Earth ChangesS


Clock

NYC Wildlife Haven Dying Off

NEW YORK - The scene from Dan Mundy's living room window is worlds away from the normal urban views of New York City. The sky is a brilliant blue, and the waters lapping at the stone wall just a few feet away are clear and calm. A duck paddles off, and even a jellyfish looks more peaceful than dangerous as it undulates near Mundy's dock. Welcome to Jamaica Bay, a wildlife haven just next door to John F. Kennedy International Airport, reachable by subway from Manhattan's skyscrapers some 15 miles away.

Cloud Lightning

Sudanese lament loss of homes as flood waters rise

Asad Ali Fadla was sitting down to dinner with his family when a wall of water swept down his street and smashed into his compound in Sennar town on the banks of the Blue Nile in southeastern Sudan.

Minutes after he had rushed out to check the damage, the flash flood started tearing away at the bricks of the outer wall. Just over an hour later, more than half his home had been reduced to a mass of surging mud and rubble.

Cloud Lightning

New Zealand: Northland savaged by storm

Up to 100,000 households and businesses were without power in the north of the country tonight following stormy weather which also caused flooding, slips and road closures.

The Far North district declared a state of emergency after widespread rain and strong winds caused damage on a par with what the region suffered in March.

©Signs of the Times
The Kerikeri River rages under the Stone Store bridge as emergency plans are put in place to save historic treasures at the Stone Store and Kemp House.

Cloud Lightning

Indian floods death toll up, million-plus stranded

The death toll from heavy rains in India has climbed to about 660 as a minster said more than a million people were stranded in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.

©AFP/Deshakalyan Chowdhury
A taxi on a flooded road in Kolkata.

Cloud Lightning

Suffolk UK: 'Mini-tornado' hits town shops

A workman told last night how a "mini-tornado" struck a row of shops and houses in Woodbridge, causing hundreds of pounds of damage.

Strong winds struck properties in Warwick Avenue in the town at about 6.30pm, ripping off roof tiles and sending garden furniture flying through the air.

Eyewitnesses said the "tornado" lasted just a few seconds - it came as heavy storms travelled across the region last night.

Magnify

Thousand of new volcanoes revealed beneath the waves

The true extent to which the ocean bed is dotted with volcanoes has been revealed by researchers who have counted 201,055 underwater cones. This is over 10 times more than have been found before.

The team estimates that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes, 39,000 of which rise more than 1000 metres over the sea bed.

Cloud Lightning

Cold snap kills three people in Argentina and Chile

A cold snap sent thermometers plunging in South America in recent days, killing three people in Chile and Argentina while Buenos Aires saw snow on Monday for the first time in 89 years.

The temperature dropped to minus 22 degrees Celsius (7.5 Farenheit) in Bariloche, in Argentina's southern Andes mountains, while snow flakes fell for the first time in Buenos Aires since 1918.

Question

Petless family forced to flee mysterious flea invasion

CICERO, N.Y. - Jeanne Sokolowski was watching television in her home around midnight last week when she had some minuscule intruders.

"I looked at the window and, all of a sudden, these bugs were all over the windows and were coming into the house. There were thousands of them," she said. "It was like a horror movie. It was unbelievable."

Hordes of fleas infested the Sokolowskis' home after a heavy rainfall, coming into the white ranch house through gaps in the windows, she said. She and her husband, Bill, immediately started scrubbing walls and windows and vacuuming their wall-to-wall carpeting.

Bizarro Earth

Flashback The Hidden History of Human Evolution

RECENTLY ARCHAEOLOGISTS have come to recognise that the way we see the past is to a large extent influenced by our present conceptions, particularly our present conception of time. They have therefore come to see the value of looking at the past through different time lenses.

I proposed to examine the entire archaeological record through a time lens derived from the ancient Sanskrit writings of India, especially the Puranas, or histories. The writings contradict the dominant view that anatomically modern humans arose between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago from more ape-like ancestors.

Bizarro Earth

Million-year-old human tooth found in Spain

Spanish researchers on Friday said they had unearthed a human tooth more than one million years old, which they estimated to be the oldest human fossil remain ever discovered in western Europe.