Earth ChangesS


Attention

Quakes Rattle Ishikawa Pref., Vicinity On Sea Of Japan Coast


Mediafax
Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:05 UTC
A series of earthquakes, including one with a preliminary magnitude of 5.0, jolted Ishikawa Prefecture and neighboring prefectures early Monday, AFP quoted the Japan Meteorological Agency as saying.

No tsunami warnings were issued.
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Life Preserver

Cyclone Gonu suspected in alien jellyfish invasion

Daniel Bardsley and Emmanuelle Landais
Gulfnews
Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:51 UTC
Swimmers were banned from the sea yesterday after lifeguards spotted jellyfish they say have never been seen before in Dubai.

Staff at Jumeirah Beach Park speculated that the tiny purple and white creatures had been blown here by Cyclone Gonu.

Red flags were hoisted at the beach park yesterday as well as the Open Beach due to a large number of jellyfish spotted in the morning. However swimmers were seen in the late afternoon at Umm Suqeim Beach.

Barbara Scocci, 31, an Italian tourist visiting family in Dubai said an hour after she had arrived at the beach yesterday morning a Dubai Municipality jeep cruised up and down the shoreline calling everybody out of the water with a megaphone.
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Cloud Lightning

66 killed in South China flood

Xie Chuanjiao
China Daily
Mon, 11 Jun 2007 07:26 UTC
Days of torrential rain in southern China have killed 66 people and left 12 missing by last night, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Nearly 9 million people have been affected.

Floods caused by heavy rains damaged 94,000 houses and destroyed 48,000 in the region; and forced the evacuation of about 591,000 people, a ministry spokesman said.

About 294,800 hectares of crops were affected, of which 53,000 hectares were completely destroyed, he said.
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Attention

Colony Collapse: Do Massive Bee Die-Offs Mean an End to Our Food System as We Know it?

Scott Thill
Alternet
Mon, 11 Jun 2007 05:53 UTC
It may sound like urban legend but it's not. A frightening trend of bee colony collapses could lead to everything from a radically transformed diet to an overall wipeout of the world's food supply.
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Magnify

Bee dieoff in 35 states has crippled beekeepers and threatened many crops

Jia-Rui Chong and Thomas H. Maugh II
LA Times
Mon, 11 Jun 2007 05:55 UTC
The dead bees under Dennis vanEngelsdorp's microscope were like none he had ever seen.

He had expected to see mites or amoebas, perennial pests of bees. Instead, he found internal organs swollen with debris and strangely blackened. The bees' intestinal tracts were scarred, and their rectums were abnormally full of what appeared to be partly digested pollen. Dark marks on the sting glands were telltale signs of infection.

"The more you looked, the more you found," said VanEngelsdorp, the acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania. "Each thing was a surprise."
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Cloud Lightning

Bangladesh landslide kills 22, several missing


Reuters
Mon, 11 Jun 2007 03:01 UTC
DHAKA - At least 22 people were killed and several missing after landslides triggered by heavy rains buried hillside homes in Bangladesh's Chittagong port city on Monday, police and witnesses said.

The dead included five from one family, they said.
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Bizarro Earth

The wrath of 2007: America's great drought

Andrew Gumbel
The Indepedent
Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:20 UTC
America is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Or perhaps worse still.

From the mountains and desert of the West, now into an eighth consecutive dry year, to the wheat farms of Alabama, where crops are failing because of rainfall levels 12 inches lower than usual, to the vast soupy expanse of Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida, which has become so dry it actually caught fire a couple of weeks ago, a continent is crying out for water.
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Light Sabers

Flashback The real deal? Some scientists deny global warming exists

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
Sun, 10 Jun 2007 20:16 UTC
Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, one of Israel's top young scientists, describes the logic that led him -- and most everyone else -- to conclude that SUVs, coal plants and other things man-made cause global warming.
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Cloud Lightning

Half of China on flood alert


Xinhua
Sat, 09 Jun 2007 21:25 UTC
Millions of people are suffering and at least 23 have been reported dead as violent rainstorms plague nearly half of the provinces in China.

Relentless rainfall is now in its fourth successive day in central Hunan Province, affecting more than one million people in 11 cities and counties, sources with the provincial government said at a flood control meeting on Saturday.

The rain has left three people dead, one missing and 158,000 homeless, the Ministry of Civil Affairs reported on Friday.

©Xinhua
A motorcyclist wades through waist-deep flood waters in Yongzhou, Central China's Hunan Province June 8, 2007. Floods, triggered by heavy rains, ravaged the city.
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Cloud Lightning

Three dead after storms, flash floods in Switzerland


AFP
Sat, 09 Jun 2007 17:26 UTC
Three people were killed in central Switzerland after they were caught in flash floods overnight caused by heavy thunderstorms, police said Saturday.

A couple died in the small town of Huttwil after they were swept away by a small river which turned into a raging torrent during the storms late Friday, police in the canton of Bern said at a press conference.
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