In the dry wasteland of Sudan's war-racked Darfur region, the imprint of an ancient 8,000sq-mile underground lake has been discovered by geologists from Boston University. If confirmed, a lake as big as the area of Wales could replenish the region for a century. It is also raising hopes that one cause of the devastating civil war could be alleviated if drinking water is pumped to the surface.
Opheera McDoom
ReutersThu, 19 Jul 2007 07:53 UTC
More than 50 people were killed and 20 injured in Sudan's worst floods in living memory which have partially or completely destroyed 18,000 homes, the head of civil defense said on Thursday.
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©Nadya Kotseva (Sofia Photo Agency)
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The sizzling weather that swept Bulgaria this month started to cause damage to the transport infrastructure in Bulgaria's capital city of Sofia.
The tram rails on major streets in downtown city have begun to curve, which could lead to heavy road accidents.
The world's biggest nuclear power station stands directly above an active earthquake faultline, which provoked an atomic spill this week, seismologists revealed yesterday.
East Africa region has been experiencing a number of tremors for the past four days as geologists warn of an eminent earthquake is building up.
The frequent tremors have been felt in Kenya since Thursday, 12 July 2007. The strongest of the earthquakes was reported yesterday at 5:10 (GMT) from the same location as the earlier six (around Lake Natron in northeastern Tanzania) and measured 6.0 on the Richter scale.
wcbstvWed, 18 Jul 2007 16:34 UTC
The National Weather Service confirmed that an F-1 tornado touched down in the Islip area of Long Island Wednesday morning.
At the F-1 level, a tornado carries hurricane-force winds that can reach 110 mph. It can peel off roofs, push mobile homes off their foundations or blow vehicles off the road.
Johor Baru: About 2,000 students of SRJK (c) Pei Hwa and SK Sri Perling here were evacuated after the schools were damaged in a furious freak storm.
The storm, which began about 11.15am on Wednesday, has blown off the roofs of the classroom blocks of both schools located side-by-side in Taman Perling.
Witnesses described the storm as strong and scary.
At least 15 people died in a powerful storm and high winds that swept southwest China's Sichuan Province, Hong Kong's RTNK-3 radio station said Wednesday.
Torrential rains damaged around 10,000 buildings during the 16-hour storm.
Elephants moving into war-ravaged southern Angola from neighboring countries appear to have developed the ability to avoid the land mines that litter the region, scientists report.
Michael Chase, a biologist who has been studying the elephants for seven years, says he first detected the animals' apparent ability to avoid the mines from satellite-collar tracking images.
The elephants are returning in growing numbers to southeast Angola, where thousands of the animals were massacred during the country's protracted civil war, said Chase, who heads the nonprofit conservation group Elephants Without Borders.
The region was headquarters for Jonas Savimbi's rebel UNITA movement, which is reported to have sold ivory to pay for weapons.
Fishermen in Zanzibar have caught a coelacanth, an ancient fish once thought to have become extinct when it disappeared from fossil records 80 million years ago, an official said on Sunday.
Researcher Nariman Jidawi of Zanzibar's Institute of Marine Science said the fish was caught off the tropical island's northern tip.
"The fishermen informed us they had caught this strange fish and we quickly rushed to find it was a coelacanth," he told Reuters, adding that it weighed 27 kg (60 lb) and was 1.34 meters long.
The coelacanth, known from fossil records dating back more than 360 million years, was believed to have become extinct some 80 million years ago until one was caught off the eastern coast of South Africa in 1938 -- a major zoological find.