UAE sees two new cases of Mers coronavirus infection
Omani patient succumbs to infection, while man from Abu Dhabi in critical condition
By Samihah Zaman, Staff Reporter
Published: 21:30 March 27, 2014
Abu Dhabi: Two new cases of infection by the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (Mers-CoV) in the UAE have been reported to international authorities over the past week, with one of the patients succumbing to the disease.
The victim was a 40-year-old man from Oman, who died on Monday (March 24) at an Abu Dhabi hospital, according to reports submitted by UAE authorities to the World Health Organisation (WHO). He had had underlying medical conditions, and was first admitted to a hospital in Muscat. On March 17, he was admitted to an Abu Dhabi facility. The patient has not recently travelled outside Oman and the UAE, and had no recorded contacts with animals or other Mers-CoV patients.
The second patient is a 49-year-old man from Abu Dhabi whose condition is currently critical. The patient had been admitted to hospital in late February, and was discharged after a few days because his condition had improved. On March 16, he was readmitted, and laboratory tests confirmed Mers-CoV infection.
Although the patient has not travelled recently, he is said to have been in contact with a 68-year-old farm owner from Abu Dhabi who was diagnosed with Mers earlier and is now stable.
A 40-year-old man from Oman with underlying medical conditions. He was 1st admitted to a hospital in Muscat on [15 Feb 2014] and was then readmitted to hospital in Abu Dhabi on (17 Mar 2014). His condition deteriorated, and he died on (24 Mar 2014). Laboratory-confirmation was done on (21 Mar 2014). The patient had no history of recent travel outside of Oman and the UAE and had no reported contact with animals or a laboratory-confirmed case. Further epidemiological investigation in ongoing.
Biohazard name:
MERS-COv
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
A 40 year old Omani man with ‘underlying medical conditions’ died of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in Abu Dhabi on Monday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that the man was first admitted in a hospital in Muscat on February 15, and then readmitted to a hospital in Abu Dhabi on March 17. “His condition deteriorated and he died on March 24,” the WHO added in a statement.
26 March 2014 – On 23 March 2014, the National IHR Focal Point of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) notified WHO of an additional laboratory-confirmed case of infection with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV).
Details of the case provided to WHO are as follows:
A 40 year-old man from Oman with underlying medical conditions. He was first admitted to a hospital in Muscat on 15 February and was then readmitted to hospital in Abu Dhabi on 17 March. His condition deteriorated and he died on 24 March 2014. Laboratory-confirmation was done on 21 March. The patient had no history of recent travel outside of Oman and the UAE, and had no reported contact with animals or a laboratory-confirmed case. Further epidemiological investigation in ongoing.
Globally, from September 2012 to date, WHO has been informed of a total of 200 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection with MERS-CoV, including 85 deaths.
WHO advice
Based on the current situation and available information, WHO encourages all Member States to continue their surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) and to carefully review any unusual patterns.
Infection prevention and control measures are critical to prevent the possible spread of MERS-CoV in health care facilities. Health-care facilities that provide for patients suspected or confirmed to be infected with MERS-CoV infection should take appropriate measures to decrease the risk of transmission of the virus from an infected patient to other patients, health-care workers and visitors. Health care workers should be educated, trained and refreshed with skills on infection prevention and control.
It is not always possible to identify patients with MERS-CoV early because some have mild or unusual symptoms. For this reason, it is important that health-care workers apply standard precautions consistently with all patients – regardless of their diagnosis – in all work practices all the time.
Droplet precautions should be added to the standard precautions when providing care to all patients with symptoms of acute respiratory infection. Contact precautions and eye protection should be added when caring for probable or confirmed cases of MERS-CoV infection. Airborne precautions should be applied when performing aerosol generating procedures.
Patients should be managed as potentially infected when the clinical and epidemiological clues strongly suggest MERS-CoV, even if an initial test on a nasopharyngeal swab is negative. Repeat testing should be done when the initial testing is negative, preferably on specimens from the lower respiratory tract.
Health-care providers are advised to maintain vigilance. Recent travellers returning from the Middle East who develop SARI should be tested for MERS-CoV as advised in the current surveillance recommendations. All Member States are reminded to promptly assess and notify WHO of any new case of infection with MERS-CoV, along with information about potential exposures that may have resulted in infection and a description of the clinical course. Investigation into the source of exposure should promptly be initiated to identify the mode of exposure, so that further transmission of the virus can be prevented.
People at high risk of severe disease due to MERS-CoV should avoid close contact with animals when visiting farms or barn areas where the virus is known to be potentially circulating. For the general public, when visiting a farm or a barn, general hygiene measures, such as regular hand washing before and after touching animals, avoiding contact with sick animals, and following food hygiene practices, should be adhered to.
WHO does not advise special screening at points of entry with regard to this event nor does it currently recommend the application of any travel or trade restrictions.
Muscat: A 40-year-old Omani died in UAE due to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), according to World Health Organisation (WHO).
The WHO said that the citizen was first admitted to a hospital in Muscat on February 15 and was then readmitted to hospital in Abu Dhabi on March 17. “His condition deteriorated in Abu Dhabi hospital and he died on March 24,” the WHO said.
A laboratory-confirmation was done on March 21. The patient had no history of recent travel outside of Oman and the UAE, and had no reported contact with animals or a laboratory-confirmed case. “Further epidemiological investigation is going on,” the WHO said.
Globally, from September 2012, WHO has been informed of a total of 200 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection with MERS-CoV, including 85 deaths.
In Oman, the MERS-CoV has claimed life of two people.
A 59-year-old patient who was under treatment died on December and the Sultanate’s first MERS coronavirus patient died on November 10, 2013.
The first MERS-CoV victim, who was admitted to the hospital in Nizwa was suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure while the second victim died of lung failure.
A WHO spokesman said the findings in camels provide clues, but the issue of how humans are being infected is still unresolved.
Researchers who conducted blood tests on animals from different regions found evidence that camels have been exposed to the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) or a very close relative, the outbreak’s first strong clue about a possible animal reservoir.
Until now, the only animal clue has been from genetic sequencing studies, which suggested the virus came from bats. Though there are no reports that any of the patients had contact with bats, a man from the United Arab Emirates who was treated for his fatal infection in Germany had been exposed to a sick racing camel.
The investigators, mostly from the Netherlands and Germany, reported their findings today in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The first MERS-CoV illness was reported a year ago, and so far 94 cases and 46 deaths have been confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO), all of them from or linked to Middle Eastern countries.
Human-to-human infections have been rare, and health officials suspect that an animal reservoir could be playing a yet unknown key role in the spread of the new virus.
The research team obtained 349 blood serum samples from livestock animals including dromedary camels, cows, sheep, goats, and other animals closely related to dromedaries. The animals were from different areas, including Oman, the Netherlands, Spain, and Chile.
They analyzed the blood samples for antibodies to MERS-CoV, other antibodies that react to SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus, and HCoV-OC43, another strain of coronavirus that can infect humans and is related to a bovine form of the virus.
No cross-reactivity was seen between MERS-CoV antibodies and those for SARS or HCoV-OC43, and the team confirmed those findings with highly specific virus neutralization tests. Presence of MERS-CoV antibodies probably shows previous infection with MERS-CoV, or a closely related virus, the group reported.
No MERS-CoV antibodies were found in the blood of 160 animals from the Netherlands and Spain, but evidence of earlier exposure to the virus was found in all 50 samples taken from dromedary camels in Oman. Sampling in Oman involved camels from different parts of the country, suggesting that MERS-CoV or a close relative is circulating widely in the region’s dromedary camels, the authors reported.
No antibodies were found in animals from the Netherlands and Chile that are closely related to dromedaries, such as Bactrian camels, alpacas, and llamas.
Lower levels of MERS-CoV antibodies were found in 14% (15) of samples taken from two herds of dromedaries from the Canary Islands, a Spanish island group located off the coast of mainland Africa that has not reported any human MERS-CoV cases.
The authors said in a journal press release that the dromedaries from Oman were positive more often and had much higher antibody MERS-CoV antibody levels than the ones from Spain. “The best way to explain this is that there is a MERS-CoV-like virus circulating in dromedary camels, but that the behavior of this virus in the Middle East is somehow different to that in Spain,” they noted.
The findings suggest dromedary camels may be one reservoir for MERS-CoV and that their popularity in the Middle East, where they are used for racing, meat, and milk, presents a variety of contacts with humans that could lead to virus transmission, the investigators said in the press release.
No fewer than four major tectonic plates (Arabia, Eurasia, India, and Africa) and one smaller tectonic block (Anatolia) are responsible for seismicity and tectonics in the Middle East and surrounding region. Geologic development of the region is a consequence of a number of first-order plate tectonic processes that include subduction, large-scale transform faulting, compressional mountain building and crustal extension.
Mountain building in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan is the result of compressional tectonics associated with collision of the India plate moving northwards at a rate of 40 mm/yr with respect to the Eurasia plate. Continental thickening of the northern and western edge of the India subcontinent has produced the highest mountains in the world, including the Himalayan, Karakoram, Pamir and Hindu Kush ranges. Earthquake activity and faulting found in this region, as well as adjacent parts of Afghanistan and India, are due to collisional plate tectonics.
Beneath the Pamir-Hindu Kush Mountains of northern Afghanistan, earthquakes occur to depths as great as 200 km as a result of remnant lithospheric subduction. Shallower crustal earthquakes in the Pamir-Hindu Mountains occur primarily along the Main Pamir Thrust and other active Quaternary faults, which accommodate much of the region’s crustal shortening. The western and eastern margins of the Main Pamir Thrust display a combination of thrust and strike-slip mechanisms.
Along the western margin of the Tibetan Plateau, in the vicinity of southeastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, the India plate translates obliquely relative to the Eurasia plate, resulting in a complex fold-and-thrust belt known as the Sulaiman Range. Faulting in this region includes strike-slip, reverse-slip and oblique-slip motion and often results in shallow, destructive earthquakes. The relatively fast moving left-lateral, strike-slip Chaman Fault system in southeastern Afghanistan accommodates translational motion between the India and Eurasia plates. In 1505, a segment of the Chaman Fault system near Kabul, Afghanistan ruptured causing widespread destruction of Kabul and surrounding villages. In the same region, the more recent 30 May 1935, M7.6 Quetta, Pakistan earthquake, occurred within the Sulaiman Range, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people.
No fewer than four major tectonic plates (Arabia, Eurasia, India, and Africa) and one smaller tectonic block (Anatolia) are responsible for seismicity and tectonics in the Middle East and surrounding region. Geologic development of the region is a consequence of a number of first-order plate tectonic processes that include subduction, large-scale transform faulting, compressional mountain building and crustal extension.
Mountain building in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan is the result of compressional tectonics associated with collision of the India plate moving northwards at a rate of 40 mm/yr with respect to the Eurasia plate. Continental thickening of the northern and western edge of the India subcontinent has produced the highest mountains in the world, including the Himalayan, Karakoram, Pamir and Hindu Kush ranges. Earthquake activity and faulting found in this region, as well as adjacent parts of Afghanistan and India, are due to collisional plate tectonics.
Beneath the Pamir-Hindu Kush Mountains of northern Afghanistan, earthquakes occur to depths as great as 200 km as a result of remnant lithospheric subduction. Shallower crustal earthquakes in the Pamir-Hindu Mountains occur primarily along the Main Pamir Thrust and other active Quaternary faults, which accommodate much of the region’s crustal shortening. The western and eastern margins of the Main Pamir Thrust display a combination of thrust and strike-slip mechanisms.
Along the western margin of the Tibetan Plateau, in the vicinity of southeastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, the India plate translates obliquely relative to the Eurasia plate, resulting in a complex fold-and-thrust belt known as the Sulaiman Range. Faulting in this region includes strike-slip, reverse-slip and oblique-slip motion and often results in shallow, destructive earthquakes. The relatively fast moving left-lateral, strike-slip Chaman Fault system in southeastern Afghanistan accommodates translational motion between the India and Eurasia plates. In 1505, a segment of the Chaman Fault system near Kabul, Afghanistan ruptured causing widespread destruction of Kabul and surrounding villages. In the same region, the more recent 30 May 1935, M7.6 Quetta, Pakistan earthquake, occurred within the Sulaiman Range, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people.
An Omani oil company says it has the situation under control after 300 of its contractors at a drill site were sickened by food poisoning. Most of the workers were treated and released at a camp clinic, Petroleum Development Oman said in a statement, but some required hospitalization, Gulf News reported Wednesday. Some 62 workers were admitted and 19 were later discharged, “All those sent to the hospitals are stable and no one is in any danger,” the company said. All of the workers were employed at oil installations in Qarn Alam in central Oman, about 250 miles from Muscat. Petroleum Development Oman is owned by the state of Oman. A team from the Ministry of Health has been sent to camp to investigate the incident, officials said.
Biohazard name:
Mass. Food poisoning
Biohazard level:
1/4 Low
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses including Bacillus subtilis, canine hepatitis, Escherichia coli, varicella (chicken pox), as well as some cell cultures and non-infectious bacteria. At this level precautions against the biohazardous materials in question are minimal, most likely involving gloves and some sort of facial protection. Usually, contaminated materials are left in open (but separately indicated) waste receptacles. Decontamination procedures for this level are similar in most respects to modern precautions against everyday viruses (i.e.: washing one’s hands with anti-bacterial soap, washing all exposed surfaces of the lab with disinfectants, etc). In a lab environment, all materials used for cell and/or bacteria cultures are decontaminated via autoclave.
The social networking sites have been flooded with news about thunderstorm and heavy rains lashing parts of the UAE. The National Center of Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS), in a statement, has denied rumours on such sites that a thunderstorm with intense rainfall deteriorated visibility in Alsala and that it will pass in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, the rest of the United Arab Emirates to Oman during the next six hours. The NCMS website says mild weather during daytime and partly cloudy skies at times over some northern and eastern areas. The weather would be pleasant by night. Meanwhile, minimum temperatures have dipped to 10 degree centigrade in some mountainous areas, with a maximum of 32 degrees C in some internal areas.
A 5.3 magnitude earthquake hit Alexandria early on Friday morning.
Hatem Oada, head of the National Institute for Astronomical and Geophysical Research, said in a statement to the state-run MENA news agency that regional seismic networks indicate the tremor hit at 5:35 am, Cairo time. No damages or injuries have been reported.
The epicenter of the quake was in the Mediterranean Sea, north of the Delta. This region is not typically seismically active, Oada said.
SYDNEY, Oct 21, 2012 (AFP) – – A strong 6.2-magnitude earthquake rattled the South Pacific island of Vanuatu Sunday, seismologists said, but there were no immediate reports of damage and no tsunami warning was issued.
The quake struck at 10:00 am (2300 GMT Saturday) 500 kilometres (310 miles) northwest of the capital Port Vila at a depth of 35 kilometres, the United States Geological Survey said.
The USGS had earlier put the magnitude at 6.6.
Vanuatu lies on the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a zone of frequent seismic activity caused by friction between shifting tectonic plates.
It has been rocked by several large quakes in recent years, averaging about three magnitude 7.0 or above incidents every year without any major damage.
Biggest earthquakes during the last 48 hours
Size Time Quality Location
5.2 21 Oct 01:25:15 Checked 19.3 km NNE of Siglufjörður
4.9 20 Oct 22:53:46 38.3 116.8 km NE of Kolbeinsey
4.8 21 Oct 00:10:20 Checked 20.4 km NNE of Siglufjörður
4.4 21 Oct 01:03:42 90.0 20.1 km NNE of Siglufjörður
4.3 21 Oct 02:20:01 90.0 27.5 km NNE of Siglufjörður
4.1 21 Oct 00:10:21 90.0 16.6 km NE of Siglufjörður
A verdict in the trial of seven top Italian scientists for manslaughter for underestimating the risks of an earthquake which killed 309 people in L’Aquila, central Italy, in 2009, is expected on Monday.
“The verdict is expected on October 22,” said Enzo Musco, a lawyer for Professor Gian Michele Calvi who is one of the defendants.
The prosecutor’s office has asked for sentences of four years in prison for each of the seven who were all members of the Major Risks Committee.
The committee met in the central Italian city on March 31, 2009 — six days before the powerful earthquake devastated the region — after a series of small tremors in the preceding weeks had sown panic among local inhabitants.
Prosecutor Fabio Picuti said the experts had provided “an incomplete, inept, unsuitable and criminally mistaken” analysis after that meeting, which reassured locals and prevented them from preparing for the quake.
The experts had said after their meeting that they could not predict an earthquake but urged local authorities to ensure safety rules were respected.
The seven include Enzo Boschi, who at the time was the head of Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology.
The La Repubblica daily on Friday also reported on a separate case against an engineer who lost his daughter in the earthquake but was put on trial for failing to respect anti-quake regulations in one of his constructions.
Diego De Angelis, 67, was convicted on Thursday and sentenced to three years in prison.
Mount Merapi erupting in 2010. (JG Photo/Boy T Harjanto).
Solo, Central Java. A lava dome that formed on top of Mount Merapi following its 2010 eruption has collapsed, prompting volcanology officials to issue a warning on Friday of a possible deadly cold lava stream on the mountain slope.
Tri Mujianto, from the Merapi mountain observatory in Jrakah, in the Selo subdistrict of Boyolali, said the lava dome had disappeared but he could not say precisely when.
“The dome is now no longer there but we were not able to monitor when it collapsed. Some [of the material] may have fallen inside [the crater] while some may have flowed into the channel of Apu River,” he said.
They have not been able to determine the cause of the collapse, as there has been no rain in the crater area for days. They also haven’t been able to estimate the volume of cold lava in the collapsed dome.
Tri said the alert status for Merapi remained at the normal level but warned that should rains fall over the crater, cold lava stream may flow down through natural river channels. A cold lava stream is congealed lava and other volcanic mud and debris flushed down the slopes of a volcano by heavy rains.
“Entering the rainy season, the frequency of cold lava stream is rising. We have checked the conditions at the craters several times and it appears to still be very much unstable. People on the slopes of Merapi, especially those living on the banks of rivers originating from the peak, should remain alert,” he said.
Meanwhile, Subandriyo, the head of the Volcanology office in Yogyakarta, said that parts of the lava dome facing Boyolali district had collapsed, and ventured that it was due to its fragile condition.
“The collapse was not directly recorded because there were so many small deflagrations. On the scale, they did not even reach one kilometer down the slope,” Subandriyo said.
He warned that rains with intensity of more than 20 millimeters and lasting more than two hours were enough to trigger flash floods of cold lava down the mountain’s slope.
Contact Information:
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
Office of Communications and Publishing
12201 Sunrise Valley Dr, MS 119
Reston, VA 20192
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Experts in volcano hazards and public safety have started a conversation about volcanoes in the southwestern United States, and how best to prepare for future activity. Prior to this meeting, emergency response planning for volcanic unrest in the region had received little attention by federal or state agencies.Though volcanic eruptions are comparatively rare in the American Southwest, the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah host geologically-recent volcanic eruption deposits and are vulnerable to future volcanic activity. Compared with other parts of the western U.S., comparatively little research has been focused on this area, and eruption probabilities are poorly understood.“A volcanic eruption in the American southwest is an example of a low-probability, but high-impact event for which we should be prepared to respond,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “No one wants to be exchanging business cards during an emergency, and thus a small investment in advance planning could pay off in personal relationships and coordination between scientists and first responders.””The goal of the conference is to increase awareness of volcanism and vulnerabilities in the American Southwest, and to begin coordination among volcano scientists, land managers, and emergency responders regarding future volcanic activity,” said Dr. Jacob Lowenstern, one of the organizers of the conference, and the U.S. Geological Survey Scientist-In-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. “This is the first time these federal, state, and local agencies have met to discuss their roles, responsibilities, and resources, should an eruption occur.”The “Volcanism in the American Southwest” conference on Oct. 18-19 in Flagstaff, Ariz. was organized by the USGS, Northern Arizona University, University at Buffalo, and New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, the meeting included interdisciplinary talks, posters, and panel discussions, providing an opportunity for volcanologists, land managers, and emergency responders to meet, converse, and begin to plan protocols for any future volcanic activity.
More information about the meeting, including presentation abstracts, is online.
Indonesia issued today an official alert at the straight of Sunda for the increasing activity of Mt. Anak Krakatoa. Dense clouds surrounding the mountain blind it from human eyes while fishers and tourists must remain at a distance of two kilometres, said Andi Suardi, head of the watch deport in Hargopancuran. Just 30 days earlier, Anak Krakatoa spewed lava and other material 2,000 meters high above the peak; there have been since hundreds of quakes in the area and black clouds continue to veil the mouth of the mountain. Situated between Sumatra and Java Islands, Anak Krakatoa emerged from sea late in the 1930s and from 1950, growing an average of five meters per year. Science has confirmed another five active volcanos and the authorities have activated the alert in their vicinity, and Indonesia has more than 400 volcanos and some 130 remain active.
A huge wave dragged a Polish woman to her death as she walked on a Spanish beach with a friend on Friday in a storm that also left a young French man missing.
As the powerful storm smashed into northeastern Catalonia, a big wave snatched away the 37-year-old Polish woman in the holiday resort of Lloret del Mar in the early hours, emergency services officials said.
“She was walking along the beach with a friend when she was surprised by a wave that dragged her in,” said a police spokesman.
Her corpse was found five nautical miles down the coast near Blanes later in the morning, officials said, and she was identified by her clothes and jewellery.
The French man, described only as a young person, disappeared after going fishing in a rocky area of the coast of Roses, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) further north.
Only his fishing rod was recovered.
Emergency services were alerted by the French man’s friend after he went fishing in a rocky area known as Carretera de Canyelles and failed to return, an emergency services spokesman said.
“This morning we found his fishing rod in a rocky area and began a search of the land and sea with helicopters and specialized vehicles,” he said.
Catalonia’s emergency services declared a state of alert on Friday because of forecasts for the weekend of heavy rain, rough seas with waves higher than 2.5 metres (eight feet) and strong winds.
The authorities warned people to avoid breakwaters, coastal paths and beaches affected by the waves.
Storms also beat down on the neighbouring northern Spanish region of Aragon, causing floods in the province of Zaragoza.
Spain has been punished by extreme weather in the past year.
After the driest winter in 70 years, forest fires scorched more than 184,000 hectares (454,000 acres) of land in the first nine months of 2012, the largest amount in a decade, according to government figures.
While the roads remained clear of any snow, ewes and lambs picked their way through the icy crust
By Hamish Clark
It’s been a bitterly cold end to Labour Weekend, with bad weather sweeping across the South Island.
Snow fell in Canterbury from Lake Tekapo up to Methven, while over on the West Coast, a tornado flattened an old theatre in the northern township of Hector.
The storm arrived at the break of dawn and blanketed the countryside. Temperatures dived in the wintry blast to near freezing – a turnaround on yesterday’s 20degC highs.
Five-to-10cm of snow covered the Canterbury Foothills, falling as far south as Twizel and Tekapo, cutting short holiday-makers’ long weekend away.
One by one, caravans, campervans and boats joined the queue home, although one classic bike was left on the side of the road.
“We have just come back from Twizel on the old motorbike and been in the snow,” says motorcyclist Grant Jones. “I have just blown a head casket on her, so she is on the trailer now until home.”
While the roads remained clear of any snow, ewes and lambs picked their way through the icy crust.
“[We have] few lambing ewes and a few sorry looking lambs,” says farming student Hamish Forrester.
Over on the West Coast, there was not much left of an old Hector theatre and dancehall north of Westport – a tornado flattened it in the middle of the night.
But if Tourism New Zealand ever wanted the perfect promo, this was it – visitors say they loved seeing the snow in Tekapo.
Brett Dutschke, Monday October 22, 2012 – 17:09 EDT Much of central Australia is baking in heat not experienced at this time of year in decades.
Temperatures have been reaching the high thirties each day for about a week, the longest it has been this hot at this time of year in more than 20 years.
Today is Yulara’s eighth day of reaching 35 degrees or more. In more than 20 years of record there hasn’t been a longer run of such heat at this time of year.
Alice Springs has reached at least 38 degrees in each of the past six days, beating the previous September/October record of four days, most recently set in 2008.
Across the border in far southwest Queensland, Birdsville has almost equalled its longest run of 40-degree days for this time of year. Sunday was the fourth day of 40 or more. This is only one day short of the October record of five days, set in 1988. Monday had only reached 39.4 degrees by 3:30pm. Birdsville’s records go back to the 1950s.
This heat has a few more days to go, at least until Wednesday in Yulara and Alice Springs and until Thursday in Birdsville, when a cooler southerly change is due. This change will drop temperatures by about 10 degrees.
Before the cooler change arrives Alice Springs is on target for nine consecutive days of 35 degrees, also a record for this time of year.
The persistent snow and rain hit the northwestern part of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, causing a dramatic temperature drop. This has resulted in the freezing of the road surface on several sections of Sayram Lake-Guozigou Highway, causing traffic congestion in the direction to Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, northwest China.
A hailstorm has left a trail of destruction, damaging furniture and ripping off roofing sheets at Lumanto Basic School in Lufwanyama. The storm, which happened last Friday, damaged a 1×2 classroom block at the school, whose window panes and part of the wall collapsed. Lufwanyama district education board secretary Hilda Kulelwa confirmed the tragedy in an interview yesterday. Ms Kulelwa said the hailstorm struck when schoolchildren were on lunch break and no one was hurt. “We had a very strong wind yesterday (Friday) which ripped off iron sheets at Lumanto Basic School. The desks are also damaged. The storm struck as soon as the grade nines finished their practical examinations,” she said. Ms Kulelwa said the damage left by the hailstorm will affect the school timetable as some classes will have to be rescheduled until the affected block is rehabilitated. She said the matter has been reported to the district commissioner and the provincial education officer. And Lufwanyama district commissioner Alex Kalela said his office will write to the provincial permanent secretary, requesting for the rehabilitation of the school as soon as possible. “The children are writing their final examinations and we don’t want their timetable to be affected. We are appealing to the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit to quickly repair the roofs before the rains start,” Mr Kalela said.
Ekurhuleni metro police ran for cover as hail the size of golf balls shattered their car windscreens and side mirrors, spokesman Kobeli Mokheseng said. The hail “came down like a ton of bricks” for about five minutes on Saturday between 2pm and 3pm, he said. “Metro police officers who were patrolling… ran for cover following heavy rain and winds blowing uncontrollably,” said Mokheseng. He said metro police were still assessing the damage, and that no one was hurt. The hail appeared to have been heaviest in Edenvale, Midrand, Germiston, Boksburg and Benoni. People took to the social networking site, Twitter, to express their dismay at the damage it caused. “What a scary experience yesterday really bad weather hail were so big damaged my younger sister’s kids playroom,” a Twitter user wrote. “Tennis ball sized hail at our place on Saturday crazy.” Another Twitter user wrote: “Talk about hail damage… 12 windows KO!!!!”. “Every car in the East Rand that wasn’t under cover or was on the road is damaged. Mine has 3 dents on boot,” wrote another person. “My mom’s Clio took a beating… Hail damage all over! It went right through the body work.” The Sunday Times showed a photograph of a Benoni man, Jimmy Sales, inspecting his car’s shattered rear windscreen under the headline “This weather is insane”. The newspaper carried an inset picture of a hailstone almost the size of a cricket ball which was among those which fell at the Glendower Golf Club, reportedly damaging several cars in the parking lot and gouging chunks out of the green.
22.10.2012
Flash Flood
Bulgaria
Province of Burgas, [Varvara and Ahtopol, Municipality of Tsarevo]
BLACKWELL, Okla. — Transportation officials say a stretch of Interstate 35 in northern Oklahoma is open again after a massive dust storm triggered a multi-vehicle accident.
Oklahoma Department of Transportation spokesman Cole Hackett said the 8-mile stretch of Interstate 35 reopened Thursday evening.
Transportation workers had been called in earlier Thursday to close the highway between U.S. 60 and Oklahoma 11. The area just south of the Kansas state line remained closed for several hours as crews cleared debris from the crash and waited for winds to die down.
weather.com
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said visibility was less than 10 feet as gusts as high as 55 mph blew dust over the roadway Thursday afternoon.
No one was killed in the multi-vehicle accident, though Blackwell Police Chief Fred LeValley said nine people were injured.
In a scene reminiscent of the Dust Bowl days, choking dust suspended on strong wind gusts shrouded Interstate 35, which links Dallas and Oklahoma City to Kansas City, Mo. Video from television station helicopters showed the four-lane highway virtually disappearing into billowing dust on the harsh landscape near Blackwell, plus dozens of vehicles scattered in the median and on the shoulders.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jodi Palmer, a dispatcher with the Kay County Sheriff’s Office. “In this area alone, the dirt is blowing because we’ve been in a drought. I think from the drought everything’s so dry and the wind is high.”
The highway patrol said the dust storm caused a multi-car accident, and local police said nearly three dozen cars and tractor-trailers were involved. Blackwell Police Chief Fred LeValley said nine people were injured, but there were no fatalities.
State transportation workers were called into to close the highway between U.S. 60 and Oklahoma 11, an 8-mile stretch of the cross-country roadway.
The area is just south of the Kansas state line in far northern Oklahoma. Interstate 35 runs from the Mexican border in south Texas to Duluth, Minn.
A red flag fire warning was in place for parts of northern Oklahoma on Thursday, as is a blowing dust advisory.
The National Weather Service forecast for the area said winds would subside to 20 mph or lower overnight but that gusts as high as 28 mph could continue. Calm winds were expected by Friday night.
The area has suffered through an extended drought and many farmers had recently loosened the soil while preparing for the winter wheat season.
“You have the perfect combination of extended drought in that area … and we have the extremely strong winds,” said Gary McManus, the Oklahoma associate state climatologist.
“Also, the timing is bad because a lot of those farm fields are bare. The soil is so dry, it’s like powder. Basically what you have is a whole bunch of topsoil waiting for the wind to blow it away. It’s no different from the 1930s than it is now.”
Steve Austin, a Kay County commissioner, said visibility was terrible.
“It looked like a huge fog was over the city of Ponca City,” he said. “We’ve had dust storms before, but I don’t remember anything of this magnitude in years.”
There are no flooded and isolated settlements after the heavy rain in the coastal municipality of Tsarevo on Sunday. A bridge has been hit by a tidal wave on the road between the southeastern village of Varvara and town of Ahtopol, municipality mayor Georgi Lapchev said. He added that the road was closed and experts were working to restore the damaged section. He said there was a roundabout route. He noted that Sunday’s heavy rain caused damages and other settlements might experience problems as well.
Flash floods in Papua in eastern Indonesia on Sunday night has displaced over 1,000 people and damaged over 200 houses and other public facilities, an official of disaster relief agency said here on Monday. Spokesman of the National Disaster Management and Mitigation Agency Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said that heavy rains at mountainous area led to overflow of Eranouli river and caused flash floods in Eranouli village in Panja district at about 21:00 pm Jakarta time (1400 GMT). “Over 200 houses and scores of office building have been damaged and about 1,000 people have escaped to higher grounds,” he said. The waters inundated the village by up to 2 meters high, said Sutopo. The waters also damaged a health clinic and a clean water facility, he said.
A flash flood triggered by torrential rain has killed at least nine construction workers and left 15 others missing and feared dead in India’s remote northeast. Karma Zyatso, chief secretary of Sikkim state, says the workers, who lived in camps, were swept away by the swirling waters of a flooded river Friday in Chungthan, a small town in the mountainous region. Zyatso said Sunday that authorities had recovered nine bodies and were searching for the 15 missing workers, who were building roads.
At least 11 Peruvians were killed and 10 more are missing after a mudslide Wednesday slammed into a small village in a mountainous jungle region, officials said.
Those killed in the landslide include five children, Ronald Garcia, the provincial mayor, told RPP national radio network.
The avalanche of mud and rocks swept away 24 homes when it crashed into the village of El Porvenir, in the northern department of San Martin, at dawn.
The head of Peru’s Civil Defense Institute, Alfredo Murgueytio, told the daily El Comercio in an interview posted online that rescuers pulled 11 bodies from the rubble, and that 10 people are still missing.
Mayor Garcia said that some of the missing people may have fled into the hills to save their lives.
“Whole families are missing,” said Garcia. More than 80 families live in the village, he said.
El Porvenir residents are mostly coffee farmers, officials said.
Heavy rain in Peru’s Andean region in recent weeks has triggered several landslides.
Tornadoes reportedly touched down Monday afternoon in three Northern California counties, knocking down some trees and power lines as a powerful storm blew over the region. Officials said no injuries were reported by the tornadoes, which were caused by the first storm of the season in Northern California. The National Weather Service said preliminary reports indicated that the tornadoes touched down in Sutter, Yuba and Butte counties. The unstable weather prompted the agency to issue a tornado warning for Placer County. Officials said they received reports from residents of toppled trees and power lines and damage to rooftops after shingles were ripped off by powerful winds.
22.10.2012
Tornado
USA
State of Pennsylvania, Fern Glen [Lancaster County]
Authorities have confirmed that a tornado caused a pavilion to collapse at a Lancaster County park, injuring 15 people and causing millions of dollars in damage. The EF-1 tornado touched down shortly after 8 p.m. Friday and over the next 10 minutes traveled about 16 miles from Fern Glen to Paradise in Lancaster County, packing maximum winds of 100 to 110 m.p.h., the National Weather Service said Sunday. Officials said several dozen people attending a baseball game near Paradise sought shelter at the 40-by-40-foot pavilion, but high winds collapsed it. Police said 10 to 12 people were injured, but the weather service put the injury total at 15. Authorities said most of the injuries were minor; one person had a broken bone. The tornado damage was sporadic and contained within a larger area of straight-line wind damage, weather observers said. Officials said 50 structures were damaged, including several barns that were destroyed. Two small high-tension towers and thousands of trees were toppled. The county emergency management office estimated damage at $3 million to $5 million.
More than 20 schoolchildren, who have fallen sick in some posh localities of the city, are attending their classes, posing a danger to others kids. Teachers suspect students are afflicted with chickenpox. With blisters over body, fever and tiredness, these students are going to school. The parents say they have to send their children to schools as their absence from the school would affect studies and they might miss the chance of writing their annual test because of falling short of minimum attendance necessary to appear in examination. “I know many children who are suffering from chickenpox, a woman teacher, residing in Arera Colony, told TOI. Instead of quarantining such kids, their parents were sending them to schools, which may trigger the spread of the contagious disease, she said. These kids, some from my locality, are from the posh localities, she said. The health officials should take some steps and visit schools.
Biohazard name:
Chicken Pox
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
Hospitals in the city have reported cases of rickettsial disease caused by tick bites – a rare infectious fever that is common in hilly regions having a tropical climate. Though doctors said the disease “is very rare” in Delhi, AIIMS has reported at least two cases in its paediatric unit over the past six weeks. Serological reports from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) confirmed that these patients were afflicted with scrub typhus, a variant of rickettsia. Doctors at three private hospitals said they had sent samples to the NCDC and received confirmed reports. Serological tests to confirm the infection is not available in government and most private hospitals. The Director of Health Services (DHS) Dr N V Kamat said the city’s infectious disease surveillance programme was yet to be notified about the cases. Dr V K Paul, the head of paediatrics in AIIMS, said: “The disease is very rare and we do not often get patients suffering from the it in Delhi. But we have received confirmation from the NCDC that two of our patients were diagnosed with Scrub Typhus over the past six weeks.” Dr Atul Gogia, associate consultant of internal medicine in Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said: “We have seen 8-10 cases of scrub typhus in the past month. We used to see a case once a year. This year, there has been a sudden jump. So we are sending every suspected, unexplained fever for tests.” Dr Gogia said patients have a characteristic black mark, known as eschar, left by the mite on the body accompanied by fever.
Biohazard name:
Typhus (Scrub)
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
Solar activity has increased to active during the past 24 hours, featuring a long duration M9.1 flare and six C flares.
The M9.1 flare was released by sunspot region 1598 on the east limb of the Sun and peaked at 18:14 UT on October 20th. A high-speed shock wave registered 516 kilometers per second (320 miles per second) observed at 18:15 UT. An associated CME was observed by LASCO C2 at 19:00 UT, but is not directed towards Earth.
Earlier today sunspot region 1596 produced a M1.3 (2003UT), C7.8 (0316UT), and C5.6 (0534UT). Both regions 1596 and 1598 maintain potential for further isolated M-class to X-class activity.
Solar wind speed is expected to increase slightly days one and two under the influence of a coronal hole wind stream. NASA and NOAA has issued a WARNING for high flying aircraft, the ISS, NSSO and NSTAC due to an increased possibility of satellite deep dielectric discharge.
In a flux of high energy charged particles, they penetrate the spacecraft or satellite’s outer surface and bury themselves in dielectric materials such as circuit boards and the insulation in coaxial cables. The buildup of charge will continue until the dielectric strength of the material is exceeded, when a sudden electrical discharge will occur. This miniature lightning stroke can cause permanent damage in the associated or nearby circuitry.
Watch for increased extreme weather events which include earthquake, volcano, tornado, and cyclone activity over the next 48 to 72 hours.
A gray, 2-inch rock that hit a Novato home is the first confirmed chunk of the meteor that dramatically exploded over the Bay Area, a scientist said Sunday. Lisa Webber, 61, found the meteorite in her yard on Saturday, three days after the object fell onto the roof of her home on St. Francis Avenue. She had heard a strange sound at the time but didn’t think twice about it until she read a Chronicle story saying debris from the meteor would be found in a band stretching east of San Rafael toward Napa and Sonoma. Some have marveled at the potential cosmic significance of the fact that it hit a home belonging to a man of the cloth – Webber’s husband, Kent Webber, is pastor at Presbyterian Church of Novato. The space rock, in fact, had first hit the roof of his study, she said. “It’s just science – and it’s cool,” said Lisa Webber, an administrative nurse at UCSF Medical Center. “It’s wonderful. It’s like the heavens coming down, and history and this thing probably came from an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – I mean, how cool is that?” Peter Jenniskens, a leading meteor hunter at the Seti Institute in Mountain View, confirmed that the space rock was indeed debris from the meteor that streaked over the sky Wednesday night.”The significance of this find is that we can now hope to use our fireball trajectory to trace this type of meteorite back to its origins in the asteroid belt,” Jenniskens wrote on his group’s website. At the time the object hit her roof, Webber thought the sound she heard had come from an animal that was rummaging on her property. She checked the roof, found nothing, and quickly forgot about it until she read The Chronicle on Friday night. That’s when she went searching through the yard and found a rock. She summoned her neighbor’s son, the two put a magnet to the object, and they stuck together. On Saturday, neighbor Luis Rivera climbed onto the roof and found an indentation left by the meteorite. “The surprising thing about it all is that it’s something from the orbit between Mars and Jupiter, and it ended up in Novato,” Rivera said. “And when Lisa was relating all of this to me, it took a while to sink in as to the odds of this happening.”
Russia could start building a space rocket capable of destroying asteroids threatening the Earth, chief of rocket and space corporation Energia said Friday.
“There are three large asteroids, including Apophis, whose orbits cross the Earth’s orbit and which could hit the Earth in the next several decades,” Vitaly Lopota told the state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
To change the orbit of a small planet of Apophis’ size, a 70-ton rocket was needed to “tow” an asteroid away from Earth or to destroy it with a thermonuclear blast, Lopota said.
Apophis was discovered in 2004. It will approach the Earth dangerously close, at about 30,000 km, which is less than one-tenth of the Moon’s distance from Earth, in 2029.
Experts calculate impact of a collision between Apophis and the Earth will be equal to a 1,700-Megaton explosion.
Lopota said existing Russian rocket carriers with RD-171 engines could be redesigned to produce a rocket capable of destroying an asteroid. Energia was ready to build such a rocket within three to five years, he said.
Currently, RD-171 engines made by NPO Energomash have been used on Zenit-3SL missiles employed in the Russia-Ukraine-Norway-U.S. joint project Sea Launch.
“We call them Tsar Engines, which no other country possesses,” Lopota said, referring to Russian artifacts, the Tsar Cannon and Tsar Bell, which were the world’s largest in their time.
by Francis Reddy for Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt MD (SPX)
This plot shows the fractions of settled disk galaxies in four time spans, each about 3 billion years long. (full size chart) There is a steady shift toward higher percentages of settled galaxies closer to the present time. At any given time, the most massive galaxies are the most settled. More distant and less massive galaxies on average exhibit more disorganized internal motions, with gas moving in multiple directions, and slower rotation speeds. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
A comprehensive study of hundreds of galaxies observed by the Keck telescopes in Hawaii and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has revealed an unexpected pattern of change that extends back 8 billion years, or more than half the age of the universe.
“Astronomers thought disk galaxies in the nearby universe had settled into their present form by about 8 billion years ago, with little additional development since,” said Susan Kassin, an astronomer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the study’s lead researcher. “The trend we’ve observed instead shows the opposite, that galaxies were steadily changing over this time period.”
Today, star-forming galaxies take the form of orderly disk-shaped systems, such as the Andromeda Galaxy or the Milky Way, where rotation dominates over other internal motions. The most distant blue galaxies in the study tend to be very different, exhibiting disorganized motions in multiple directions. There is a steady shift toward greater organization to the present time as the disorganized motions dissipate and rotation speeds increase. These galaxies are gradually settling into well-behaved disks.
Blue galaxies – their color indicates stars are forming within them – show less disorganized motions and ever-faster rotation speeds the closer they are observed to the present. This trend holds true for galaxies of all masses, but the most massive systems always show the highest level of organization.
Researchers say the distant blue galaxies they studied are gradually transforming into rotating disk galaxies like our own Milky Way.
“Previous studies removed galaxies that did not look like the well-ordered rotating disks now common in the universe today,” said co-author Benjamin Weiner, an astronomer at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “By neglecting them, these studies examined only those rare galaxies in the distant universe that are well-behaved and concluded that galaxies didn’t change.”
Rather than limit their sample to certain galaxy types, the researchers instead looked at all galaxies with emission lines bright enough to be used for determining internal motions. Emission lines are the discrete wavelengths of radiation characteristically emitted by the gas within a galaxy. They are revealed when a galaxy’s light is separated into its component colors. These emission lines also carry information about the galaxy’s internal motions and distance.
The team studied a sample of 544 blue galaxies from the Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe 2 (DEEP2) Redshift Survey, a project that employs Hubble and the twin 10-meter telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Located between 2 billion and 8 billion light-years away, the galaxies have stellar masses ranging from about 0.3 percent to 100 percent of the mass of our home galaxy.
A paper describing these findings will be published Oct. 20 in The Astrophysical Journal.
The Milky Way galaxy must have gone through the same rough-and-tumble evolution as the galaxies in the DEEP2 sample, and gradually settled into its present state as the sun and solar system were being formed.
In the past 8 billion years, the number of mergers between galaxies large and small has decreased sharply. So has the overall rate of star formation and disruptions of supernova explosions associated with star formation. Scientists speculate these factors may play a role in creating the evolutionary trend they observe.
Now that astronomers see this pattern, they can adjust computer simulations of galaxy evolution until these models are able to replicate the observed trend. This will guide scientists to the physical processes most responsible for it.
The DEEP2 survey is led by Lick Observatory at the University of California at Santa Cruz in collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., the University of Chicago and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. in Washington.
A bright fireball, reportedly with hues of red and orange, streaked across the night sky visible from San Francisco’s Bay Area on Wednesday, October 18, around 8 p.m. local time (3UTC on October 18). Many say they heard a boom, which was so loud it “shook their homes,” some residents said, making them think it may be an earthquake.
Wes Jones in Belmont, California caught the meteor disappearing behind the trees while using a wide-field camera. Image copyright Wes Jones. Used with permission.
Belmont, California astronomer Wes Jones captured the fireball as it sailed across the sky on October 17, just as it was entering the trees.
Here is the capture data for the Wes Jones’ image above:
Camera: Interactiveastronomy Skyeye Camera
Camera Location: 122°16’31.73″ W, 37°31’1.17″ N
Altitude: 17 Meters
Exposure Duration: 30 seconds
File Write Time: 07:44:44 PM PDT 10/17/2012
The video above is raw footage from the security camera at Lick Observatory, located in the hills above San Jose, California. Camera is a little out of focus. Round structure to the left is the 40-inch Nickel refracting telescope dome. Lights in the background are the San Jose cityscape. Video posted to YouTube by Erik Kovacs.
Screen grab from Google maps (not clickable) of area where October 17, 2012 meteorite might have fallen. One expert said it might have come down in the hills north of Martinez, California. If so, he said, hikers might be able to find pieces of the meteorite.
Jonathan Braidman, astronomy instructor at Oakland’s Chabot Space and Science Center, told SuiSunCityPatch.com that the meteor may have been “roughly the size of a car when it broke up over the Bay Area.” He said hikers might be able to find small pieces of the meteorite in the hills north of Martinez, California.
Was the October 17, 2012 meteor seen over the Bay Area associated with the Orionid meteor shower? If it were associated, it would have to have radiated from the same point in the sky as the Orionids. That point is in the the same famous constellation Orion the Hunter, shown here. Can anyone who saw the October 17 meteor tell us if it radiated from this constellation? More about this weekend’s Orionid meteor shower here.
Is the October 17, 2012 meteor associated with the Orionid meteor shower? That shower is coming up this weekend. Although I didn’t see it, and don’t know if its path could be traced back to the constellation Orion – which is the radiant point for all meteors in the Orionid shower – the answer is likely that the two are not associated. Meteors in annual showers are tiny, icy bits left behind by comets orbiting the sun. The Orionids, in particular, come from one of the most famous comets, Comet Halley, which last visited Earth in 1986. The meteor seen over the Bay Area on October 17, 2012 was more likely a larger, rocky meteor, just a random chunk of space debris that entered Earth’s atmosphere and vaporized due to friction with the air.
The October 17, 2012 meteor sighting is reminiscent of another meteor sighting earlier this year, when – on the morning of April 22, 2012 – many in Nevada and California saw a bright flash across the sky, and heard an audible boom, or explosion. The object was later called “a small asteroid” whose estimated weight was some 70 metric tons.
Wikimedia Commons image of a bollide or fireball – a piece of space debris entering Earth’s atmosphere and causing a particularly bright streak across the sky.
Astronomers use the word bolide to describe an exceptionally bright fireball such as this one. The term bolide – which comes the Greek word bolis, meaning a missile or to flash – is particularly applicable when the object is so bright it can be seen in broad daylight, when the object explodes in the atmosphere and when it creates audible sounds. In other words, all of these phenomena are known to occur, and astronomers even have a word for it.
Bright meteors or bollides were also seen in the U.K. and New Zealand in 2012. They are not uncommon, if you are considering the entire globe.
However, from any one spot on Earth, they are uncommon, Among astronomers, it’s sometimes said you might witness one bolide, or very bright fireball, in your lifetime. So if you saw this one, this was yours!
Bottom line: Many in San Francisco’s Bay Area saw an exceptionally bright meteor, and heard a loud boom, on the night of October 17, 2012. Photo and video in this post, plus information on the Orionid meteor shower, which peaks on the morning of October 21.
Concentrations of red tide have been detected from Charlotte County to Collier County. Hundreds of dead fish are washing ashore and a foul odor now fills the air at many beaches throughout Southwest Florida. Many residents and visitors are hoping that red tide is on its way out of town, but at Wiggins Pass State Park in Collier County, things aren’t looking too great. Thousands of dead fish remain in sight. But beachgoers we spoke with said they aren’t letting the toxic algae ruin their fun. “This is the first time I’ve seen this,” said Karl Udo, who has been visiting Southwest Florida from Germany for over 20 years. “It’s no good.” The toxic algae started to wash through Collier County beaches just last week, carrying with it the unpleasant stench. “You got to breathe through your mouth. So don’t take deep breaths through your nose,” said Liz Koch, who is visiting from Chicago. The latest tests done by county officials show that red tide is at medium levels throughout some of Collier’s beaches. The toxin can cause respiratory irritation, a concern for county officials with tourist season in sight.
Crews working on an old Air Force fuel spill have found potentially cancer-causing chemicals beneath a southeast Albuquerque neighborhood, Kirtland Air Force Base announced. The New Mexico Environment Department said Friday that Air Force crews found the pollutant Perchloroethylene, or PCE, in water around 500 feet underground while installing test wells. However, officials say they don’t believe the recently discovered pollutant is connected to a decades-old Kirtland Air Force Base jet fuel spill threatening Albuquerque’s water supply that could be as large as 24 million gallons. Davis tsaid that the chemicals likely came from a dry cleaner. Jim Davis, head of New Mexico Environment Department Resource Protection, told reporters that the chemical is threatening groundwater and not residents in the neighborhood above the contamination. Still, the discovery could trigger action under the federal Superfund law, a program aimed at the nation’s most serious hazardous chemical contamination problems. New Mexico Environment Department Secretary David Martin praised crews for making the discovery.The department has launched a probe to see if any businesses that used PCE were located in the vicinity of the well clusters in the past. The Air Force is two years away from finalizing a cleanup plan in connection with a toxin-laden plume from a 40-year underground pipe leak was discovered at Kirtland Air Force Base. The spill was first discovered in 1999 when the Air Force noticed a pool of fuel coming up out of the ground at its old aircraft fuel storage center, which dates back to the 1950s. Air Force officials say the fuel was leaking from an underground pipe for at least 40 years as tests on elements in the plume — which contains the cancer-causing Benzyne and other harmful toxins — show it dates back to at least the 1970s. Less than half a million gallons have been pumped out of the ground.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes ‘FAIR USE’ of any such copyrighted material.]
Muscat: Two back-to-back earthquakes were recorded closer to Oman by the Earthquake Monitoring Centre at Sultan Qaboos University in the last 24 hours but there were no reports of damage to property or loss of life.
While an earthquake measuring 4.8-magnitude was reported in the Arabian Gulf around midnight, the other was reported from southern Iran with 4.2-magnitude on Tuesday evening.
Speaking to Times of Oman, Dr Issa Al Hussain, director, Earthquake Monitoring Centre, Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), said that they record around 150 earthquakes from all over the globe every month.
“Locally we record around four to five quakes every month but most of them are weak and its epicenter is far away from Oman,- he said. But given Oman’s close vicinity to where the Arabian plates meet the Eurasian plates, how much risk does it pose to the Sultanate?
Earthquake potential
Dr Hussain said places like Khasab and Musandam in northern Oman have earthquake potential as the Arabian plates meet the Eurasian plates. “But we have to remember that Oman lies in the low risk zone so there is little chance of earthquake,- he added.
Though having a little chance, tsunami did hit the Sultanate on November 27, 1945, following an earthquake situated offshore Pakistan. “That time the epicentre of the earthquake was Makran region where we recorded 8.1-magnititude,- he said.
Another expert said that the southern part of Oman is also at risk from tsunamis generated offshore in Indonesia.
“However, the wave height there is not likely to be very high as demonstrated following the earthquake in 2004, when the tsunami reached only 3m in Oman,- another expert said.
The social media has been abuzz since last night with many concerned residents taking to Twitter and Facebook to confirm if indeed there was an earthquake that had things rattling in their wake.
However, Hussain denied reports about mild tremors that residents of Oman reportedly said they had felt. “While one of them was 542km away from Muscat, the other was 671km away from Muscat so it is not possible that it affected the Oman residents,- he added.
Through a network of 21 seismic stations at various locations across the Sultanate, the Earthquake Monitoring Centre is capable of registering and measuring shock-waves of all sizes.
(Follow timesofoman.com on Facebook and on Twitter for updates that you can share with your friends.)
Increased seismic activity was detected in Mýrdalsjökull glacier in south Iceland, under which the volcano Katla lies, last night. Twenty-six minor earthquakes were picked up by sensors, all of which had their epicenter within the Katla crater.
Mýrdalsjökull. Photo: Páll Stefánsson.
A seismic activity expert on watch at the Icelandic Meteorological Office informed ruv.is that the earthquake swarm had started at 1 am and continued through 5 am.
However, there is no reason to be concerned about an imminent volcanic eruption or glacial outburst in Katla. The earthquakes were all shallow and originated in seismic activity in the geothermal system.
Click here to read about another recent earthquake swarm in Katla.
PUEBLO CO
LAS VEGAS NV
FLAGSTAFF AZ
ELKO NV
RIVERTON WY
DENVER CO
GRAND JUNCTION CO
CHEYENNE WY
SALT LAKE CITY UT
…………………………………….
Fires, Smoke in Central Russia
Russia has declared a state of emergency in several eastern regions due to hundreds of wildfires. NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of fires and smoke in north central Russia on June 15, 2012, at 05:50 UTC (1:50 a.m. EDT) The red spots are where the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard the Terra satellite detected heat signatures. Dry conditions, agricultural burning, lightning and human involvement have contributed to many wildfires across Siberia over the last few weeks.
ST. PAUL, Minn. – Gov. Mark Dayton has declared a state of emergency and authorized the National Guard to help Duluth cope with its flood damage.
The governor issued the executive order Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after promising Duluth Mayor Don Ness that the state would provide all possible assistance.
Dayton plans to travel to Duluth on Thursday morning to discuss further how the state can help.
Dayton also asks people who live in or were planning to travel in the Duluth area to follow the requests of local authorities to stay off of affected roads and highways so emergency crews can do their work.
In Carlton, several residents have been evacuated. Some residents in Thomson Township in Carlton County were urged to leave after the Thompson Reservoir overflowed. Residents of Duluth’s Fond du Lac neighborhood had also urged to evacuate.
Emergency services volunteers were forced to abandon their vehicle this morning after it became trapped in a flooded ditch in Koo Wee Rup. The State Emergency Service utility was door-knocking residents in the inundated town southeast of Melbourne when it ran into the deep ditch, leaving the nose of the vehicle submerged. There are reports the deluge has risen to about half a metre along Boundary Drain Road, one of the worst hit streets in the flood-ravaged town. SES spokeswoman Dimity York said volunteers were specially trained and all vehicles were fitted with funnels, nevertheless it demonstrated the perils of driving through floodwaters. “It’s further reinforcement that if specially trained personnel can get into that situation then no one should ever drive through floodwater,” Ms York said. She said emergency services would have to wait until floodwaters receded until they could retrieve the stricken vehicle. Meanwhile, Melbourne Water engineers were struggling to fix a broken levee gate which allowed flooding to billow over the town’s boundary drain, intensifying flooding in the area. SES spokesman Toby Borella said a combination of high tides and floodwaters surged through the open gate, causing the channel to overflow and spill onto William Street. Mr Borella said the pressure floodwaters were putting on the gate meant engineers were finding it difficult to close.
He said they didn’t know why the gate had failed. At comes as at least 30 homes have been evacuated in Koo Wee Rup as parts of Gippsland succumbed to flooding overnight. State Emergency Service spokesman Lachlan Quick said emergency services began door-knocking early this morning after torrential rain threatened properties. He said further evacuations could be expected throughout the day, with the downpour not expected to ease until later tonight. “With any luck we can see it (the water level) drop today, (but) we never expect it to ease that quickly. We have to be prepared for the worst,” Mr Quick said. Despite concerns, he said only a handful of properties had so far been inundated. Police warned a number of arterial roads in the area bounded by Longwarry Rd, Bridge Rd, the Westernport Highway, South Gippsland Highway and Koo Wee Rup Rd were affected by flooding. So far, the South Gippsland Highway north of Lang Lang, near the intersection of McDonalds Track has been closed. The Bass Highway at Wonthaggi is closed. Inverloch-Kongwak Road at Kongwak as well as Outtrim-Inverloch Rd at Outtrim are closed.
A small equipment fire that lasted for about 17 minutes today caused the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station to reduce its plant power to 62 percent and declare an “unusual event.” The fire was discovered at 2:51 p.m. on one of the plant’s three feedwater pumps, said Jill Lyon, speaking for Constellation Energy Nuclear Group. The plant’s onsite trained personnel extinguished the fire by 3:08 p.m., she said. The “unusual event” was declared at 3:05 p.m. when it was apparent the fire would last more than 15 minutes. The fire was extinguished at 3:08 p.m. and the “unusual event” was declared over at 4 p.m., Lyon said. No personnel were injured and no workers were evacuated, Lyon said. The plant will continue operating at 62 percent while inspectors investigate the cause of the fire, she said. At the lower power level, one pump can maintain reactor water level, she said. An “unusual event” is the lowest level of four emergency classification levels for a nuclear plant. Because of the federal regulations, any event out of the ordinary is reported to federal, state and local authorities. By definition, the event poses no risk to the public or to plant employees, she said. The top three classifications are: “general emergency,” “site area emergency” and “alert,” she said.
disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
U.S. researchers say microscopic mechanical devices that withstand intense radiation and heat can be used in robots dealing with damaged nuclear power plants.
Such devices can withstand high amounts of radiation that can quickly fry silicon-based electronic circuits, University of Utah engineers reported Tuesday.
Such electronic circuits were in robots sent to help contain the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after Japan’s catastrophic 2011 earthquake and tsunami, they said.
“Robots were sent to control the troubled reactors, and they ceased to operate after a few hours because their electronics failed,” Utah researcher Massood Tabib-Azar said.
Tabib-Azar and his colleagues have been working on mechanical substitutes for such electronics and showed their devices, known as micro-electro-mechanical systems, kept working despite intense ionizing radiation and heat by dipping them for two hours into the core of the University of Utah’s research reactor.
“We have developed a unique technology that keeps on working in the presence of ionizing radiation to provide computation power for critical defense infrastructures,” Tabib-Azar said. “Our devices also can be used in deep space applications in the presence of cosmic ionizing radiation, and can help robotics to control troubled nuclear reactors without degradation.”
MessageToEagle.com – As our Sun goes through its 11-year cycle that is due to peak in 2013 or 2014, scientists worry about dangerous solar flares that could practically wipe out a lot of our electronic civilization.
There has also been concern in what way our Suns’ abnormal behavior can effect human health.
Some scientists say there is actually a correlation between the rise and fall of solar activity and the human consciousness
Professor Raymond Wheeler of the University of Kansas has come to the same conclusions that Russian scientist Alexander Chizhevsky discovered in 1915, namely that solar storms directly cause conflict, wars and even death among humans on Earth.
In the 1930’s Wheeler began a lifetime study that analyzed world climate and cultural activities back to the dawn of recorded civilization. He presented his research in his book, Climate: The Key To Understanding Business Cycles.
There is no doubt according to Wheeler that weather does affect us.
Wheeler’s studies show studies that there exists a most important 100-year-cycle of climatic changes that influences human affairs in a profound manner.
The cycle occurs in four distinct phases, which are descriptive of worldwide conditions rather than specific areas.
The four phases are disturbed by secondary leads and delays — as much as 10 years — in isolated and widely separated areas.Prof. Wheeler stated: “The climatic curve is intended to represent — as far as one curve can — the weather trend in the world as a whole at any one time.
The curve has no absolute significance. The meaning of the curve at any one time is relative to the pattern of the 100-year old cycle as a whole.”The 100-year weather cycle and its phases are not of precisely equal duration. The cycle can contract to 70 years or expand to 120.
The cycle is divided into a warm and a cold phase, each of which has a wet and dry period.
Because people are affected by weather, the cycles of weather produce similar patterns of behavior and events in history during the same phases of the century-long weather cycle. The phases are: (1) Cold-Dry, (2) Warm-Wet, (3) Warm-Dry, and (4) Cold-Wet.
We are now in a cold-dry phase, which will prevail until about 2000 A.D.
Our Sun affects our mental and physical health. The Sun’s activity as it interacts with the Earths magnetic field, effects extensive changes in human beings perspectives, moods, emotions and behavioral patterns.
Solar flares affect human health, scientists say. Image credit: SDO
During solar minimums and maximums the geomagnetic fields begin to intensify. The magnetic fields interact with human electrochemically within the brain. It affects psychological mechanisms creating anomalous hormonal swings and significantly mutated brain-wave activity.
Wheeler expanded on Chishevsky’s work by studying violence during 1913; measuring the time between battles and severity. These findings were compared with the suns 11 year sunspot cycle.
The results showed that as the sun cycle peaked, there was a rise in human unrest, uprisings, rebellions, revolutions, and wars between nations. As the magnetic fields intensified, the reaction within the human brain was a mixture of deadly emotional tantrums and unadulterated killing sprees.
As Wheeler further compared his findings with human history, he found a startling pattern that could be traced back 2,500 years.
In solar cycle 22, at the sun’s maximum we experienced Iraq invading Kuwait and the US entering the first battle against Saddam Hussein.
Just eleven years later, as the sun became active again, 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ensued.
In the latter half of 2010, the sun reached another peak that affected the Earth’s magnetic field; we witnessed dissent in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen.
Those global uprisings spread to Syria, Libya, Iran and China as riots continued across the European landscape.
This civil unrest has now reached its influence across the modernized world and even into Middle Eastern countries, Africa and Asia.
It is projected, based on Wheeler’s research, as the sun’s activity increases, so will the violence on Earth.
We are now entering the 24th solar cycle.
A surge in solar activity by 50 times more than previously recorded is anticipated. NASA and other space agencies have been warning of this fact.
Through 2011 and onto 2012, the X-flares are expected to endure toward their maximum. As this incredible activity is being witnessed, we are assured that more wars, toppling countries and populations will be displaced.
In 2012 we are seeing these events coming to pass; with only more intensification to come.
In what way will Earth be affected during this solar peak?
Wheeler’s predecessor was a man named Dr. Robert Becker. Becker was an author, expert in biological electricity and a Professor with State University.
In 1963, Becker, along with his colleague, Dr. Freedman, discovered that there was a marked correlation between solar activity and psychotic outbreaks of mass insanity on Earth.
Becker and Freedman made their most dire predictions of incredible violence to culminate in the years 2012 and 2013.
So far, history has proven them correct.
There obviously appears to be connection between solar activity and psychotic outbreaks of mass insanity on Earth. The world is not ending, but there might be some rough times ahead according to these scientists.
MessageToEagle.com – The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new view of the dwarf galaxy UGC 5497, which looks a bit like salt sprinkled on black velvet in the image.
The object is a compact blue dwarf galaxy that is infused with newly formed clusters of stars.
The bright, blue stars that arise in these clusters help to give the galaxy an overall bluish appearance that lasts for several million years until these fast-burning stars explode as supernovae.
UGC 5497 is considered part of the M 81 group of galaxies, which is located about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major (The Great Bear).
UGC 5497 turned up in a ground-based telescope survey back in 2008 looking for new dwarf galaxy candidates associated with Messier 81.
According to the leading cosmological theory of galaxy formation, called Lambda Cold Dark Matter, there should be far more satellite dwarf galaxies associated with big galaxies like the Milky Way and Messier 81 than are currently known.
Finding previously overlooked objects such as this one has helped cut into the expected tally — but only by a small amount.
Astrophysicists therefore remain puzzled over the so-called “missing satellite” problem.
Dwarf galaxy UGC 5497. Credit: ESA/NASA
The field of view in this image, which is a combination of visible and infrared exposures from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, is approximately 3.4 by 3.4 arcminutes.
Jefferson County Public Health has confirmed that a squirrel from the Idledale area has tested positive for bubonic plague. Plague is a highly infectious bacterial disease carried by various types of wild rodents and is transmitted primarily by flea bites. Squirrels, rodents, prairie dogs and other mammals, such as rabbits and cats are susceptible to plague because they carry fleas. “The risk of residents contracting plague is extremely low,” said Jefferson County Public Health Director Dr. Mark Johnson. “We want people to be aware that summer marks the beginning of the plague season, and just a few simple precautions will further reduce that risk. The best way to prevent plague is to control the presence of rodents and fleas in and around the home. In addition, people should avoid contact with any species of wild rodents, especially sick or dead rodents. If a dead rodent is found, do not handle the animal directly, use gloves and place it in a plastic bag. Dogs and cats should be confined so they cannot prey on infected rodents and then bring the disease home with them. Pet owners who live close to rodent populations should use flea-control products recommended by their veterinarian. Controlling fleas on pets will prevent the transfer of fleas to humans. If these precautions are taken, the probability of contracting plague is extremely low. Anyone experiencing these symptoms should consult a physician immediately: sudden onset of high fever; muscle pain; malaise, or a general feeling of being ill; nausea; and vomiting. Jefferson County Public Health will continue its plague surveillance of rodent populations in the county.
Biohazard name:
Bubonic Plague
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
http://sheilaaliens.net/?p=869 // 2ND UPDATE – Meteor starts C.O. Wildfire?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPr7vKcaNM // “Wednesday the crews of two commercial aircraft flying over Liberal, Kan., reported what appeared to be a meteorite at 1:47 p.m. Central Daylight Time, or 12:47 p.m. Mountain time. He said the Colorado sighting occurred at about the same time.”
“The American Meteor Society has received 18 reports so far of a bright daylight fireball over Colorado & New Mexico. Eight of the eighteen reports are from Colorado Springs. This event occurred sometime from 12:35 to 12:40pm MDT Wednesday afternoon June 20th. Reports of many different colors have been received, with white and orange being most mentioned. The average brightness reported by witnesses varied quite a bit, ranging from brighter than the full moon to brighter than the sun.”
And this is just a personal report I received from a close friend, take it or leave it:
A friend of their’s was curious if a meteor shower was happening, because on the night of the 19th they saw three fireballs in a row.
Meteor showers and strange haze/dust? If I didn’t know any better, I’d be screaming about Nibiru/Wormwood 😉
It was a 90-degree afternoon, and the Garfield Park pool was packed. David Yates, 13, had just zipped down a slide and splashed into the water when he noticed a bad taste in his mouth – like bleach. At the same time – across a pool that features shallow wading areas, two large water slides and a children’s playhouse – others were making the same discovery. Mayhem ensued. Jamie Rahmany, in the baby pool with her son, noticed kids coughing around her. Patricia Tanner, a mother of three sitting just out of the pool, saw children vomiting. And Shari Patton, a mother with two children at the pool, smelled a sharp odor that was likened to ammonia, or chlorine. Patton yanked her kids out of the water and rushed them to a shower room for a rinse. Around her, swimmers were leaving the pool and grabbing shirts, towels, whatever they could to cover their faces and shield them from the smell. Pool staff quickly began giving the children water, with kids drinking from the same cups. The source of the chaos was what officials described as a toxically out-of-balance mixture of pool chemicals that were pumped into the water around 2 p.m. Thursday. The solution sickened scores and sent more than 80 people – most of them children – to four local hospitals. Most were treated and released within a couple of hours. Some were being kept Thursday evening for observation, but there was no indication that anyone had been seriously harmed. The emergency was serious enough that first responders initially referred to the scene as one of “mass casualties.” They set up a triage area. In addition to several ambulances, two IndyGo buses were brought in to take the victims to the hospitals. For a time, the city’s emergency room capacity was strained by the numbers. Mayor Greg Ballard stopped what he was doing to visit the scene on the city’s Southside.
Exactly how the noxious mixture came about wasn’t clear, according to Lt. Derrick Sayles of the Indianapolis Fire Department, because the pool’s operator was among those being treated. Sayles said the source seemed to be the improper use of a pool cleaning chemical called ACID Magic. Sayles said the machine that pumps chemicals into the pool had been shut down and restarted. As it was restarted, the combination of ACID Magic, sodium and water flowing into the pool was wrong. Dr. James Mowry, director of the Indiana Poison Control Center at IU Health Methodist Hospital, which handled 45 of the Garfield pool patients, described the resulting mixture as a chlorine gas. In this case, the mixture was just strong enough to irritate eyes and lungs and induce vomiting. But in super-high concentrations — as with chemical weapons used during World War I — the gas can be lethal. How the misapplication of chemicals occurred will be investigated, Sayles said. The mayor said other city pools will be checked to ensure they aren’t susceptible to similar problems. The Indianapolis Star requested health inspection and maintenance reports on the Garfield Park pool from county and city officials Thursday but was told those records were not immediately unavailable. Garfield Park’s pool was closed for the rest of the day. It’s not known when it will reopen. Jen Pittman, the city’s marketing director, said the city will not provide refunds to pool visitors but will provide them with a complimentary pass for another day, once it does reopen.
David Yates, the 13-year-old who tasted the chemical after surfacing from his splash off the water slide, turned down care from emergency officials, even at the urging of his baby sitter. He left the Garfield Park pool with a reddened face, puffy eyes and irritation in his chest. When his mother, Heather Lightle, arrived home a couple of hours later, she found David with his eyes matted shut and a green substance oozing from the corners. She took him to the emergency room immediately. He was treated and released a few hours later. Lightle was angry that emergency responders at the scene didn’t force him to go to the emergency room. And she was angered by what happened with the chemicals at the pool.
A dozen fire fighting and hazardous materials teams were called to a Haifa plant Thursday morning to contain a chemical leak that could spill into the Haifa Bay. The leak was reported at the Carmel Olephin plant, which produces chemicals for use in plastic products, including polypropylene and polyethylene. According to Ynet, the chemicals in question were undergoing a reaction in their storage tank, which the teams were attempting to contain first by cooling and and then by diluting the material. Israel Radio reported that the leak started around 7 a.m. Haifa Bay is home to some of Israel’s largest chemical plants and is often cited as one of the country’s most polluted areas. Two weeks ago, a leak of acrylamide at Ben-Gurion International Airport, also used to make plastics, was discovered. One man was lightly injured in that incident.
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Mount Merapi erupting in 2010. (JG Photo/Boy T Harjanto).
weather.com
MessageToEagle.com – As our Sun goes through its 11-year cycle that is due to peak in 2013 or 2014, scientists worry about dangerous solar flares that could practically 
Solar flares affect human health, scientists say. Image credit: SDO
MessageToEagle.com – The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new view of the dwarf galaxy UGC 5497, which looks a bit like salt sprinkled on black velvet in the image.
Family Survival Protocol - Microcosm News 
