Earth ChangesS

Attention

Media Spin! Hungry Mexico flood victims turn to looting

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico - Rescue workers and police were out in force helping flood victims in southern Mexico, as food shortages sent hundreds of hungry people on a looting rampage at a shopping center.

Around 80 percent of the Belgium-sized state of Tabasco was flooded after seven rain-loaded rivers burst their banks in the flat, flood-prone region, in its worst natural disaster in decades.


Comment: Using the word looting is a way of stigmatizing the victims of the disaster. The word looting refers to the act of stealing private property in acts of war or riots and thus a criminal act. In case of disaster where people, who are starving and who feed themselves through taking of food from stores can not be compared to war or riot situations. Especially when the food due to lack of refrigeration would go off anyway. Think about it! What would you do if you were in their place and your family were starving, the place inundated with water and the authorities unable to deliver aid?


Life Preserver

Exodus out of Mexico flood zone

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled severe floods in the south Mexican state of Tabasco where rivers burst their banks after heavy rain.

©Agence France-Presse
Mexican soldiers have been deployed to keep order

Info

Man Correctly Predicted Bay Area Quake

Scientists have been trying for years to come up with a way to predict quakes without much luck. But a man was able to predict Tuesday night's Bay Area earthquake using a system he's worked on for years.

On Sunday, Luke Thomas posted his quake prediction on his website called quakeprediction.com and on YouTube. Pointing to a brightly colored map of California, Thomas points to what he says are low-risk areas in the northeastern and southern parts of the state.

©CBS13
Luke Thomas points to the high risk area on his quake prediction map.

Cloud Lightning

Update! 'Dangerous' storm, Noel, heads to eastern Canada

People in Atlantic Canada are expecting heavy rain, strong winds and possible electrical outages as the remnants of Hurricane Noel hit the region this weekend.

The storm is heading north after cutting a swath through the Caribbean, where it left more than 100 people dead and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage.

©TSR

Attention

Rare, strong earthquake jolts Antarctica

Santiago -- An earthquake registering 6.3 on the Richter scale rocked Antarctica at 2031 GMT Friday, the Chilean national TV station reported.

©csem-emsc

Bizarro Earth

Scientists Say Indonesian Volcano Erupts

One of Indonesia's deadliest volcanos began erupting Saturday, but there was no visual confirmation of activity because the peak was cloaked in dense fog, a senior government volcanologist said.

Cloud Lightning

Vietnam: Havoc continues as floods kill 7 and injure 30



©VNA/VNS Photo Xuan Quang
The water level in the Hoai River in the ancient town of Hoi An, Quang Nam Province, continues to rise due to heavy rains.

Seven people have died and 30 others have been injured by the recent extreme weather conditions in Viet Nam's central region, according to Vietnam News Agency.

Six people are still missing.

Authorities in Quang Nam Province have told relevant sectors to evacuate people in areas threatened by landslides and floods, and have distributed food, oil, petrol and medicine to localities that have been cut off by flooding.

House

Calaveras Fault hit with nearly 40 aftershocks after 5.6 quake




Nearly 40 small aftershocks struck on the Calaveras Fault on Wednesday, following Tuesday night's moderate earthquake near San Jose that startled residents throughout the Bay Area.

The 5.6-magnitude quake caused only minor damage in South Bay communities, and the aftershocks - the largest at 3:54 p.m. with a magnitude of 3.7 - occurred south of the main quake's epicenter near the Calaveras Reservoir, according to Tom Brocher, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park.

Cloud Lightning

Update! One million people affected by Mexico floods

MEXICO CITY - One person was killed and more than a million people affected by flooding in Mexico's southern state of Tabasco, officials said, as hundreds of thousands Friday waited for rescuers to pull them out of their homes in the worst floods ever in the region.

The oil-rich state the size of Belgium is now 80 percent underwater, officials said, adding that they expect more rain in the next days.

©Gilberto Villasana/AFP/Getty Images
General view of a flooded area in the city of Villahermosa, Tabasco state, Mexico on November 1, 2007. More than 700.000 people were affected by the heavy rain --unrelated to Hurricane Noel-- in the state of Tabasco.

Magnify

Oldest Known Jellyfish Fossils Found

The oldest known fossils of jellyfish have been found in rocks in Utah that are more than 500 million years old, a new study reports.

The fossils are an unusual discovery because soft-bodied creatures, such as jellyfish, rarely survive in the fossil record, unlike animals with hard shells or bones.

©Unknown
Cambrian fossil jellyfish shows similarity to the modern jellyfish (right), Periphylla. Credit: Fossil photo by B. Lieberman. Periphylla photo by Dhugal Lindsay, Copyright JAMSTEC

"The fossil record is biased against soft-bodied life forms such as jellyfish, because they leave little behind when they die," said study member Bruce Lieberman of the University of Kansas.

These jellyfish left their lasting imprint because they were deposited in fine sediment, rather than coarse sand. The film that the jellyfish left behind shows a clear picture, or "fossil snapshot," of the animals.

"You can see a distinct bell-shape, tentacles, muscle scars and possibly even the gonads," said study team member Paulyn Cartwright, also of KU.