Earth Changes
Bangalore: The city was abuzz with rumours on Friday morning about a low intensity earthquake in parts of the city after residents experienced a mysterious sound and rattling.
Speculations were rather specific and even strangely consistent: that a quake measuring 1.5 on the Richter scale hit Kengeri, HSR Layout and Yelahanka at about 8.30 a.m. These were, however, quickly put to rest by the meteorological centre here, which said it was more likely a quarry blast.
CNNSat, 13 Sep 2008 17:44 UTC
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Park benches are strewn about in downtown Houston Saturday during Hurricane Ike.
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Galveston, Texas -- Rescuers in Galveston, Texas, were going door-to-door Saturday to check on the estimated 20,000 people who failed to flee Hurricane Ike, which has slowed to tropical storm status.
Galveston - Hurricane Ike bore down on the Texas coast late Friday with driving rain, crashing waves and fierce gusts, threatening to rattle the skyscrapers of America's fourth-largest city, shut down the heart of the U.S. oil industry and obliterate towns already flooded with waist-high water.
Though nearly 1 million people evacuated coastal communities in the days leading up to the storm, tens of thousands ignored calls to leave and decided to tough it out. But as wind-whipped floodwaters began crashing into coastal homes, many changed their minds. Galveston fire crews rescued more than 300 people who were walking through flooded streets, clutching clothes and other belongings as they tried to wade to safety.
Authorities in the Houston area and along the Southeast Texas Gulf Coast ordered hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate Thursday as Hurricane Ike lumbered toward the coast and threatened to grow even stronger.
Hurricane Ike's gargantuan size - not its strength - will likely push an extra large storm surge inland in a region already prone to it, experts said Thursday.
At least eight more persons including three children who were displaced by the Koshi floods and taking shelter in various government run camps in Sunsari and Saptari district, have died of high fever and diarrhea in the past 24 hours.
The Himalayan Times quoted Sunsari District Police Office as saying that five-year-old Nitesh Kumar Kamat and Mohamad Usman, 50 - both Haripur-8
residents - died of fever in Sunsari on Sunday. Babita Rai, Jasira Khatun, Sitadevi Hindawal and Taphail Khan of Haripur-2 had died of dysentery Saturday night.
SURFSIDE BEACH, Texas - At first, even the threat of "certain death" was not enough to persuade Bobby Taylor to flee this small town directly in the path of Hurricane Ike.
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©Margo Aldridge
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Dry: The Arminou Dam
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Cypriots have been warned that the island is running dry and that careful conservation of water is now even more important, as it will take two more months before additional sources are available.
Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew has pledged to draw up a strategy to rescue Northern Ireland's vanishing bee populations.
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Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew is to draw up a plan to rescue bees
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If farmers don't see state aid or rain by the winter, Cyprus will cease to have a farming sector, one farmer warned parliament yesterday. Speaking before the House Agriculture Committee, general secretary of the National Agricultural Organisation of Cyprus, Michalis Lytras told deputies that the last time Cyprus suffered as bad a drought was in 1973. "But at least back then we had plenty of ground water. Now, we don't. If we don't see rain this season, you are looking at the end of agriculture," he said.