroke after apparently getting out of their car in the California desert to go for help.

Augustinus Van Hove, 44, and Helena Nuellet, 38, drove into Joshua Tree National Park before noon on Monday and took a remote, dirt road to head towards Arizona, according to police.

Nearly seven hours later, a couple visiting the park found Mr Van Hove's body on the edge of Black Eagle Mine Road.

Sheriff's deputies later found Ms Neullet's body around a mile away from her boyfriend, who was the director of 013 - a popular concert venue in the Netherlands.

The black Dodge Charger they were renting was found stranded around five miles away on the same road.

Temperatures during the day in the park topped 41 Celsius.
      Read More...
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