California: Earthquakes Are Increasing, But Scientists Aren’t Sure What It Means

Luke 21:10-11, “Then He said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven …’”

Romans 8:22, “For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.”

By Rong-Gong Lin II, LA Times – “No, it’s not your imagination: The Los Angeles area is feeling more earthquakes this year.

After a relatively quiet period of seismic activity in the Los Angeles area, the last five months have been marked by five earthquakes larger than 4.0. That hasn’t occurred since 1994, the year of the destructive Northridge earthquake that produced 53 such temblors.

Over the next two decades, there were some years that passed without a single quake 4.0 or greater.

Earthquake experts said 2014 is clearly a year of increased seismic activity, but they said it’s hard to know whether the recent string of quakes suggests that a larger one is on the way.

‘Probably this will be it, and there won’t be any more 4s. But the chance we will have a bigger earthquake this year is more than if we hadn’t had this cluster,’ U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones said. ‘Every earthquake makes another earthquake more likely.’

Quakes in the magnitude 4 range are large enough to be felt over wide areas but generally too small to cause much damage. The largest this year was a magnitude 5.1 in La Habra, which caused several million dollars in damage. Others hit Fontana and Rowland Heights.

But scientists are particularly intrigued by the other two quakes, which were centered along the 405 Freeway under the Santa Monica Mountains.

In addition to a 4.4 quake March 17 in Encino and Sunday’s 4.2 temblor a few miles away in Brentwood, 15 earthquakes between magnitude 1.0 and 2.5 hit between January and March in the Santa Monica Mountains near Wilacre Park.

The quakes show that seismic activity underneath the Santa Monica Mountains is increasing …” Read more.

Flashback: There Are Almost As Many Earthquakes Rattling Oklahoma As California This Year, ‘We Haven’t Seen This Before’ – “Mile for mile, there are almost as many earthquakes rattling Oklahoma as California this year. This major increase in seismic shaking led to a rare earthquake warning today (May 5) from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Oklahoma Geological Survey. In a joint statement, the agencies said the risk of a damaging earthquake— one larger than magnitude 5.0 — has significantly increased in central Oklahoma. Geologists don’t know when or where the state’s next big earthquake will strike, nor will they put a number on the increased risk.” Read more.

Iranian Government: Muslim Men Have The Right To Rape Unveiled Women

For peaceful purposes. And there are evidently some Muslim women who seem to agree, as was inferred here in a brief conversation I had recently with a woman from Indonesia. According to Iranian authorities, women’s hair releases mind-controlling sex rays. Their clothing causes devastating earthquakes. (And, if Islamic logic is to ever make any sense whatsoever, perhaps their nail polish is responsible for Iran’s lack of rain). Considering how hot-and-bothered the Iranian government has become since 1979’s Islamic Revolution over the appearance of women, we may have finally stumbled upon the real cause of global warming …

Recommended: Exposing The Qur’an: Allah Permits The Raping Of Apostate And Non-Muslim Women

Mohabat News – “Thousands of women in Iran have shared photos of themselves without the mandatory headscarf (I.e. hijab). The popular action has so far attracted more than 300 thousand users on Facebook and thousands of Twitter users tweeting under the hashtag #MyStealthyFreedom. The Facebook page was created by Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist living in exile in London, England.

Attempting to spread fear among Iranian civil society, *Tasnim, a state-run news agency in Iran controlled and operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), interviewed Hadi Sharifi, a ‘media activist’ (I.e. Regime propaganda activist), who attempted to send the message to campaign supporters: stop, or else.

In the interview Sharifi accused Alinejad of being associated with the CIA and explained that those who have ‘liked’ the campaign’s Facebook page did so to stay informed of the developments instead of being aligned or supportive of the cause. Sharifi said that if women feel it is their right to show off their beauty, or appear any which way they desire in society, or reveal their beauty to men, then they should also consider the right of men to enjoy women. He attempted to explain that because it is natural and instinctual for a man to be drawn to the beauty of a woman and seek sex with her, it is a man’s right to benefit from what he loves. Sharifi said that when a man forces himself onto a woman because she is ‘showing off her beauty’, this [should not] be considered rape.

Sharifi said since men have not granted women permission to show off their beauty, then men who become aroused by the “nakedness” of women do not need the permission of women to pursue their sexual urges.

*The current owner of Tasnim was the former editor in chief of Fars News Agency, a state-run media agency operated and controlled by the IRGC.” Source – Mohabat News.

Flashback: Iran: Uncovered Female Hair Releases Mind-Controlling ‘Sex Rays’ – “An annual test of wills between Iran’s morality police and women who dress in ways that are deemed unacceptable has begun in cities across the Islamic republic… Iran’s sex cops have this weird belief that uncovered hair releases ‘sex rays’ that drive men wild. One of the strange beliefs of the Islamic religious bigots is that men are not responsible for their conduct when it comes to an impulse to make a sexual assault.” Read more.

Flashback: Iran’s ‘Morality Police’ Ready To Tackle The Growing Problem … Of Nail Polish – “Some 70,000 female police officers will be on the lookout for women dressed inappropriately on the streets of Iran in the rising summer heat, daily Vatan reported. Female police officers will be responsible for detecting and warning women who fail to dress in line with the moral code of the Iranian authorities. Officers too will be dressed in black burqas, and will be instructing Iranian women on how to cover themselves the right way. Routine hand checks will also be conducted to prevent any use of nail polish.” Read more.

Flashback: Iranian Cleric: Women’s Clothing Causes Earthquakes – “A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes… ‘Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes,’ Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Women in the Islamic Republic are required by law to cover from head to toe, but many, especially the young, ignore some of the more strict codes and wear tight coats and scarves pulled back that show much of the hair.” Read more.

Earthquakes, Animals Fleeing Yellowstone Spark Fears Of Volcanic Eruption

Sounds like something out of an Roland Emmerich movie …

Potential Ashfall Of An Eruption

RT – “Videos of bison seemingly fleeing Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming have sparked concerns among some bloggers that recent seismic activity could trigger the eruption of the park’s so-called supervolcano.

According to Epoch Times, multiple videos of such incidents have been posted online recently, one of which shows a herd of buffalo allegedly leaving the park and ‘running for their lives.’ Although people behind the discussion acknowledge there’s no way to predict when the park’s massive volcano could erupt, they believe the reaction of the Yellowstone’s animals could signal some kind of alert.

On March 30, Yellowstone was struck by the most powerful earthquake it has experienced since 1980 – a 4.8 magnitude quake that did no damage, but that some believe could be connected to the various animals’ movements.

‘Whether I believe this, or whether I don’t believe the story or not, I don’t know. I can tell you this story I saw this morning about the buffaloes running the street … whether or not it’s because of any activity in Yellowstone or not, I don’t know,’ said blogger Jay Lee, according to the Times.

‘But I’ll tell you this, whatever the case may be, that their running away from Yellowstone is an alert of some sort.’

Another video uploaded to YouTube, this time by self-described ‘survivalist’ and ‘search-and-rescue expert’ Tom Lupshu, claims, ‘Biologists aren’t sure if there’s been a stunning decline in the herd or if other factors have skewed the tally.’ Lupshu also said that helium releases in the area are 1,000 times above normal levels, and accused the US Geological Survey of not reporting small quakes occurring near the volcano.

‘Herds of bison running for their lives on the public roadways and they were not being chased or rounded up, the bison were running down the mountain slopes onto roadways running right past a filming crew,’ he added. ‘They detect something vast and deadly. The Yellowstone Supervolcano is the only thing there that would fit the bill.’

The supervolcano – which was found last year to be 2.5 times larger than previously thought – has not erupted in over 640,000 years, leaving some to speculate that a blast is overdue. If and when it erupts again, the volcano could potentially spew ash over large swathes of North America and cause trouble around the entire planet.

‘It would be a global event,’ Jamie Farrell of the University of Utah told the Associated Press last year. ‘There would be a lot of destruction and a lot of impacts around the globe.'” Read more.

Flashback: Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano Due For An Eruption? – “If the volcano located under Yellowstone National Park were to erupt, there would be catastrophic consequences. Scientists claim that a trace of ash and soot would cover almost all of the United States. The volcanic material lifted into the sky would block out the sun for a period of time, causing a global temperature decrease. The ash, combined with lower temperatures, would kill most crops—leading to a nationwide food crisis. ” Read more.

Nevada: Officials Baffled After 100,000 Fish Die In Sparks Marina, ‘The Fishery Doesn’t Exist Anymore’

By Scott Sonner, Associated Press – “State wildlife officials are trying to figure out why all the fish have died in a northern Nevada marina where the stocked fishery has flourished since the man-made lake was created nearly 15 years ago.

As many as 100,000 trout, bass and catfish have died over the past month in the Sparks Marina along U.S. Interstate 80 east of Reno, apparently the result of a dramatic, unexplained drop in dissolved oxygen levels, Nevada Department of Wildlife spokesman Chris Healy said Wednesday.

Scientists say a bitter cold snap could have caused oxygen-poor waters to rise from the old rock quarry’s bottom to the surface, but they don’t understand what sparked the massive die-off.

Fish biologists confirmed low oxygen levels caused the death of an estimated 3,000 fish in one corner of the lake in mid-December but Healy said they thought at the time the event was localized and of limited impact. Since then, they’ve been unable to detect any live fish in the 77-acre lake. Numerous dead fish have been removed from the lake’s shoreline and Healy said it’s likely the rest sank to the bottom.

‘The 100,000 dead fish figure is something that is probably a pretty conservative guess,’ said Healy, who estimates they’ve stocked close to 1 million adult fish in the lake since they started in 1998.

‘We don’t know if any small fish have survived, but for all intents and purposes, the fishery doesn’t exist anymore,’ he told The Associated Press.

The Reno Gazette-Journal first reported scientists determined the problem was much more serious than they realized after a boat survey on Monday found dissolved oxygen levels far too low to support the fish at 11 different sampling locations. Readings from an electronic fish-finder also revealed no fish swimming in the lake’s depths.

Lakes like the marina consist of different layers of water temperatures, with the warmest water on top holding the highest oxygen content, Healy said. He said one theory is that the surface water may have chilled very quickly, sank toward the bottom of the lake and stirred up material on its floor, causing a ‘violent turnover’ that could have sucked up additional oxygen.

‘Everything is a theory right now,’ Healy said.” Read more.

‘Horrible’: 100,000 Bats Fall Dead From The Sky In Australia, Trees And Earth Littered With Dead Creatures

By Jonathan Pearlman, The Telegraph – “About 100,000 bats have fallen from the sky and died during a heatwave in Australia that has left the trees and earth littered with dead creatures.

In scenes likened to ‘an Alfred Hitchock thought bubble’, a heatwave across the north-east state of Queensland in recent days caused mass deaths of flying foxes from an estimated 25 colonies.

‘It’s a horrible, cruel way to die,’ a conservation worker, Louise Saunders, told The Courier Mail.

‘Anything over 43 degrees [Celsius, 109F] and they just fall. We’re just picking up those that are just not coping and are humanely euthanising what we can.’

Health experts have warned residents not to touch the dead creatures amid concerns about the spread of virus or bites and scratches from bats that may still be alive. At least 16 people have been are receiving antiviral treatment after coming into close contact with a bat.

‘If you find a bat it is very important not to touch it because of the risk of infection with Australian bat lyssavirus,’ the state’s chief health officer, Dr Jeannette Young, told APN.

‘Some bats may appear dead but they are not and when people have attempted to remove them they have been bitten or scratched. Bats also have a claw on their wings which is a frequent cause of injury.’

The stench from the rotting carcasses has begun to disturb residents of Brisbane and large towns.” Read more.

‘Apocalyptic-Size’ Hail Batters Eastern Australia

This happened this past Saturday. Fortunately, the hail wasn’t burning …

Officials: Death Toll After Historic Philippines Typhoon Could Reach 10,000 … In One City Alone

I hope they’re wrong …

Fox News – “Authorities expect a ‘very high number of fatalities’ after one of the strongest typhoons on record devastated central Philippines, cutting communications and severely damaging an airport in one of the hardest-hit regions.

A senior regional police official and a city administrator in the typhoon-ravaged Tacloban city in the central Philippines say the death toll there could reach 10,000 people, according to the Associated Press.

Regional police chief Elmer Soria said he was briefed by Leyte provincial Gov. Dominic Petilla on Saturday and told there were about 10,000 deaths on the island, mostly by drowning and from collapsed buildings.

Tacloban city administrator Tecson Lim said that the death toll in the city alone ‘could go up to 10,000.’

Earlier, the Philippine Red Cross told Reuters that based on reports it estimated at least 1,200 were dead in Tacloban, which is located about 360 miles southeast of Manila, and 200 more in Samar Province.

Interior Secretary Max Roxas arrived in Tacloban Saturday and said it was too early to know exactly how many people had died following Typhoon Haiyan, which was heading toward Vietnam and expected to hit the country’s coast Sunday afternoon.

‘The rescue operation is ongoing. We expect a very high number of fatalities as well as injured,’ Roxas said. ‘All systems, all vestiges of modern living – communications, power water, all are down. Media is down, so there is no way to communicate with the people in a mass sort of way.'” Read more.

One Of The Strongest Storms Ever Recorded Heads For Philippines, Significant Loss Of Life Expected

This is worse than Katrina’s big angry brother. Please keep the Philippine people in your thoughts and prayers …

By Jethro Mullen, CNN – “Thousands of people in vulnerable areas of the Philippines are being relocated as one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever observed spins toward the country.

With sustained winds of 315 kph (195 mph) and gusts as strong as 380 kph (235 mph), Super Typhoon Haiyan was churning across the Western Pacific toward the central Philippines.

Its wind strength makes it equivalent to an exceptionally strong Category 5 hurricane.

The storm, known as Yolanda in the Philippines, is expected to still be a super typhoon, with winds in excess of 240 kph (149 mph), when it makes landfall Friday morning in the region of Eastern Visayas.

The storm is so large in diameter that clouds from it are affecting two-thirds of the country.

Philippines braces for super typhoon

Authorities in the region had moved more than 3,800 people to evacuation centers by late Thursday, Maj. Reynaldo Balido of the Philippine Office of Civil Defense said.

Most of those relocated live in Tacloban City, which sits on the coast of the island of Leyte and has a population of more than 200,000.

In a speech Thursday, President Benigno S. Aquino III warned residents of the ‘calamity our countrymen will face in these coming days.'” Read more.

Harbingers Of Disaster? Rare ‘Sea Serpents’ Are Washing Ashore Southern California Beaches

CBS Los Angeles – “Could the appearance of rare ‘sea serpents’ washing ashore beaches in Southern California portend disaster?

The question comes following the discovery of the carcass of a rare 18-foot-long oarfish off the coast of Catalina Island on Oct. 13, followed by another snakelike 14-foot-long oarfish found on Oct. 18 in Oceanside.

Fishermen in Japan reported a sharp uptick in oarfish sightings in March 2010 following the massive magnitude-8.8 earthquake in Chile that same month, which marked almost exactly one year before the country was devastated by its own magnitude-8.9 quake in northeast Japan.

Oarfish, which can grow to more than 50 feet in length, are considered the longest bony fish in the world. They typically dive more than 3,000 feet deep, which makes sightings rare and has fueled various serpent legends throughout history.

According to traditional Japanese lore, oarfish rise to the water’s surface and beach themselves to warn of an impending earthquake, a notion that some scientists have speculated could be supported by the bottom-dwelling fish being more sensitive to seismic shifts.

Known as the ‘Messenger from the Sea God’s Palace,’ over a dozen ‘ryugu no tsukai,’ or slender oarfish, either washed ashore or were caught in fishing nets in the Ishikawa, Toyama, Kyoto, Shimane and Nagasaki prefectures near the quake’s epicenter months before the 2011 quake hit, according to several reports.” Read more.

‘Once-In-A-Decade Event’: Monster Typhoon Set To Pummel Fukushima, Japan

By Joe Kovacs, WND – “Packing heavy rains and winds up to 125 miles per hour, a monster typhoon called a ‘once-in-a-decade event’ by the Japan Meteorological Agency is on track to pummel the Tokyo area, home to the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

‘It is the strongest typhoon in 10 years to pass the Kanto region (Tokyo and its vicinity),’ Hiroyuki Uchida, the weather agency’s chief forecaster, told a news conference.

‘It is expected to have a great impact on the traffic systems in the metropolitan area during commuting hours,’ he said.

The storm is causing atomic concerns since the plant has seen a rash of radioactive water spills in recent months, trying to keep its melted reactor cores cool.

The Wall Street Journal says many are ‘worried about what will happen to the plant and the thousands of tons of radioactive water stored in tanks there.’

‘We are making preparations for proper management of contaminated water,’ said a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. ‘We will patrol places that could have inflows of water (from the storm).’

He indicated cables and hoses have been bundled together, while ground and offshore works have been stopped, as the brunt of the storm hits on Wednesday.

According to Agence France-Presse, the power company announced 114 gallons of polluted water had spilled from a tank as workers tried to remove rainwater dumped at the plant by recent typhoons.

‘It has admitted contaminated water may well have flowed into the sea,’ AFP reported. ‘Japan’s atomic watchdog summoned the president of TEPCO for a public dressing-down for sloppy standards at the plant after the incident. The nuclear plant was badly damaged by the tsunami that hit in March 2011. Critics say it remains in a fragile state and at the mercy of extreme weather or other natural hazards.'” Read more.

Flashback: Yale Professor: Fukushima Is ‘A World-Wide Disaster Of The Most Epic Proportions Just Waiting To Happen’ – “A Yale Professor is compelling the world to wake up from its nuclear slumber and face some cold-hard facts, ‘All of humanity will be threatened for thousands of years’ if the Fukushima Unit 4 pool can’t be kept cool. Your worries about eating cesium-contaminated fish from the Pacific Ocean are grounded in fact, but this is a world-wide disaster of the most epic proportions just waiting to happen.” Read more.

Flashback: From Horrible To Horrendous: You Won’t Believe What’s Going On At Fukushima Right Now – “Tepco Has No Idea How to Stabilize the Reactors You’ve heard bad news about Fukushima recently. But it’s worse than you know. The Wall Street Journal notes that radiation levels outside the plant are likely higher than inside the reactor … The reactors have lost containment, and experts have no idea where the nuclear cores are. And the problems which have been detected at ground-level are only the tip of the iceberg.” Read more.

Flashback: Expert: Fukushima Disaster 1,000 Times Worse Than IAEA Estimate – “Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer at Fairwinds Associates, has called the new estimate that the Japanese nuclear tragedy released 20-30 times the amount of cesium that has been reported. Calling this a ‘game changer,’ he has estimated 100,000 deaths more than widely released Fukushima data. ‘When there’s no liquid inside the containment, there’s no capture of the cesium. So whatever cesium was inside that containment was leaking out of the containment.” Read more.

‘They’re Dead Everywhere’: Catastrophic Storm Kills As Many As 100,000 Cows In South Dakota

Fox News – “Ranchers in South Dakota fear they may lose everything after a freak storm dumped up four feet of snow in parts of the state last week, killing as many as 100,000 cattle.

Matt Kammerer, a 45-year-old rancher whose family has operated in South Dakota’s Meade County since 1882, told FoxNews.com that he lost 60 cattle in the storm, or one-third of his entire herd.

‘You’re talking about $120,000 of assets that are just gone,’ Kammerer said Friday by phone. ‘And we still owe the banks, too. It’s like driving a brand-new pickup off a cliff and still having to make payments.’

Kammerer painted a gruesome scene north of Rapid City, where a record 23 inches of snow fell.

‘It’s just unreal,’ he said. ‘There are cattle that are 8 or 9 miles away from the pasture they were in, just lying dead. And within that whole stretch, it’s just dead cow after dead cow, where they’ve gotten caught in dams, streams, fences, you name it. They’re dead everywhere.’

Carcasses of mature cows as well as calves were floating downstream local waterways in droves, Kammerer said, stoking fears of a potential outbreak of disease.

‘If you don’t get those picked up and buried, you’re looking at the possibility of disease or possibly contamination,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to get them all picked up.’

Most ranchers in the state lost anywhere between 50 to 75 percent of their herds, according to Silvia Christen, executive director of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, which represents 1,500 ranching operations.

‘We’re certainly looking at tens of thousands if not pushing 100,000 at this point,’ she said of the dead livestock.

Aside from the economic losses, which will be severe once finally tallied, the unprecedented storm has left an ‘incredible emotional burden’ on the state’s ranchers, Silvia said.” Read more.

Colorado: Over 500 People Unaccounted For After Flood Of Biblical Proportions Devastates Towns

Fox News – “As rains bring historic flooding to Colorado that has killed at least four people and left more than 500 unaccounted for, residents were bracing for more heavy rain Sunday.

According to DailyCamera.com, the treacherous weather that has devastated the state was followed by drier, clearer skies on Saturday. But that seems a temporary respite, as the forecast called for even wetter conditions Sunday.

‘It looks like there is a chance of some heavy rain Sunday, and a continued risk of flash flooding. And then we finally dry out on Monday,’ National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Kalina told the website.

Rescue teams are warning people in some Colorado towns isolated by devastating flooding against remaining there, telling them that they could face weeks without basic supplies, including running water and electricity.

Helicopters and truck convoys of the National Guard carried the admonition Saturday into paralyzed canyon communities where thousands of stranded residents were eager to escape the Rocky Mountain foothills. But not everybody was willing to go. Dozens of people in hard hit Jamestown wanted to stay to watch over their homes.

Authorities made clear that residents who chose not to leave might not get another chance for a while. Rescuers won’t go back for people who insist on staying, Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said.” Read more.