A further tornado outbreak yesterday has killed at least 210 people in Alabama, prompting President Barack Obama to sign a disaster declaration to assist the clean up of the aftermath of the twisters. Tornados have been ravaging the southern states of the USA for days now, and the death toll has risen to 300.
Tornadoes are just fascinating, aren’t they? So much force and destructive power wrapped up in a crazy cone of wind. In the last few days, the southern states of the USA have been hit by a spate of storms which have given birth to deadly tornadoes. Check out this video, captured by CCTV cameras from inside Lambert Airport, in St Louis.
Two Sunday World journalists reported on Sunday that they saw a church leader, and self-styled prophet, Paseka Motsoeneng, insert his fingers into the vaginas of two female congregants as part of a ritual he performed to expel the demons that had allegedly possessed their “biscuits”. The pastor also has a television show on Soweto TV on DSTV channel 150.
Obviously it’s not actually humorous to make fun of natural disasters, and that’s not what we’re doing here. Instead we’re laughing at the unique situation that Eric Hubbard landed up in, shall we say. So, go ahead and make of this fellow what you will. He is rather superbly animated with his storytelling execution.
In what is not your typical Chinese dog story, hundreds of dogs were spared from being served as the main course in restaurants in China last Friday. Activists managed to stage a 15-hour standoff in order to save them from the dinner table.
For the last week, the whole state of Texas has been battling enormous wildfires which have scorched a million acres of earth. The Texas Fire Service has had to rope in firefighters from 34 states to assist with managing the fires. All they can do is concentrate on putting out the big ones first.
The recession is serving up another good deal, friends. For about R5,4 million you can buy the historic village of Valle Piola in Italy. It’s surrounded by wild and mountainous terrain, and is set in the heart of one of the country’s biggest national parks, Gran Sasso.
South Africa’s third butterfly census will take place this week, and no, it’s not an initiative by hipster hippies. According to the Southern African Butterfly Conservation Assessment (SABCA), butterflies are a good indicator of the health of the ecosystem, and counting them can provide important information which can be related to land use practices, and even climate change.
Nature showed her claws again this weekend in the Western Cape, when Somerset West’s Straightway Head Hotel was ravaged by a veld fire along with 15 other houses on Saturday. Built in 1939, The Straightway Head was a well-known luxury establishment which many of your grandparents would have been familiar with, even if you weren’t.
That is correct, that grass might not be that green after all. A researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has revealed in a report entitled “Energy up in Smoke: The Carbon Footprint of Indoor Cannabis Production” that indoor growers account for approximately one percent of total US electricity use.
Microsoft has decided to have a real dig at the Google group by launching its own 3D mapping system. The unique selling point thus far – they will be taking numerous precautionary measures to ensure that they don’t fall into the data privacy trap like Google did.
A new levy for the mining industry is currently under consideration by Government. The purpose of the tax would be to finance the clean up of toxic acid water which rises and flows out of abandoned mines. Pollution from acid mine water is a major problem in Gauteng. Very unpleasant.
Golfers at Carbrook Golf Club in Queensland in Australia can certainly boast testing themselves against one of the sport’s scariest water hazards ever – a lake of Zambezi or Bull sharks. The “hazards” have apparently been around for some time but thankfully we now have a video for proof.
As reported in morning spice headlines this morning, Japan has decided to raise its assessment of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to the worst rating on an international scale: from a level five to a level seven, putting the disaster on par with the 1986 Chernobyl explosion in the former Soviet Union.
The University of Illinois, collaborating with the Equid Research and Conservation lab at Princeton, have put together software that can uniquely identify any striped, spotted or otherwise marked animal with a clear digital photo. Like a barcode!
Watch out for Japan in the next 100 years, because if this continual natural bombardment doesn’t galvanize a national stoicism, ingenuity and will to survive of epic proportions, then nothing will.
An overly tense Sam Jackson was not present on Saturday when over 600 snakes were discovered in the luggage compartment of a bus, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Engineers have used a flying drone to peer into the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Sunday. The drone has been used by the US military and reportedly weighs about 23kg and has the propensity to withstand winds of up to 20 knots.
Archaeologists have claimed they may well have found the oldest gay in the village. A 5 000 year old burial site and human remains are causing the stir and it’s got to do with the way the skeletal remains have been buried.
In case the message hasn’t already been made abundantly clear, South Africa needs to embrace new energy sources – and quickly. Eskom can’t foresee our (yes, it affects everyone) power supply problem improving for the next five years.
In what is quickly becoming a cosmic joke, the North East shore of Japan is expected to be struck by a tsunami in a matter of hours. An earthquake with a magnitude of 7,4 struck off the coast of Honshu, with local reporters in the North East of the country citing concern over an unusually strong aftershock.
I’m starting to think everything is awesome in Botswana! A leopard had been stalking a warthog, but when his prey disappeared into some particularly long grass he was forced to stretch himself to his full height like a meerkat on watch. Every few minutes the leopard would balance expertly on his hind legs to keep track of his tasty prey.
The video you are about to see is about a girl who wanted a horse, but her parents said no and bought her a cow instead. So she simply trained the cow to behave like a horse. And that is what Luna the cow was destined to be. You go girl! Has anyone in South Africa attempted this yet?
It seems this is a common problem that the US Naval Academy faces. Another midshipman was expelled from the force for using or having a banned weed-like substance known as “spice”. No spice. This brings the total number of expulsions to 12.
Two vegans who fed their 11 month old daughter only on her mother’s breast milk went on trial in northern France on Tuesday. They have been charged with neglect after their baby died as a result of suffering from vitamin deficiencies and could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
A report in The Star newspaper has revealed how a Teacher has had to resign because he was caught puffing on the old knowledge cabbage with a pupil. It’s no big secret that South African schools have had problems with drug use over the years, but this is an upper class school, so it was probably good stuff.
Recently, news came to light that fossil energy giant, Shell Petroleum, was moving towards engaging in launching an environmentally devastating drilling expedition in the Karoo. The drilling procedure, which is ostensibly a search for natural gas, is known as Fracking.
Human displacement aside, the floods in Pakistan have caused massive changes in the local ecology. With more than a fifith of Pakistan submerged, millions of spiders have escaped the rising waterline by moving into trees – quickly covering riverside treelines in cocoons of spiderweb. It’s creepy-looking.
The Tanzanian “miracle” pastor, Reverend Ambilikile “Babu” Mwasapile has called for a break. He has temporarily asked people to stop going to his remote home for a “miracle cure” after thousands flocked there, resulting in chaos in the surrounding area.
This doesn’t happen very often, but it is happening today. We need you to help Craig find his beloved parrot. Check out the missing flier. Craig says: He flew out the front door yesterday, and shit dude, I just gotta find him. My lady is not taking it too well cause he’s basically family. He’s […]