A moderate earthquake rocked southwest China Thursday evening, injuring at least 336 people and collapsing 10,000 homes, state media said. The magnitude-6.0 temblor, centered in Yunnan province's Yao'an county, damaged another 30,000 homes, the Xinhua News Agency said.
Thirty people suffered severe injuries, while the other 305 were slightly injured, Xinhua said.
The quake was followed by eight aftershocks and the provincial civil affairs department was sending 4,500 tents, 3,000 quilts and other relief materials to Yao'an, Xinhua said.
Hundreds of police were dispatched to the disaster zone, it said.
Earth Changes
© Gary Ramage / Newspix / Rex Features
He may not be conjugating Latin verbs, but this cotton-topped tamarin can remember some simple grammar
He may not be conjugating Latin verbs, but this cotton-topped tamarin can remember some simple grammar
The findings do not mean primates can communicate using language, but they do suggest that some of the skills required to use language may be linked to very basic memory functions.
One grammatical structure that is found across many languages is affixation: the addition of syllables, either at the beginning or at the end of a word, to modify its meaning.
For instance, in English, the suffix " - ed" is added to verbs to make the past tense. In German, the same effect is achieved by adding the prefix "ge - " to the front of verb stems.
Ansgar Endress and colleagues at Harvard University thought that, because this structure is found in so many languages, it might be linked to basic memory functions that are independent of language. If they could prove this was true, it would suggest ways that children might be learning grammatical structures.
A runway at New York City's Kennedy Airport was shut down Wednesday morning after 78 turtles emerged from the bay and crawled onto the tarmac.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says grounds crews rounded up the wayward reptiles in about 35 minutes and deposited them back in the water, further from airport property.
The shutdown disrupted flight schedules, though, with delays climbing to nearly 1 1/2 hours. Pilots reported the first turtle sightings at around 8:30 a.m.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says grounds crews rounded up the wayward reptiles in about 35 minutes and deposited them back in the water, further from airport property.
The shutdown disrupted flight schedules, though, with delays climbing to nearly 1 1/2 hours. Pilots reported the first turtle sightings at around 8:30 a.m.
© Darrel McKay
The other two types of blue birds were a little corellas and one or more house sparrows.
All of these have turned up blue in and around Sydney between June 2008 and June 2009.
© Richard Shears/Daily Mail
Richard Shears reports seeing a blue house sparrow in April this year (Passer domesticus) in his garden in Sydney, Australia. At first he thought he was seeing things, but he made no mistake.
On the first day he was unable to photograph it, but it returned again 1 day later and managed to take a few photographs.
The bird was flying with a flock of normally-coloured house sparrows, which are light and dark brown.
Shears began doing some research on the web, looking for references to blue sparrows. After being unable to find anything relevant, he started asking questions with ornithologists and other experts.
© Richard Shears/Daily Mail
A blue house sparrow (Passer domesticus) has appeared in Sydney, Australia, out of nowhere. Experts are convinced the color is genuine, but baffled as to the cause.
This happened last April, but Where Light Meets Dark is bringing this up on July 2nd, 2009, because they have received a report - including photographs - of other blue birds, probably of different species, in New South Wales, Australia.
For more details, see here and here.
El Nino is back.
Government scientists said Thursday that the periodic warming of water in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which can affect weather around the world, has returned.
The Pacific had been in what is called a neutral state, but forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the sea surface temperature climbed to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal along a narrow band in the eastern equatorial Pacific in June.
In addition, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center said temperatures in other tropical regions are also above normal, with warmer than usual readings as much as 975 feet below the ocean surface.
In general, El Nino conditions are associated with increased rainfall across the east-central and eastern Pacific and with drier than normal conditions over northern Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
A summer El Nino can lead to wetter than normal conditions in the intermountain regions of the United States and over central Chile. In an El Nino year there tend to be more Eastern Pacific hurricanes and fewer Atlantic hurricanes.
Government scientists said Thursday that the periodic warming of water in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which can affect weather around the world, has returned.
The Pacific had been in what is called a neutral state, but forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the sea surface temperature climbed to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal along a narrow band in the eastern equatorial Pacific in June.
In addition, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center said temperatures in other tropical regions are also above normal, with warmer than usual readings as much as 975 feet below the ocean surface.
In general, El Nino conditions are associated with increased rainfall across the east-central and eastern Pacific and with drier than normal conditions over northern Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
A summer El Nino can lead to wetter than normal conditions in the intermountain regions of the United States and over central Chile. In an El Nino year there tend to be more Eastern Pacific hurricanes and fewer Atlantic hurricanes.
Firefighters continued efforts this morning to stamp out a slow-moving brush fire near the Sepulveda Pass that burned 80 acres and forced evacuations from the Getty Center and Mt. St. Mary's College. The fire was 90% contained this morning.
Sepulveda Boulevard remained closed between Mulholland Drive and Sunset Boulevard, said Erik Scott, spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. At least two freeway off-ramps -- Getty Center Drive and Skirball Center Drive --on the northbound 405 Freeway also remained closed.
Sepulveda Boulevard remained closed between Mulholland Drive and Sunset Boulevard, said Erik Scott, spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. At least two freeway off-ramps -- Getty Center Drive and Skirball Center Drive --on the northbound 405 Freeway also remained closed.
© Reuters
On the agenda: World leaders will be debating climate change at the G8 summit in Italy this week
On the agenda: World leaders will be debating climate change at the G8 summit in Italy this week
Whatever he or they offer, it will not be enough to quell the warmists' semi-religious fervour.
They are like medieval preachers, proclaiming to baying crowds that the end of the word is nigh.
Well, is it? There are two separate climate issues - the extent of global warming and the role that humanity plays in it.
Some facts help. The famous 1996 report by the International Panel on Climate Change predicted serious global warming and blamed mankind.
But, since then, the world has disobligingly stopped warming. And two years of global cooling erased nearly 30 years of recorded temperature rises.
The layer of ice over the Arctic Ocean has thinned "dramatically" this decade, with its thin seasonal blanket for the first time making up a bigger portion of the total ice than the thicker, older coat, a study said.
Scientists from NASA and the University of Washington in Seattle surveyed the ocean's ice sheet from 2003 through 2008 using observations from the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, to make the first estimate of its thickness and volume. The study was published in the July 7 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans.
Scientists from NASA and the University of Washington in Seattle surveyed the ocean's ice sheet from 2003 through 2008 using observations from the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, to make the first estimate of its thickness and volume. The study was published in the July 7 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans.
Comment: A bit of spin, not necessarily for global warming per se, but for diverting attention from the opposite of "regularity and occasional abruptness of global warming", that is a new Ice Age. Nicely done.
The fact is, Earth's climate is in a constant state of flux, of which we can observe only a small part: What everyone avoids saying is that the climate can switch back equally fast. Just think about flash-frozen mammoths.