June 22, 2014 - MIDDLE EAST - Nine Syrian military targets have been hit by Israeli jets and guided
missiles, the IDF says, claiming it was a decisive response to a series
of cross-border shootings to protect the citizens of Israel.
The strikes on targets in Golan Heights were carried out shortly after midnight, Haaretz reports citing an IDF official, who called it a direct response to Sunday’s deadly incident when an anti-tank projectile fired from Syrian territory struck near the border fence on the Israeli occupied Golan Heights.
“The shooting [on Sunday] was a very serious act of provocation, and a continuation of a series of attacks carried out over the past several months against IDF forces throughout the border region, and in this area specifically,” the statement reads.
A military command headquarters reportedly was among the targets hit in Syria.
Earlier on Sunday, in response to the killing of Israeli teen Mohammed Karaka, IDF artillery pounded military outposts on Syrian territory, with speculations about possible strikes against other targets.
The killed teenager was an Arab citizen of Israel, accompanying his father, a Defense Ministry civilian contractor, to the Golan, the ministry said, uncertain whether the boy was 15 or 13 years old. The father and two more people we injured in the incident.
An Israeli soldier prepares to load shells into his Merkava tank
positioned near the Quneitra checkpoint on the border with Syria in the
Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, on June 22, 2014. (AFP Photo / Menahem
Kahana)
It was not clear who exactly fired the anti-tank missile that hit the Israeli border from an area contested by the Syrian army and the rebels.
Relations between Syria and Israel have been tense since the civil war erupted in the country more than three years ago.
Ripped by internal warring factions, numerous cross-border shooting and shelling have become a common occurrence in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights, which Tel Aviv secured following the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
IDF aerial retaliatory strikes were reported in January 2013, when Israeli planes allegedly struck deep within Syrian territory, reportedly targeting anti-aircraft weaponry outside Damascus.
Israeli warplanes also struck a Syrian air-defense base near the port city of Latakia in October 2013, as confirmed by US officials, with some experts speculating that the target was missile equipment that may have been transferred to Lebanese Hezbollah.
In May 2013, Syrian media reported "Israeli airstrikes" targeting military positions in Damascus, following bombing in Rif Dimashq governorate. In July 2013, RT reported that Israel used a Turkish military base to launch one of its recent airstrikes against Syria from the sea, a week after July 5 depot attack in Latakia. - RT.
June 22, 2014 - HAWAII - Mauna Loa, the world's largest active volcano, has rumbled back to
life in Hawaii over the past 13 months with more seismic activity than
at any time since its last eruption, scientists say, while calling it
too soon to predict another blast.
The volcano, which last erupted in 1975 and 1984, has been rattled since March 2013 by earthquakes of the same type and in the same location as the temblors that preceded those explosions, said Wes Thelen, a seismologist for the US Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
"The earthquakes we are seeing at Mauna Loa lead us to believe that some of the same things that happened before the 1975 and 1984 eruptions are happening right now," Thelen told Reuters. "We don't see this kind of activity outside of pre-eruptive earthquake sequences," he said.
The USGS posted a photo of Mauna Loa on Instagram on Wednesday with the caption: "After a 30-year repose, this sleeping giant may be stirring slowly to life."
circa 1930: Tourists peer into the mouth of Halemaumau, which means
'House of Everlasting Fire', the inner crater of Kilauea. Situated on
the slopes of Mauna Loa on central Hawaii Island, Kilauea is the most
active volcano in the world.
Getty Images
Thelen said the earthquakes so far had not been regular or sustained enough to lead the observatory to forecast an eruption or raise the color-coded volcano warning system. But seismologists were keeping a close eye on the volcano.
Mauna Loa, which covers half of the island of Hawaii, is a popular destination for hikers despite being one of Earth's most active volcanoes. "We're not closing down the summit or doing anything drastic," he said. "This is of interest because it may be the very first sign that something's up deep underneath the volcano, but we'll wait until either the earthquakes get larger or we see more inflation in the volcano to raise the color code."
Mauna Loa. (Wikimedia Commons)
Mauna Loa's last eruption in 1984 sent hot magma flowing toward several populated areas, close enough to the city of Hilo that residents could see it glowing on hillsides.
Thelen said Mauna Loa, which has erupted 33 times since 1843, had been unusually quiet since 1984, although it inflated between 2002 and 2005, which seismologists interpreted as magma filling the magma chamber.
"Volcanos are very irregular beasts but certainly the historical eruptive history at Mauna Loa is much more active than what we've seen in the last 30 years," he said. "There aren't a lot of cases in the historical record where we've seen Mauna Loa have such a long gap between eruptions." - DNA India.
June 22, 2014 - CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC, AFRICA - Until the last year, when the Central African Republic's civil war
became a humanitarian crisis too dire to ignore, most Americans thought
little about the country at all. It has a low global profile in part
because it is exceedingly poor, with four out of five people living on
less than $2 a day. It has some natural resources, but because it is
landlocked by other troubled countries - Chad, Sudan, Congo, and
Cameroon - even if a lull in the war allowed it to extract those from
the ground, it would still face formidable problems in exporting them.
But for one group, the Central African Republic is anything but
ignorable, and in fact is home to an enduring scientific mystery.
Geophysicists who map the earth's magnetic fields have identified a
disturbance in the earth's natural magnetic fields within the Republic.
They still have few clues about what causes it, but at least some think
it could be key to understanding one of the most dramatic events in the
history of the planet.
When geophysicists look at the globe, they don't see national borders.
Instead they see geological features like fault lines and tectonic
plates, or, if they study geomagnetism, zones where the earth's normal,
needle-points-north magnetic field seems to go haywire. They map these
anomalies by satellite and with ground surveys. When they look at the
Central African Republic, something strange appears in the center of the
country: a massive aberration known as the Bangui Magnetic Anomaly,
named for the country's capital. At 600 miles across, it is one of the
largest such anomalies on earth.
"If you were on the ground there and you had a magnetic compass, you'd
need to correct for it," says Patrick T. Taylor, a NASA geophysicist who
has studied the anomaly closely. "The compasses would go berserk."
The earth's magnetic field is generally consistent,
which means hikers and sailors have been able to use it to avoid getting
lost since the invention of the navigational compass a thousand years
ago in China. Compasses point to magnetic north, a point in the Arctic
near the geographic North Pole. But a handful of anomalies are large
enough to alert scientists that something unusual is happening in the
earth's crust. When the anomalies can't be explained, they serve to show
just how poorly we understand certain details of earth's underlying
structure. (Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick used this mystery to
great effect in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which featured a
magnetic anomaly in a crater on the moon that turns out to have been
planted by extraterrestrials as a beacon.)
Some large anomalies on earth have obvious origins: The Kursk anomaly in
far western Russia is clearly the result of an iron deposit. Not so the
Bangui anomaly. First identified 60 years ago by French mappers, it
continues to perplex scientists. Iron is usually the explanation for a
huge positive anomaly, Taylor says, and one theory explains the Bangui
anomaly by proposing that the culprit is a large, dense upwelling of
magnetic material, possibly iron-rich, from the earth's mantle a few
miles beneath the surface. But the Central African Republic also has a
very negative gravity anomaly - things weigh less there - which suggests
that the country is sitting on rock less dense than a huge upwelling of
the mantle.
In 1991, Taylor, R. W. Girdler, and J. J. Frawley pointed out features
of the Central African Republic that hinted at another origin, first
proposed in 1976. They found that the surface of the country resembled a
huge, shallow crater, with a circular rim that mapped closely onto the
area with strange magnetism and gravity.
The center of the bull's-eye, Taylor says, may be the site of the
largest meteor strike still visible on the surface of the earth, from
over a billion years ago. "When meteorites strike the earth, you get a
crater and a rim," he says. And at this size, this one would be "bigger
than any other known impact, by an order of magnitude." Under this
theory, a huge meteor would have hit, heating up the impact site, making
the iron there more magnetic, and leaving a great pock on the earth
that hasn't disappeared after a billion or more years of erosion.
"Every solid body in the solar system - every moon, every planet, even
comets - are covered by impact structures, except for earth," Taylor
says. That's because the earth has water and an active atmosphere that
eventually wash away the evidence. "It's like they've been erased."
As a result, geologists have become sympathetic to the hypothesis that
many geological features that are not obviously craters are, in fact,
sites of ancient impacts. "We've been slow to recognize the number of
craters on the earth," says Raymond Jeanloz, a planetary geophysicist at
the University of California at Berkeley. "We've probably overlooked a
few dozen." Jeanloz points out that the most famous such site, the
Chicxulub site in the Yucatan peninsula, was found and explored only in
the last 35 years or so. It is now thought to be the strike that killed
the dinosaurs.
Jeanloz classifies the Bangui meteor hypothesis as "interesting but
unproven." Only a handful of geophysicists have examined the Bangui
anomaly in any detail, and all of them seem to agree that more work
would be necessary to advance the hypothesis.
One hint, proponents believe, might be found in one of the Central
African Republic's few exports. The country has a small diamond industry
- its total annual product could fit in a single suitcase. But in
addition to gemstones, it boasts a peculiar type of industrial diamond.
Taylor and colleagues note that both the Central African Republic and
Bahia, Brazil - areas that were once close to each other before plate
tectonics shifted the continents into their present positions - produce
"carbonados." Most other diamonds are found in pipes of a rock called
kimberlite. But carbonados seem to be scattered, and now Taylor and
others believe they might be the remnants of a meteor made mostly of
diamond. The carbonados could, Taylor says, be part of the "splatter" of
the strike.
The simplest way to check this hypothesis would be to go rock-hunting in
the Central African Republic. Taylor would like to visit the areas that
look like the rim of the crater, and study rocks for signs that they
were deformed in a meteor strike. "That would be the smoking gun." But
for the moment he'll have to wait. The Central African Republic was
never an easy country to do research in - it has few paved roads and no
scheduled commercial domestic plane routes. Now, the war has made
research almost unthinkable. "It's very hard to get in there and do
proper work," Taylor says.
Even if Taylor makes it to the Central African Republic, he'll be
examining the coldest of geological cold cases. Over a billion years
have passed since the event he thinks happened. And we simply have very
little idea what a huge meteor crater looks like a billion years after
the fact. "What do you look for, when you're looking for ancient
impacts?" Taylor asks. "We don't really know."
- Boston Globe.
June 22, 2014 - SPACE - An international team of scientists have
discovered that winds blowing from a supermassive black hole in a nearby
galaxy work to obscure observations and x-rays. The discovery sheds
light on the unexpected behavior of black holes, which emit large
amounts of matter through powerful, galactic winds.
Using a large array
of satellites and space observatories, the team spent more than a year
training their instruments on the brightest and most studied of the
"local" black holes — the one situated at the core of Type I Seyfert Galaxy
NGC 5548. "Shadowing" of light from a black hole had not been seen
before. With the discovery, scientists were able to decipher the
outflow.
"These outflows are thought to be a major player in the structure formation of the universe," said Nahum Arav, an associate professor of physics with Virginia Tech. "This particular outflow is comparatively small but because it's so close we can study it very well and then create a better understanding of how the phenomenon will work in very large objects that do affect the structure formation in the universe."
The researchers discovered much colder gas than expected based on past observations, showing that the wind had cooled and that a stream of gas moved quickly outward and blocked 90 percent of x-rays. The observation was the first direct evidence of an obscuration process that — in more luminous galaxies — has been shown to regulate growth of black holes.
By looking at data from different sources, scientists found that a thick layer of gas lay between the galactic nucleus and the Earth blocked the lower energy x-rays often used to study the system, but allowed more energetic x-rays to get through. Data from Hubble Space Telescope also showed ultraviolet emissions being partially absorbed by a stream of gas.
"I don't think anyone has trained so many scopes and put in so much time on a single object like this," said Arav. "The result is quite spectacular. We saw something that was never studied well before and we also deciphered the outflow in the object. We know far more about this outflow than any studied previously as to where it is and how it behaves in time. We have a physical model that explains all the data we've taken of the outflow over 16 years."
The discovery was made by an international team led by SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research scientist Jelle Kaastra using the major space observatories of the European Space Agency, NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope, Swift, NuSTAR, Chandra, INTREGRAL, and other satellites and observation platforms.
"Until now our knowledge of these characteristics was very limited," Arav said. "Before we were making educated inferences — but now we know. We know the distance of outflow from the center of source, we know the mass of outflow, and we know what causes its observed changes. The shadowing was definitely a surprise —a beautiful phenomenon we were lucky to catch."
Over the past two years the shadowing has built up and Arav believes it won't last much longer than another year or two, but concedes scientists don't have a full enough observation to say how the shadowing feature is changing in time.
The supermassive black hole at the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151 has created a structure that astronomers call the "Eye of Sauron," after the evil wizard in J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" novels. This image is a composite of images taken by several different telescopes. - Daily Galaxy.
June 22, 2014 - EUROPE - This is one in a series of articles taken from eyewitness
testimony before the International Common Law Court of Justice in
Brussels. Five international judges are examining evidence of child
rape, torture, murder and kidnapping allegedly done by global elite
members of the Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult network.
Regular Ninth Circle child sacrifices were said to take place in the
catacombs of Catholic Cathedrals, the Vatican, on private estates and
groves and government military bases in Belgium, Holland, Spain,
Australia, Ireland, France, England and the US. At least 34 child mass
grave sites were identified in Ireland, Spain and Canada – and refused
excavation by the respective governments, Crown of England and Catholic
Church. Named as present in Ninth Circle activities were Pope Francis,
former Pope Ratzinger;Anglican, United Church of Canada and Catholic
Church officials including Cardinals; members of European royalty
including Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip; officials of the Canadian,
Australian, UK and US military and governments including the USA’s CIA,
plus prominent government ministers, judges, politicians and
businessmen from the US, Belgium, Holland, Canada, Australia, France,
Ireland and the UK.
Teens were drugged, stripped naked, raped, hunted down in the woods
and killed by European royals according to this week’s latest eyewitness
to testify before the International Common Law Court of Justice in Brussels. The woman was the fourth eyewitness to
give accounts about these human hunting parties of the global elite
Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult network. A former member of
the Netherlands criminal drug syndicate known as Octopus testified that
victims were obtained for these human hunting parties from juvenile
detention centers in Belgium and Holland.
“In 2004 I was an involuntary witness to torture, rape and murder
sessions of drugged children performed for a group of high ranked people
of the Netherlands” stated a woman. “I was taken to a hunting party in
Belgium close to Brussels where I saw two boys and a girl ages 14 to 16,
hunted and killed by global elites. The human hunting party was heavily
guarded by the Netherlands Royal Guards. I was told that King Albert of
Belgium was present.”
Four eyewitnesses confirmed that as children and youths they were
forced to attend human hunting parties where they and other children
were raped, with some killed, and deceased boy’s penises were cut off.
Allegedly there was a Dutch countryside palace where boys’ penises were
displayed like trophies on a wall. Some hunting parties were hosted on
the grounds of Belgium Queen Beatrix’s Palace.
Dutch therapist Toos Nijenhuis claimed
that as a four year-old she was forced to witness murders of children
that involved former Pope Ratzinger, a Dutch Catholic Cardinal, plus the
father of Netherlands Belgium Queen Beatrix and Bilderberger Founder,
Dutch Crown Prince Alfrink Bernhard. “I saw the former Pope Joseph
Ratzinger murder a little girl″ another witness confirmed. “It was at a
French chateau in the fall of 1987. It was ugly, horrible and didn’t
happen just once. Ratzinger and Bernhard were some of the more prominent
men who took part.”
In Ireland, Spain and Canada 34 child mass grave sites were
discovered and appeared linked to Ninth Circle activities. The largest
was the Mohawk Indian Residential School in Brantford Ontario where
child remains were identified in 2008 before the Catholic Church,
Canadian government and English Crown shut down the dig by professional
archeologists. The 2013 ICLCJ Court had found Queen Elizabeth and Prince
Phillip guilty for the Oct. 10 1964 disappearance of ten native
children from the Catholic residential school in Kamloops British
Columbia. In the first two weeks of the 2014 court witnesses identified
Dutch and Belgian royal participants in the rape and killing of Mohawk
children and newborns. Named were Bernhard and King Hendrick, consort to
Queen Wilhelmina of Holland.
Alleged to be present during the human hunting parties were the late
Prince Johan Friso and his wife Mabel Wisse Smit, former ministers, the
top man of the Dutch army, the under secretary of the Raad Van State in
the Netherlands, the Vice-Roy next to Queen Beatrix and other global
business and political leaders including some from the US. “Surely the
present King Willem Alexander and King Filip and their wives know about
this abuse and murder of children” said one eyewitness.”They do nothing
about it and likely are the ones to stop investigations and
prosecutions.”
In January 2014 the brother of the king of Holland Prince Johan Friso passed away in a coma after these three Dutch-language websitesshownhere reached
the internet. The websites revealed that Friso was at the human hunting
and killing parties.”The story came on the internet after years of
trying to move the policy and justice department in the Netherlands to
act against the criminals,” an eyewitness said. “Nobody did anything to
stop these criminals, probably because Queen Beatrix and King Albert
likely interfered with the investigations.”
Human hunting parties were said to take place on the grounds of
Belgium Queen Beatrix’s Palace in the Netherlands. Two witnesses have
named former Pope Joseph Ratzinger and Queen Beatrix’s father the
deceased Prince Alfrink Bernhard, as being present at child sacrifices. Both were said to be Nazi sympathizers.
The ICLCJ Court received a collection of Jesuit archival records
about a child sacrificial cult known as the Knights of Darkness. In 1933
the Knights were established by the Catholic Jesuits and Nazi Waffen
S.S. Division. The records showed Ratzinger was identified as a member
of the Knights while working as an S.S. Chaplain’s assistant at the
Ravensbruck Concentration Camp in Germany. The records also stated that
Ratzinger participated in child sacrificial rites using kidnapped
children from the camps or political prisoners.
Another court document called the Magisterial Privilege indicated
child sacrifice was a regular occurrence at the Vatican. At the tender
age of 12 “Svali” of San Diego County California claimed she was brought
to catacombs beneath the Vatican to witness the sacrifice of a three
year-old drugged boy. In this video her
interviewer said that 24 years prior a “Maria” told him she witnessed
another satanic child sacrifice rite in the same Vatican Catacombs.
Last week an Irish police investigator reported to the ICLCJ Court
that the close to 800 babies buried in a Catholic Nun’s septic tank were
dismembered, decapitated and in bits and pieces – signs that they could
have been murdered in Satanic child sacrifice rites. In the last two
months the ICLCJ Court has heard these heart-wrenching testimonies about
the rape, torture and murder of children as recently as 2010 by
Catholic leaders, European royal family members and other global elites.
Murder sites of the Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult were said
to be in the catacombs of Catholic Cathedrals including the Vatican and
on private estates, military establishments and groves in Belgium,
Holland, Spain, Australia, France, England and the US.
The ICLCJ Court has been overwhelmed with newly discovered evidence
and a number of new witnesses coming forward to testify about Ninth
Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult activities. They have uncovered
Ninth Circle Satanic Cult member possible involvement in international
child sacrifice, kidnapping, exploitation and drug rings. The five
international judges and 27 jury members were expected to remain in
session for at least a year due to the complexity of the cases.
Amnesty has been offered to citizens or employees of the Vatican,
Crown of England, churches or governments willing to give sworn
testimony or evidence that leads to the prosecution of these global
elites suspected of committing crimes. Rewards up to 10,000 euros or
around 13,660 dollars was available through the ICLCJ court.
The ICLCJ Court had over 450 Common Law Peace Officers in 13
countries, with 51 local chartered groups operating. Local organizing
funds were available for common law groups that applied through the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State.
To contact officers of the court or ITCCS Field Secretary Kevin Annett,
email or call: itccscentral@gmail.com, info@iclcj.com, admin@iclcj.com,
hiddenfromhistory1@gmail.com, 250-591-4573 (Canada), or 386-323-5774
(USA) - Before It's News.
June 22, 2014 - CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES - A unique weather event called a Karman Vortex was created by airflow
disturbed by Island Guadalupe off the coast of Baja California only
occurs in a few places around the world and only on rare occasion.
NASA-MODIS
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), photographed a
strange atmospheric phenomenon in northern Baja California Sur called
Karman vortices, which occur only in very specific climatic conditions.
The image of four eddies spinning in the Pacific in the wake of Isla de
Guadalupe of the coast of Baja California, was taken by the MODIS
instruments onboard the Aqua satellite in mid June 2014; also managed to
capture a Gloria, a kind of circle that reproduces a spectrum effect
The paths of anticyclonic eddies or Karman vortices,
named in honor of the scientist who discovered them, occur when winds
meet a geographic obstacle such as the islands and the warmth of the
land in opposition to the ocean moisture shape the clouds to generate a
swirling trail of several miles, visible from space.
The rare phenomenon does not occur often, nor in all areas of the
world. Some of the rare locations include our own Baja California
peninsula, the Canary Islands in Spain, Portugal or Madeira, and
although they may take place in these locations you can only witness
them from space or very high altitude. - Baja Insider.
June 22, 2014 - AUSTRALIA - An unlucky driver was left stranded at a Perth casino after a sinkhole partially swallowed their car.
A social media post showed the front and back tyres of a white Hyundai stuck in the hole. (Supplied)
The sinkhole, which opened up in the Crown Casino carpark yesterday
morning, developed after heavy rain at the weekend, WA Today reports.
Nine News reporter Scott Cunningham said the bitumen had collapsed in
two places, trapping the two left wheels of the driver's side.
"The bitumen has caved in, there's probably a metre-and-a-half drop I
suppose where you can see that the sands just all cave in, around and
underneath the wheels," he said.
"There's just one car that appears to be stuck there at the moment, security has fenced-off the area around it."
A photo posted by the reporter to social media showed the full extent of the damage.
As the sinkhole is on private property, the casino will be responsible for its repair.
June 22, 2014 - AFRICA - The survival of Africa's
elephants is under threat, with estimates suggesting more than 20,000
were killed in 2013, a report says.
Elephant conservationists say demand for ivory remains high
The office of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) said poaching levels were far above the elephant birth rate.
However, the report said poaching numbers had dropped slightly compared to the previous two years.
Transnational organised crime appeared to be involved in the trade, it added.
Cites, which is based in Geneva, is responsible for regulating the international trade in more than 35,000 species of plants and animals.
China has started to destroy seized ivory in public
There are a number of interesting signals in these latest figures, perhaps indicating that the tougher line being taken by Cites is bearing fruit.
For the first time, more large-scale consignments of ivory have been seized in Africa rather than in Asia.
This is down to better policing in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and perhaps a slight downturn in demand from the key markets such as China, which carried out the first public destruction of ivory earlier this year.
There is also the rise in demand in China for legal mammoth ivory that is mainly exported from Russia, which may also indicate a growing awareness of the connection to elephants and a willingness to look at alternatives.
While these may be positive indicators, the report highlights continuing bad news.
The slaughter of elephants is rising in countries like the Central African Republic, where local populations remain on the verge of extinction.
'Large seizures'
"Africa's elephants continue to face an immediate threat to their survival from high levels of poaching for their ivory," said Cites Secretary-General John E Scanlon.
The report also documented an increase in the number of large seizures of ivory - of shipments over 500kg (1,100 pounds), in 2013.
The report says elephants could face extinction if the current rate of poaching continues
For the first time, there were more such seizures in Africa than Asia, with Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda accounting for 80% of the seizures, the report said.
"Large-scale ivory seizures are indicative of transnational organised crime being involved in the illicit ivory trade," a Cites press release said.
While elephant conservationists do believe that increased ivory confiscation is a sign that law enforcement is improving, they also point out that demand for ivory remains very high, says the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva.
Conservationists say that even in some of the monitored elephant populations, poaching is actually increasing, our correspondent adds.
The Cites poaching estimates were based on data from 51 sites across Africa, which accounted for 30-40% of the continent's elephant population.
Figures from those site were extended to estimate the total numbers killed in Africa. - BBC.
Poachers Kill One Of The World's Largest Elephants In Kenya
Satao's enormous tusks classed him among the largest elephants left alive in the world
Photo: RICHARD MOLLER/TSAVO TRUST
One of Africa’s last 'great tuskers’, elephants with ivory weighing over 100lbs, has been poisoned to death by poachers in Kenya after years of adapting his behaviour to hide himself from humans.
The bull, named Satao and likely born in the late 1960s, succumbed to wounds from poison darts in a remote corner of Tsavo National Park where he had migrated to find fresh water after recent storms.
His carcass yesterday lay with its face and great tusks hacked off, four legs splayed where he fell with his last breath, left only for the vultures and the scavengers.
Conservationists told how he moved from bush to bush always keeping his ivory hidden amongst the foliage.
“I’m convinced he did that to hide his tusks from humans, he had an awareness that they were a danger to him,” said Mark Deeble, a British documentary filmmaker who has spent long periods of time filming Satao.
The elephant’s killing is the latest in a massive surge of poaching of the mammals for their ivory across Africa.
Richard Moller, of The Tsavo Trust, who had been monitoring Satao for several months confirmed that the elephant found dead on May 30 was indeed Satao, whom he called “an icon”.
“There is no doubt that Satao is dead, killed by an ivory poacher’s poisoned arrow to feed the seemingly insatiable demand for ivory in far off countries,” Mr Moller said.
“A great life lost so that someone far away can have a trinket on their mantelpiece.”
A soaring demand for ivory in a number of Asian nations has seen poaching reach levels that were last seen in the 1980s before the ivory trade was banned.
“The loss of such an iconic elephant is the most visible and heart-rending tip of this iceberg, this tragedy that is unfolding across the continent,” added Frank Pope of Save The Elephants in Nairobi.
The street value of elephant ivory is now greater than gold, running to tens of thousands of pounds per tusk. Organised criminals are increasingly running poaching gangs and networks, officials have said.
More than 20,000 African elephants were slaughtered in 2013, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has documented the killing of 97 elephants so far this year, but experts dispute the official figures.
Dr Paula Kahumbu, who leads the Hands Off Our Elephants campaign, wrote that – based on the reports she has seen – “elephant poaching in Kenya is at least 10 times the official figures”.
In March this year, renowned conservationist Richard Leakey described poaching in Kenya as a “national disaster” and that poachers were operating with “outrageous impunity”.
“They could not operate with the impunity we are seeing if you did not have some form of protection from law enforcement agencies,” he said, likening the crisis to the mass poaching of the late 1980s.
Mr Leakey disputes official statistics that claim that the number of elephants that have been killed has declined. KWS recorded that 302 elephants were poached in 2013 down from 384 the previous year, of a total estimated population of 38,000 in Kenya.
Earlier this month, police seized more than 200 elephant tusks in a warehouse in the port city of Mombasa, weighing over 4,400lb.
Two men have been charged in connection with the haul.
Nelson Marwa, Mombasa county commissioner, said that the ivory find was linked to terrorism and drug barons in the city.
Mr Leakey cited the Indian Ocean port as a “staging post” for ivory smuggled from countries across the region.
Until recently, poachers in Kenya faced lenient sentences and few were successfully prosecuted.
A study by WildlifeDirect, a Nairobi-based charity that Dr Kahumbu heads, found that over the past five years just four per cent of those convicted of wildlife crimes in 18 of the country’s courts were sent to jail.
There is hope that tough new legislation passed earlier this year will lead to higher conviction rates and tougher sentences.
“Satao was probably one of half a dozen of Kenya’s great tuskers, possibly the largest,” said Mr Deeble, who flew over the elephant’s carcass on Friday.
“It’s a devastating situation. Kenya’s last great tuskers need presidential protection. If Satao’s death can galvanise the focus on what’s actually happening here in terms of poaching, then he won’t have died in vain.” - Telegraph.
June 22, 2014 - UNITED STATES - The seasonally-adjusted price index for meats, poultry, fish, and
eggs hit an all-time high in May, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
(AP Photo)
In January 1967, when the BLS started tracking this measure, the index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs was 38.1. As of last May, it was 234.572. By this January, it hit 240.006. By April, it hit 249.362. And, in May, it climbed to a record 252.832.
“The index for meats, poultry, fish and eggs has risen 7.7 percent over the span [last year],” says the BLS. “The index for food at home increased 0.7 percent, its largest increase since July 2011. Five of the six major grocery store food group indexes increased in May. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 1.4 percent in May after a 1.5 increase in April, with virtually all its major components increasing,” BLS states.
In addition to this food index, the price for fresh whole chickens hit its all-time high in the United States in May.
In January 1980, when the BLS started tracking the price of this commodity, fresh whole chickens cost $0.70 per pound. By this May 2014, fresh whole chickens cost $1.56 per pound.
A decade ago, in May 2004, a pound of fresh chicken cost $1.04. Since then, the price has gone up 50%.
Each month, the BLS employs data collectors to visit thousands of retail stores all over the United States to obtain information on the prices of thousands of items to measure changes for the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
The CPI is simply the average change over time in prices paid by consumers for a market basket of goods and services.
The BLS found that there was a 0.7% change in the prices for the food at home index in May, which tracks foods like meats, poultry, fish, eggs and dairy, as well as many others. - CNS News.
June 22, 2014 - POLE SHIFT - The North Pole is moving. Not the geographic axis around which Earth spins, of course, but rather its magnetic
pole, the north end of which is slowly but steadily wandering across
the Arctic Ocean toward Siberia. Scientists have known about our
planet's shifting magnetic field for a long time, since at least 1904 -
and today we now have a "Swarm" of satellites investigating its many
inconsistencies from orbit.
Swarm measurements of Earth’s magnetic field from June 2014. Blue areas show where it has weakened.
ESA/DTU Space
Launched in November 2013, ESA's Swarm mission
consists of three 9-meter satellites orbiting the planet at altitudes
of 300-530 km (186-330 miles). Their goal is to monitor Earth's dynamic
magnetic field, observing its changes over a period of four years.
The data gathered by the Swarm satellites will help scientists better
understand how our magnetic field works, how it's influenced by solar
activity, and why large parts of it are found to be weakening.
Because the magnetic field is our planet's first line of defense against
radiation from both the sun and deep space, understanding what makes it
tick is very important.
The first high-definition measurements from Swarm
have been made and what's become apparent are weakening regions within
the core-generated magnetic field over the western hemisphere, while
parts of the southern Indian Ocean show strengthening fields.
Swarm measurements also confirm the march of the magnetic north pole toward Russia.
"These initial results demonstrate the excellent performance of Swarm,"
said Rune Floberghagen, ESA's Swarm Mission Manager. "With unprecedented
resolution, the data also exhibit Swarm's capability to map fine-scale
features of the magnetic field."
The North Pole is moving. Not the geographic axis around which Earth spins, of course, but rather its magnetic
pole, the north end of which is slowly but steadily wandering across
the Arctic Ocean toward Siberia. Scientists have known about our
planet's shifting magnetic field for a long time, since at least 1904 -
and today we now have a "Swarm" of satellites investigating its many
inconsistencies from orbit.
Launched in November 2013, ESA's Swarm mission
consists of three 9-meter satellites orbiting the planet at altitudes
of 300-530 km (186-330 miles). Their goal is to monitor Earth's dynamic
magnetic field, observing its changes over a period of four years.
The data gathered by the Swarm satellites will help scientists better
understand how our magnetic field works, how it's influenced by solar
activity, and why large parts of it are found to be weakening.
Because the magnetic field is our planet's first line of defense against
radiation from both the sun and deep space, understanding what makes it
tick is very important.
The first high-definition measurements from Swarm
have been made and what's become apparent are weakening regions within
the core-generated magnetic field over the western hemisphere, while
parts of the southern Indian Ocean show strengthening fields.
Swarm measurements also confirm the march of the magnetic north pole toward Russia.
"These initial results demonstrate the excellent performance of Swarm,"
said Rune Floberghagen, ESA's Swarm Mission Manager. "With unprecedented
resolution, the data also exhibit Swarm's capability to map fine-scale
features of the magnetic field."
WATCH: Watch a video of the Swarm compass findings below:
It's known that Earth's magnetic poles occasionally reverse, a process
that takes several thousand years to complete and creates a much more
complex and unpredictable - but still protective - field during the
interim. And while the weakening observed by Swarm could be a sign of a
polarity reversal on the way, it's an event that's probably still
thousands of years away.
Meanwhile, missions like Swarm will allow us to better understand the
magnetic field we have today, in order to understand what it will do in
the future.
June 22, 2014 - CINCINNATI, UNITED STATES - A sinkhole near the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden that trapped a city bus will likely take a month to fix, according to a Metropolitan Sewer District official.
A Metro bus got trapped in a sinkhole that opened up on a street near the Cincinnati Zoo on Thursday night. (Photo: Provided)
The Metro bus was partially stuck in the hole, 15 feet wide and 15 feet
deep, near Vine and Shields streets in Corryville around 9 p.m.
Thursday, said Cincinnati police Lt. Tim Brown, the night chief.
"It's crazy," he said.
The bus was towed overnight.
An MSD crew investigated a reported buckle in the pavement earlier
Thursday when crews discovered a backup of sewage upstream of the
buckled pavement in the sewer manhole, according to a release. The bus
drove over the buckled area around 9 p.m., at which point the sinkhole
opened.
MSD crews were called to repair the hole, which sewer construction
inspector Dave Rieman says is the largest he has seen in at least a
decade. "Cave-ins are common, but not ones this big," he said.
"These pipes are put together in two or three sections. Sometimes they
open up a little but not collapse like I believe this one did."
sinkhole in Avondale near the Cincinnati Zoo
will likely take a month to fix, according to an official at the
Metropolitan Sewer District. (Photo: The Enquirer/Adam Kiefaber)
(Photo: The Enquirer/ Liz Dufour)
(Photo: The Enquirer/ Liz Dufour)
(Photo: The Enquirer/ Liz Dufour)
Records show the pipe is likely 101 years old, Rieman said.
Workers brought replacement pipes to the site before 7 a.m. Friday. The damaged pipe runs 30 feet under the road.
Sewer service in the area is not affected, a worker said Friday morning.
Rieman said no one has reported any backups and that people in the area
can use all utilities.
WATCH: Sinkhole snares bus near Cincinnati Zoo.
The road where the sinkhole occurred is mainly used as a turnaround for
Metro buses and an exit for one of the zoo's main parking lots. About
200 workers from the Cincinnati VA Medical Center had to park in the VA
garage because the sinkhole blocked access to the employee parking lot,
said spokeswoman Amanda Eisenlohr.
The sinkhole shouldn't affect operations at the zoo much, said Mark
Fisher, vice president of facilities, although more staff will be needed
to direct traffic in and out of the lot, he said.
June 22, 2014 - CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES - Good day, future citizen of West California!
Molly Kelley, 62, of Klamath River, holds up a State of Jefferson flag
as she folds it inside the
Klamath River Community Hall in California.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
You may find yourself greeted thusly as you head into a supermarket or drugstore in Los Angeles on Saturday morning.
Advocates for Six Californias,
a plan to split the Golden State into a half dozen separate states, are
holding a petition drive this weekend to get their plan on the ballot
in 2016.
The idea is the brainchild of Timothy Draper, a venture capitalist from Menlo Park – or as he hopes to some day call it, the state of Silicon Valley.
Draper has sunk $2 million into signature gathering for the proposal.
He maintains it will break bureaucratic deadlock in Sacramento (proposed
state of North California) and attract more business.
"California has become the worst managed state in the country," he told The Times this spring. "It just is too big and too ungovernable."
Tom Knorr, holds a State of Jefferson flag in Corning, Calif. The idea
of forming their own state has been a topic among
local secession
dreamers for more than a century in the state. (Terry Chea / Associated
Press)
Draper, a political independent, needs about 808,000 signatures by July
18 to get the measure on the ballot in two years. He has said he has support from the Oregon border (proposed state of Jefferson) to San Diego (South California), but the plan has been given almost no chance of success by some experts and ridiculed by Democrats and Republicans alike.
Anna Morris, spokeswoman for Six Californias, said in an e-mail that
the group has collected “a significant amount of signatures and are
hoping to get the remaining signatures we need this weekend.”
“For
people who put our chances at zero, we say that we are dedicated to
challenging the status quo and are hopeful that Six Californias will be
the much needed refresh for state government,” she said.
Joe Rodota, the co-chair of OneCalifornia, an opposition group, downplayed the significance of getting signatures on a petition.
“This
is just a process that pretty much any well-funded interest can
pursue,” said Rodota, former cabinet secretary for Gov. Pete Wilson. The
real challenge, he said, is ballot approval and “it’s just very
difficult to get a yes vote historically.”
Times political columnist George Skelton called Six
Californias “crazy” and “really crackpot,” but he noted that attempts
to break up the state have been around since its inception and can be
highly diverting if never successful.
“Go ahead and put this thing on the ballot,” he wrote in April. “We could use some fun.” - LA Times.
June 22, 2014 - IRAQ - The militants of the Al-Qaeda splinter group ISIS, also known as
ISIL, managed to capture three new towns and two border crossings on
Sunday, according to eyewitnesses, officials, and security sources.
"Army troops withdrew from Rawah, Anah and Rutba this morning
and ISIS moved quickly to completely control these towns,"
an unnamed military intelligence official told Reuters after the
three had fallen.
The militants captured the three towns in Iraq’s western province
of Anbar, Reuters reported. Later in the day, militants seized
two border crossings – one with Jordan and one with Syria, Iraqi
officials told AP.
Officials stationed at the Syrian border post of al-Waleed bolted
after a group of militants spread out over two cars fired their
guns into the air. An anonymous government official blamed
"terrorists", reported Reuters.
Iraqi troops have ceded control of four towns in the last two
days.
On Saturday, the town of Qaim was captured by insurgents.
Staff in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office has held a
press conference later Sunday commenting on the confused retreat
of the country’s army.
The Iraqi government’s security spokesman, Lieutenant General
Qassem Atta, said that the withdrawal from the three cities was
“tactical.”
“The military units' withdrawal (from Al-Qaim, Rawa and Ana)
was for the purpose of redeployment,” he said.
One of the captured towns, Rutba, with a population of about
55,000, is situated in a strategic location about 150 kilometers
east of the Jordanian border, with the Amman-Baghdad road and the
Mosul–Haifa oil pipeline passing nearby.
A picture taken on June 21, 2014 in the city of Ramadi, west of the
capital Baghdad shows a building that was damaged during the fightings
between the Sunni anti-Al-Qaeda militia Sahwa (Awakening) and
anti-government militants, including from the jihadist Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Anbar province (AFP Photo / STR)
Anonymous sources told AP that the army intends to fight back to
recapture Rutba and threatened to start shelling. This prompted
the town’s residents, among whom there could be up to 20,000
refugees from Fallujah and Ramadi, to negotiate with the invading
militants to leave the city peacefully.
Two other captured cities, Rawah and Anah, stand on the banks of the Euphrates River. The militants appear likely to head for the city of Haditha, where an important dam is positioned. The Iraqi military has reportedly dispatched 2,000 additional troops to protect this dam, but whether the army will be capable of fulfilling the task remains to be seen.
The Sunni militants control vast areas not only of Iraq but of Syria as well. Control over border crossings, such as the city of Qaim, allows the insurgents to easily transport ammunition and supplies between the two countries.
In the meantime, thousands of pro-government Shiite militiamen marched through Baghdad, Kirkuk and other Iraqi cities in a show of force.
The march demonstrated that the Shiite militia is armed not only
with handguns, but with heavy weaponry as well, such as multiple
rocket launchers, artillery and heavy machine-guns.
The Sunni insurgents, many of whom have been fighting against the
Syrian government of President Bashar Assad for the last three
years, are also very well armed. In the current conditions of
sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, a civil
war in the country could be particularly bloody and ruthless. - RT.
June 22, 2014 - EARTH - The following constitutes
the latest reports of unusual and symbolic animal behavior, mass
die-offs, beaching and stranding of mammals, and the appearance of rare
creatures.
Millions Of Fish Around The Planet Are Mysteriously Dying... But Why
Millions upon millions of fish and sea creatures are dying around the
world, but it's all very mysterious, as there does not appear to be much
explanation for it, logical or otherwise.
When more than six tons of fish died recently in Marina del Ray, it made
headlines all over the U.S., according to the blog The Mind Unleashed.
But in truth, what happened off the coast of southern California has
been replicated all around the globe. In fact, in 2014, as you will see
below, mass fish deaths have become very commonplace.
Taken individually or even a few at a time, you would not get the
impression that there was a problem. But taken collectively, it's
apparent that something is happening. But why?
Has our environment suddenly and dramatically changed? Is there some sort of global weather or geothermal pattern to blame?
What follows is an incomplete list of just some of the most recent incidents of massive deaths of fish and sea life:
In southwestern Kentucky, about
500,000 Asian carp were found dead in April below the Lake Barkley Dam.
Local reports said that the cause of the mass death was unknown, though
investigators suspect some sort of virus.
Near Duluth, Minnesota, tens of thousands of fish in
the 1,600-acre Grand Lake -- walleye, bass and northern pike -- died in
May. Researchers blamed the deaths on a lack of oxygen tied to "last
winter's heavy snowfall." But that said, the lake has not experienced a
major fish kill since the 1950s.
In New Jersey's Shark River, scientists are blaming a
massive fish kill, again, on "oxygen depletion." Environmental
Protection Department spokesman Larry Ragonese told the Asbury Park
Press that the likely scenario is a huge group of fish ended up in a
small estuary and a slightly low oxygen levels resulted in their deaths.
Another theory? Warmer weather, but it's just a theory.
In the Gulf of Mexico, four years after the world's worst oil spill,a new report has found that bottlenose dolphins and sea turtles are dying in record numbers.
The culprit, British Petroleum, has pooh-poohed the report as
pseudoscience, but the numbers, and the location, speak for themselves.
Has the spill created some sort of massive eco-shift? Remember, the
destroyed oil rig spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil into the
sea; that's a massive amount of a substance not conducive to sea life.
In the Inner Harbor, in Baltimore, Maryland, state
environmental scientists are investigating why about 7,000 Atlantic
menhaden were found there last month. Biologists say that, because just
the one species was involved, the deaths likely were not caused by a
toxic substance, but again, that still begs the question: Why just the one species?
In Vermont's Lake Champlain, the annual deaths of
thousands of alewives is now the new normal. Biologists have explained
it away as a lack of food, hard winters, lack of oxygen, yada, yada,
yada.
As reported by Vermont's Seven Days, a local news source:
The reason for the die-off, according to Vermont Fish and Wildlife, is a
little less dramatic: Fisheries biologist Bernie Pientka said that mass
deaths among alewives, an invasive species of herring, are normal in
Lake Champlain at this time of year. Biologists believe the die-offs are
a result of temperature fluctuations, food limitations and stress on
the fish population following the winter season.
"They're just not used to rapid temperature changes," said Pientka....
In Singapore, officials are still puzzled over the
death of 160 tons of fish to plankton bloom and low levels of
oxygenation. One fish farmer said he lost 95 percent of his fish crop.
It's not clear what is killing so many fish in so many different parts
of the globe (China has also been vastly affected, but that country is a
pollution nightmare). What seems clear, however, is that a
combination of elements -- don't call them man-made just yet -- appears
to be at work, and our vast ocean resources seem to be paying the price. - Natural News.
Extremely Rare White Humpback Whale Spotted Off Australia's Coast
Migaloo, an extremely rare humpback whale who happens to be all
white, has been spotted for the first time this year off the coast of
New South Wales, Australia. The whale, which is one of only a few known white whales in the
world, is extremely popular on the eastern seaboard of Australia. First
spotted in 1991, Migaloo has been a regular, if intermittent, visitor to
the area ever since. Around 8 am Tuesday morning, the whale was
captured on a mobile phone camera off Green Cape, according to The Independent.
Oskar Peterson, founder of the White Whale Research Center, confirmed
that the picture was of Migaloo, and that the sighting fits with the
whale’s known migratory pattern, which takes the animal from Antarctica
to North Queensland, Australia, and back again.
On Thursday, the White Whale was spotted once again, this time swimming
in a “competition pod” with four other humpback whales, according to MailOnline.
In this type of grouping, the whales attempt to jostle each other,
competing to be a the head of the pod as it travels north. Though fans
were eager to see pictures of the white whale, observers had to remain
at a safe distance. After a run-in with an outrigger boat in the past
that left the whale scarred, Australian officials passed tougher laws to
protect the unique animal. Boats are required to remain 500 feet from
Migaloo while aircraft are required to stay 2,000 feet away.
While some media outlets have described the white whale as an albino, io9 points out that there is some debate about whether he really is. Quoting a report by Hannah Waters for Smithsonian,
they point out that true albino animals have no melanin anywhere in
their bodies, resulting in white skin and pink eyes. While Migaloo is
white, like an albino, he nonetheless has brown eyes like all other
known humpback whales. It is far more likely that Migaloo suffers from a
condition called leucism, which manifests in the loss of pigmentation
on the skin.
Migaloo isn’t the only whale in the news lately. Last month, The Inquisitr
reported the story of “Valentina,” a female humpback whale who nearly
died in a fishing net before researchers happened upon her and were able
to free the whale, saving its life. Migaloo is expected to continue north over the next few days, giving
observers in Australia plenty of chances to catch a glimpse of the white
whale before he heads home to Antarctica later in the summer. - Inquisitr.
Experts Baffled By Cause Of 40 Dead Sea Birds In Port Elizabeth, South Africa
VERY WORRYING: Bird expert Albert Schultz, left, and Dr David Stuart
examine a dead bird at the SA Marine Rehabilitation and Education
Centre. Picture: BRIAN WITBOOI
The results of postmortems on three of the almost 40 birds found dead
along the Port Elizabeth coastline recently have proved inconclusive.
The mysterious deaths of the birds - Cape gannets, cormorants, African
penguins and seagulls - was very worrying, experts said.
While signs of starvation were found in most of the birds,
the results of the postmortems done at the SA Marine Rehabilitation and
Education Centre were inconclusive and they attributed the deaths to
three possible factors - the weather, infections or man-made
conditions.
Bird expert Albert Schultz said 11 African penguins and 23 Cape gannets
were found around Beachview on Sunday, while some cormorants were found
along the beachfront in Summerstrand.
- Herald Live.
Species On Earth Are On The Verge Of Extinction Like In The Dinosaur Era
A landmark study by an international group of scientists has concluded
that planet Earth is on the brink of a mass extinction event comparable
in scale to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
The researchers found that extinction rates are currently 1000 times
higher than normal due to deforestation, global climate change, and the
depletion of ocean fisheries. Ben Gruber reports.
WATCH: Study says Earth on brink of mass extinction event.
Mass Mortality Of Fish Found In A River In Segovia, Spain
The alarms came howling for days, on Sunday 15 June was the finding, the river Eresma dying. Hundreds of dead fish, mainly roach and barbel s, appeared on the banks of the river passing by The Orchards. The mass mortality was reported by individuals on the same Sunday, although it was not until Monday June 16 that appeared Seprona agents, technicians CHD and the Board, the latter to remove the fish and prevent their putrefaction contaminate further water. CHD technicians, meanwhile, took water samples to determine the causes of mortality.
The main cause being considered is a decrease of oxygen in the water resulting from high levels of pollution that records the river. As published acueducto2.com, on June 5 the lack of maintenance of collecting wastewater treatment plant connected with Segovia led to the uncontrolled disposal of urban waste water, a few miles upstream where there has been the highest concentration of fish dead. It rained wet, although CHD then explained that "pollution parameters were authorized levels" and no files were opened, the truth is that mortality occurs with water purification City and much of the district running time low for months by the construction of the new treatment plant, which will open in 2015. Similarly, CHD then moved to intensify the control of water in preventing fish kills.
"It's been what had to happen-explain-acueducto2.com consulted by biologists, the river is very polluted, when high temperatures reach into a spiral of nitrification and oxygen is consumed. The fish will die. " Most of the dead fish are a native cyprinid, the vermilion or roach, which is a protected species and fishing is strictly prohibited.
Meanwhile, dredging of the river by the City Council of Segovia also been able to remove contaminated sludge and sharpen the dismal state of the river. The delegate of the Board in Segovia, Javier López Escobar, said it will open an investigation and the origin of pollutants discharged confirmed death in the appropriate disciplinary proceedings are opened. Meanwhile, the river downstream of Segovia city sewer smells directly. In a situation that could worsen as the dry season will reduce the flow of Eresma. - Acueducto. [Translated]
Tufted Puffin Seen On Atlantic Coast For The First Time In Almost In 200 YEARS
Machias Seal Island lighthouse keeper Ralph Eldridge photographed a
tufted puffin on the island.
(Courtesy Ralph Eldridge)
The first sighting of a tufted puffin on the east coast of North
America in almost 200 years has people wondering how the common Pacific
coast seabird made it to the Atlantic waters. Ralph Eldridge, the
lighthouse keeper on Machias Seal Island in the Bay of Fundy, spotted
the bird and noted it was different from the thousands of Atlantic
puffins found at the Canadian Wildlife Service sanctuary on the island.
"It stood out as different from our Atlantic puffins - larger, blacker
but with a conspicuously orange beak and most notable, a very white
face," said Eldridge in an email to CBC News. Eldridge alerted Tony
Diamond, a biology professor from the University of New Brunswick, who
is on the island running the Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research.
Diamond was able to view the bird in a large telescope and confirm the
identification.
Tufted puffins are common on the Pacific coast
from Alaska to northern California, breeding on offshore islands. Jim
Wilson, a naturalist, said the last recorded sighting of one in the
North Atlantic was in the 1830s in Maine. "To put it succinctly, if
someone had asked me what the next bird - a new bird for New Brunswick
might be - it would never have been a tufted puffin," said Wilson. "The
question that immediately springs to mind is how would this bird get
here? "Seabirds have to feed as they go," said Wilson. "This is not a
bird that is going to pick up and fly across the continent like a lot of
other land birds might. It's got to stay near water in order to fuel
itself for any kind of a flight." Wilson hypothesizes it could have
made its way to the Atlantic coast through the northwest passage or by
flying all the way down the Pacific coast and around the southern tip of
South America, then up the Atlantic coast of both South and North
America. "It certainly isn't going to go through the Panama canal,
which is just a little strip through the woods," said Wilson. "It's
amazing how this bird would have possibly gotten here."
Another
possibility is the bird escaped from some kind of marine bird aviary,
of which there are very few that would have tufted puffins, said
Wilson. "It wouldn't be very hard to track down an escape and I'm sure
some work will be done on that to be sure that it might not be an
escape," he said. Wilson said the bird photographed by Eldridge
"absolutely" is a tufted puffin. "There is no question, when you look
at the photograph. there is nothing else possibly like it," he said.
"On the side of the head just about the eyes, there's these two kind of
straw-coloured tufts of long feathers that kind of stream out like, I
don't know - it looks almost like it's dressed for Halloween. "It's an
amazing looking bird and so distinctive there is nothing else that looks
anything like it."
A tufted puffin is about 40 centimetres
long, black in colour with a white face and a large orange beak. Wilson
said a tufted puffin was spotted in Britain in 2009 and there was a
sighting - of possibly the same bird - in Sweden in the late 1990s.
"Those are the only other records other than the Pacific coast. so this
is just a total mystery," said Wilson. Wilson said there is no telling
how long the tufted puffin will remain in the area. "This is the
breeding season. It's obviously in the company of a lot of other
seabirds that are around Machias Seal Island," he said, adding that
Atlantic puffins don't look the same as tufted puffins, but have the
same habits and big orange beaks. "It's probably looking for company
and it may be looking for another tufted puffin," said Wilson. Wilson
said the tufted puffin looks healthy. "If it's gotten this far, it's
finding the food it needs," he said. "It seems healthy. It looks in
good shape, so it's obviously thriving. It's just gotten a little off
course." - CBC.
Lightning Kills 101 Sheep In Bashkortostan
On June 12, in Sharansky area, Bashkortostan, 101 sheep were destroyed by lightning.
The tragedy occurred in the village of Kurtutel. During a severe
thunderstorm, lightning struck a tree on the coast of Xun River. At the
time sheep found refuge under a tree. Most of the animals died from the
discharge. Fortunately, the shepherd at this point was at a safe
distance from the blast site and was not injured.
- I heard a very strong roar and was frightened, says Alexei Asylbaev.
He saw the smoke that went from the tree tops and began to scatter the
sheep.
When the shepherd came close to the site of the stall, he saw a terrible
picture: bodies of animals were everywhere, while some have tried and
could not get up.
Then he counted the loss: the lightning hit 101 sheep. Shepherd himself
suffered the biggest damage - he lost eight sheep, two villagers still
have 7 and 6 sheep. Old resident of the village, Minsylu Kunakbaeva,
which lost three lambs, said that she couldn't recall from the village's
history, that a lightning caused such a great damage before.
- SevereWeatherRU.
Thousands Of Dead Fish Wash Up In A Lake In Jalisco, Mexico
The phenomenon that affects killed one species apparently has not adapted to the ecosystem of the lake vessel.
Were extracted three tons of fish discarded ecology ecocide (Victor Hugo Ornelas)
The morning of Tuesday, June 17 alerted neighbors, fishermen and visitors Cajititlán, delegation Tlajomulco they found thousands of dead fish on the banks of the lagoon. Those who arrived at an early hour Cajititlán boardwalk were surprised when they realized that on the surface of glass lakeside floating carpet of fish was found having a size of between five and ten inches long. Even those who know the biological phenomenon that causes the death of fish each year in the lakeside glass, hesitated to see both dead specimen due to "ghosts" of what happened in the Dam Valencia town of Acatlán de Juárez, where thousands of fish died pollution of molasses, "You can not stop scare was too fish and you see what happened in Valencia," said a fisherman who extracted some dead fish to corroborate the species from which it came, which he said is not the that is marketable.
"This is a species induced Cajititlán Lagoon, apparently a species that has not been successfully adapted to the behavior of our lakeside glass," said Mora Carlos Bernal, head of the management of Environment and Ecology and who attributed death of these fish to a "recurring" biological phenomenon caused by the drag of nutrients and other organic waste from Cerro Viejo and neighboring properties with water mirror. The phenomenon occurs two to three times per year and is the first rains when the largest number of affected fish is presented.
In 2013, the most recent case, the fish kill caused the intervention of the Ministry of Environment and Territorial Development (SEMADET) which determined that the "cyclical phenomenon" should not cause alarm and said the issue is directly related to the variation in water temperature and the reduction of dissolved oxygen.
This species popularly known as popocha or Pintita, because of their size and other characteristics has been used to feed livestock or creating compost, but not sold, even usually harmful fish for other species that inhabit the lagoon as tilapia or carp because they feed on eggs. The owner of the direction of ecology noted that it should not cause alarm about the situation, said that there is no danger to other fish species in Cajititlán, explaining that unlike last year, when the dead fish discovered charters in Cuexcomatitlán, this time the finding was concentrated to one side of the boardwalk Cajititlán due to the wind direction. After a tour of the shores of the reservoir, the presence of dead fish in San Juan Evangelista, San Lucas or other towns discarded. - Milenio. [Translated]
24,000 Birds Killed Due To Outbreak Of Disease In Norrkoping, Sweden
Over 2,000 Birds Found Mysteriously Dead Along The Coast Of Tacna, Peru
Over 2,000 birds have died for no reason in the Tacna coast for reasons not yet determined, said the manager in charge of the Municipality of CP. Boca del RÃo, Rossana Guillermo Reinoso.
The official said that every day for two weeks of commune staff makes is picking up 200 dead birds, mainly seagulls and guanayes found stranded along the spa.
Given the unusual panorama intervention National Agrarian Health Service (SENASA) to collect samples and determine the possible causes that lead to sudden death bird is called.
A Reinoso said of William, the hypothesis that handles health institution suggest that seagulls would die from a strange virus (germ) called this the "red tide" is added.
"Also could be warming the sea," he said after warning the bewildering fog this morning which was recorded throughout the region.
The presence of the dead bodies extend from the beach the Bull to the vicinity of Morro Sama, being almost impossible to pick a whole due to the lack of staff during the season. "It is presumed that there are more dead birds in the interior housing, however we can not prove it because people only come when it is summer, "he concluded. - Diario Correo. [Translated]
Endangered Bird Forces Duxbury To Cancel 4th Of July Celebration
Piping Plover (WBZ-TV)
The town of Duxbury has cancelled what was an annual 4th of July beach bonfire celebration. The endangered piping plover bird has moved-in and there are at least
24 nests on Duxbury Beach. There are large areas of the beach that are
restricted. The town’s July 4th committee said usually a couple thousand
people attend the celebration and there is no way to ensure the nests
will not get trampled, so the bonfire is cancelled.
“The plovers are federally protected. We have to follow the law,” said Margaret Kearney, Duxbury 4th of July activities committee This is the 2nd year the plover’s presence cancelled the party. Last year, 17 nests were on the beach. “They tend to come back to the siame area and every year they hope to grow or maintain the population,” said Missy Battista, co-manager of Duxbury Beach. In 2013, the committee moved the bonfire to another location, but there was little interest. Most Duxbury residents said they understand the need to cancel the bonfire for the bird. Since the birds return every year, the committee said next year they’ll consider a new tradition of having the beach bonfire at another time. - CBS.
Tens Of Thousands Of Dead Fish Found Floating On A River In Changsha, China
Changsha Xiangjiang river near Century City, discovered large fish kill.
Yesterday afternoon, the reporter broke the news to the reader: "? We are residents of the Xiangjiang Century City today to the riverside walk, found to have tens of thousands of dead fish on the river, which in the end is how is it"
Mei Xiang discovered tens of thousands of dead fish
"Also across a road, along the river I heard about the stench." 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon, follow the river to find the taste when dad walks Wu found that half a slice of the river in front of him are floating layer of dense The dead fish. The number of dead fish swim bladder turned white variety.
19 afternoon, reporters rushed to the Xiangjiang river near Century City, found that these dense dead fish floating in the river is not yet grown up almost entirely of small fry, as well as part of the larger body of grass carp, bream, upstream there have also been dead fish float to. Anglers nearby, said the rare phenomenon from the start this morning, 7:00. - China News. [Translated]
