Jeff Wicks
IOLThu, 03 Apr 2008 17:48 UTC
A man is fighting for his life in hospital after he was stung more than 1 000 times by African honey bees at a Drummond farm on Wednesday.
A paramedic who rushed to the man's aid was also stung several times and was admitted to hospital briefly after he showed signs of a severe allergic reaction to the stings.
Netcare 911 spokesperson Chris Botha said that when paramedics arrived they saw a man collapsed on the ground.
"When the paramedics got out of their ambulance they realised a large swarm of African honey bees was incensed and had stung the man repeatedly. The bees continued to swarm around the man.
A man died after he was struck by lightning while playing football at theSekolah Kebangsaan Tengku Bendahara field in Kodiang, Kedah yesterday.
In the 7pm incident, Mohd Khairon Fazdli Md Isa, 27, a heavy machine operator, was playing with friends at the field when the lightning struck.
ENSWed, 02 Apr 2008 14:30 UTC
Six persons died and six others sustained injuries in lightning strike in different parts of the State on Tuesday.
Four persons, including a woman, died at two places in Ganjam district. One person died at Tilisingi under Bhanjanagar police limits while three of a family died in Keshpur under Khallikote police limits when lightning struck.
In Parlakhemundi, one person died and four others were injured in Zagili Street under Ward no 1 under Parlakhemundi municipality. The deceased has been identified as T Sabara Raju of the same area.
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.
