EU ministers scramble to deal with cucumber crisis
EU agricultural ministers Monday struggled to come to terms with a deadly bacteria outbreak suspected of stemming from contaminated cucumbers that has already killed 12 in Germany.
“One problem with Spanish cucumbers, and all of Europe is trembling,” Belgium’s minister Sabine Laruelle said on the sidelines of an informal meeting in Debrecen, eastern Hungary.
At least 12 people have died in Germany following an outbreak of enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) found on imported cucumbers.
And several hundred more are being treated in hospitals for the highly virulent strain of bacteria, which can result in full-blown haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), a disease that causes bloody diarrhoea and serious liver damage and which can result in death.
Around Europe, other cases — real or suspected — have been reported in Denmark, Sweden, Britain, the Netherlands, Austria, France and Switzerland, all of them apparently stemming from Germany.
Dutch agriculture minister Henk Bleker said Read more…
Amazing waterspout ‘tornado’ caught on camera off Australia
115 quakes recorded at Taal volcano in 24 hours
MANILA, Philippines— (UPDATE) Taal Volcano was rocked by 115 earthquakes in the past 24 hours, the highest number of tremors recorded in the area since the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology placed the restive volcano under Alert Level 2 last April.
It was the highest number in a day, a jump from the average of 10 mild quakes daily since alert level 2 (increasing restiveness) was hoisted over Taal on April 9, said Jaime Sincioco, officer-in-charge of the Volcano Monitoring and Eruption Prediction Division of Phivolcs, in a phone interview.
He said that in the series of the 115 volcanic quakes recorded up to 3 a.m. Monday, 12 were of intensity 1 to 4 and “were felt by the residents” on the volcano island.
The strongest quake, also since April 9, was felt at intensity 4 at around 1:05 a.m.
Phivolcs said residents around the volcano in Taal, Batangas heard rumbling Read more…
Some areas in China under martial law after protests
More of this story was published last week.
(CNN) — In an apparent response to days of protests, Chinese authorities have declared martial law in parts of the northeast’s inner Mongolia autonomous region, according to Amnesty International.
The region has long been the scene of ethnic tension between Mongolians, who have lived in the area for centuries, and the Han people, who arrived in larger numbers after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Han people are the majority ethnic group in China.
In the report released Friday, Amnesty International detailed protests in and around the city of Xilinhot.
CNN contacted officials in the affected areas, but they declined to comment.
According to the human rights organization, 2,000 Mongolian students took to the streets Wednesday in Xilinhot, in a show of solidarity with an ethnic Read more…
Possible Earthquake might be eminent SE-Illinois
Iran Vows To Unplug The Internet
The leadership in Iran sees the project as a way to end the fight for control of the Internet, according to observers of Iranian policy inside and outside the country. Iran, already among the most sophisticated nations in online censoring, also promotes its national Internet as a cost-saving measure for consumers and as a way to uphold Islamic moral codes.
In February, as pro-democracy protests spread rapidly across the Middle East and Read more…
Experts: Mega-Quakes Can Create Pole Shifts
Mega-thrust earthquakes like the ones that recently struck Chile and the Fukushima region of Northern Japan, can cause the magnetic field to flip. If a quake is strong enough there is evidence it may even set off a geological pole shift tossing the Earth off its current axis and killing billions of people within a matter of minutes.
This the grim picture painted by decades of research and evidence strewn from the peaks of the Andes to the volcanic shards lying off the Pacific islands of Hawaii.
Cities could be swept away in the blink of an eye
Enormous earthquakes cause enormous damage. The threat is real and growing, as world renown physicist and popular science author, Dr.Michio Kaku , recently explained on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
According to Dr. Kaku, some of the world’s most important and populated cities could be swept away in the blink of an eye. “In our life time, we could very well see one of these cities destroyed,” Kaku claimed. “Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mexico City, Tehran, and Tokyo.”
It is actually Mankind and not nature that has placed up to one billion people at risk. “We are creating mega cities where there used to be Read more…
U.S. running out of critical gas to detect smuggled nuclear weapons materials, report finds
Agencies’ Lack of Coordination Hindered Supply of Crucial Gas, Report Says
By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON — The United States is running out of a rare gas that is crucial for detecting smuggled nuclear weapons materials because one arm of the Energy Department was selling the gas six times as fast as another arm could accumulate it, and the two sides failed to communicate for years, according to a new Congressional audit.
The gas, helium-3, is a byproduct of the nuclear weapons program, but as the number of nuclear weapons has declined, so has the supply of the gas. Yet, as the supply was shrinking, the government was investing more than $200 million to develop detection technology that required helium-3.
As a result, government scientists and contractors are now racing to find or develop a Read more…
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