Georgia: Large Fish Kill Reported After Earthquake, ‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This’

By Jeffrey Allen – “So, maybe there were some local victims of Tuesday’s earthquake after all.

That’s a possibility Loganville resident Carl Wiessel can’t help but wonder about. Wiessel woke up Wednesday morning to find 60 or 70 dead fish floating in his pond. The small lake, located off Broadnax Mill Road and Lake Edmund Drive, is home to several different species of fish, including large catfish, smaller brim and crappie and largemouth bass. It was the bass that suffered the most, as nearly all the deceased fish were bass.

‘I’ve been taking care of this lake for 18 years,’ Wiessel said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’

Wiessel said he called the Environmental Protection Agency and they wouldn’t address an issue that was contained on private property, unless there was a problem upstream or downstream.

So he called the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife division. He was told the likely cause was a phenomenon known as ‘stratification.’ Typically, the warm water in a pond is near the surface, while the colder air is near the bottom. Stratification occurs when these temperatures suddenly invert for a brief time. This causes an abrupt drop in oxygen near the bottom, causing the fish there to effectively suffocate. Hardier species such as catfish will be less affected as the large bass that prefer the cooler waters near the pond bottom. Authorities say it is a more common occurrence than one might think.

Still, given the timing of the demise of his fish population being so soon after the earthquake, Wiessel isn’t so sure it’s a coincidence.” Read more.

Pakistan: Locust Swarm Several Miles Long Invades Karachi, Biggest Swarm in Years

“KARACHI: A huge locust swarm invaded the city yesterday shortly before 4pm. It came from the northwest and northeast directions. It was several miles long, and hovered over Karachi for at least two-and-a-half hours.

It was the biggest swarm that has invaded Karachi in recent years. It was spotted at about 3.50pm over Nazimabad and nearly 50 minutes later it was again seen, this time moving in the opposite direction. But after about an hour-and-a-half it was back over the city, and settled down on the greenery in various localities, including the PECHS, denuding many trees and plants in a matter of minutes.

Some of the locust that the children managed to catch were three inches long.

Warning of heavy breeding of locust had been issued by the Desert Locust Information Service sometime ago, which had said that breeding of locust in Pakistan and India had been going on for the last two months.

The locust had moved east from Saudi Arabia and other places in the Middle East, and had laid over extensive areas of Sind, Bahawalpur and Rajasthan. The hatching began towards the middle of the last month, and the legging about the middle of this month.” Read more.

Mosquitoes ‘Disappearing’ in Some Parts of Africa, Scientists Uncertain As To Why

I almost want to classify this in the Good News category …

By Matt McGrath – “Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are disappearing in some parts of Africa, but scientists are unsure as to why.

Figures indicate controls such as anti-mosquito bed nets are having a significant impact on the incidence of malaria in some sub-Saharan countries.

But in Malaria Journal, researchers say mosquitoes are also disappearing from areas with few controls.

They are uncertain if mosquitoes are being eradicated or whether they will return with renewed vigour.

Data from countries such as Tanzania, Eritrea, Rwanda, Kenya and Zambia all indicate that the incidence of malaria is dropping fast.

Researchers believe this is due to effective implementation of control programmes, especially the deployment of bed nets treated with insecticide.

But a team of Danish and Tanzanian scientists say this is not the whole story. For more than 10 years they have been collecting and counting the number of mosquitoes caught in thousands of traps in Tanzania.

In 2004 they caught over 5,000 insects. In 2009 that had dropped to just 14.

More importantly, these collections took place in villages that weren’t using bed nets.” Read more.

Teen Tied to ‘Jihad Jane’ Allegedly Plotted School Shooting, Dreamed About Doing Columbine-Style ‘Martyrdom Operations’

Here is an update to this story.  Do note, however, you’ll likely never see this high school mass murder plot by a radical Muslim get the same mainstream media attention that the non-Muslim high school mass murder plot received …

By John Shiffman – “The Maryland teenager secretly arrested by the FBI for allegedly conspiring with the woman from the Philadelphia suburbs known as Jihad Jane also spoke of a Columbine-style plot with a Pittsburgh-area friend in a jihadist chat room, according to sources and documents.

‘I had a lot of thoughts about you today,’ Mohammed K. wrote to his Western Pennsylvania pen pal late last year. ‘About us both doing martyrdom operations together in my school. . . . It was like we both were in a big truck and had guns and we were shooting randomly at a huge crowd of kids.’

The chats provide new insight into a boy who at age 15 allegedly began helping Colleen LaRose, aka ‘Jihad Jane,’ the 48-year-old Pennsburg woman who U.S. officials say represents a disturbing new face of homegrown terrorism.

Mohammed K. was 17 and a high school senior in Ellicott City, Md., when he allegedly wrote those threatening words. The Inquirer is not publishing his last name because he is a juvenile.

Mohammed’s chat room friend was Emerson Begolly, a Pennsylvania State University student who was soon charged with soliciting unrelated terror attacks.” Read more.