Lightning has killed four soldiers and wounded 59 others during military training in north central Sri Lanka, the military said.
"When troops were gathered for the training at the training camp in Katukaleyawa in Polonnaruwa, all of a sudden lightning struck the place and four soldiers were killed and 59 injured," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.
Researchers at Texas A&M University have confirmed for the first time that a "dead zone" has existed off the Texas coast for at least the past 23 years and will likely remain there, causing potential harmful effects to marine life in the area.
Steve DiMarco, associate professor in Texas A&M's College of Geosciences who has studied dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico for more than 15 years, believes the dead zone area off the Texas coast extends from the Texas-Louisiana border area to Brownsville. A dead zone occurs when there is hypoxia, or oxygen-depleted water.
Such low levels of oxygen are believed to be caused by pollution from farm fertilizers as they empty into rivers and eventually the Gulf, or by soil erosion or discharge from sewage treatment plants.
"Not all of the area from the Texas-Louisiana coast to Brownsville is a dead zone area, but very much of it is," DiMarco explains. "The Texas dead zone appears to be more patchy and not as continuous as the Louisiana dead zone to the east, but much of the region there has very low oxygen levels, some extremely low."
Wayne Ortman
USA TodayTue, 01 Apr 2008 15:30 UTC
The California winter has been a tough one on South Dakota beekeepers like Richard Adee.
Last fall he sent 155 semitrailer trucks to California loaded with hives containing bees fit and ready to pollinate the almond crop.
"We lost 40% of the hives we sent there. We sent 70,000 out and lost 28,000," said Adee, whose Adee Honey Farms in Bruce is considered the largest beekeeping operation in the nation.
"I would say overall the losses of South Dakota bees - from what I've heard - from what they started in the spring of '07 until they came out of the almonds is at least 50%. It's not good."
Now, in preparation for the honey-making season in South Dakota, he's working to get back to full strength from a mystery called colony collapse disorder.
Earthquake measuring 4.4 points on the Richter scale rocked the Kamchatka Peninsula in the area of the Tilichiki and Korf settlements. There have been no casualties or destruction, Russian Emergency Situations Ministry's main department for the Kamchatka territory told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.
Rain in March? Figures of the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) suggest that it is extremely unusual. The state recorded 86.4 millimetres rainfall during the week ending March 26, 5,760 % more than weekly rainfall that is typical of this month.
Martin Roberts
ReutersFri, 28 Mar 2008 19:15 UTC
Spain's government on Friday unveiled new measures to relieve the impact of the driest winter in memory, including diverting water between regions to ensure supplies to 2.5 million people in the parched southeast.
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You wouldn't know it but a large volcano eruption is taking place in New Zealand. It's not visible because Monowai is completely underwater - north of the Kermadec Islands, and is about 1500 metres deep.
The volcano is belching steam and ash 7 kilometers high. Rock falls were seen on the slopes.
Another volcano - Karymsky located 140 km north from the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky - started eruption on Kamchatka. For one day seismologists have detected nearly 100 separate shocks.
The American West is heating up more rapidly than the rest of the world, according to a new analysis of the most recent federal government temperature figures. The news is especially bad for some of the nation's fastest growing cities, which receive water from the drought-stricken Colorado River. The average temperature rise in the Southwest's largest river basin was more than double the average global increase, likely spelling even more parched conditions.
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| Colorado River, Utah. The West's most pronounced temperature increase is in the Colorado River basin, which has warmed more than twice as much as the global average, with effects that put at risk a major water supply.
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