Environment

After being lost in the Arizona wilderness for nine days, a 72 year old woman and her dog have been miraculously rescued. According to The Guardian: Ann Rodgers and her dog survived by drinking pond water and eating plants, state officials said, and were rescued after a helicopter crew spotted the word “help” had spelled out on a canyon floor using sticks and rocks. “The probabilities of finding her alive were really low,” said Gila County sheriff’s detective Johnny Holmes, who coordinated the search and rescue on Saturday.

Would you like some anti-epileptic medication with your salad? As global freshwater supplies continue to shrink, many countries have switched to using treated wastewater (filtered sewage water) for both large-scale and household vegetable growing. However, there is a dark side to this seemingly “green” practice: a recent study suggests that eating vegetables grown using this type of water “boosts urine levels of carbamazepine, an anti-epileptic drug commonly detected in wastewater”. Gross.

The last remaining golden eagle in England is feared dead after it failed to return home for the spring. The eagle had been a resident of Riggindale near Haweswater in the Lake District for the past 15 years. His mate died 12 years ago, leaving the 20-year-old bird of prey alone and failing to attract another mate. He was last seen in November 2015. The Mirror reports: The eagle was believed to be around 20 years old and attracted bird-lovers from around the UK to its home at Riggindale Valley, near Haweswater in the Lake District.

A large 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Japan, killing at least two people, destroying buildings and causing power outages. According to officials there could be more people trapped under buildings that collapsed BBC News reports: About 16,000 homes were left without electricity and 38,000 without gas, reports say. No tsunami warning was issued after the magnitude 6.4 quake, which struck at 21:26 (12:26 GMT) east of Kumamoto city, on the island of Kyushu. Nuclear reactors on the island are not reported to have been affected.

Just over 5 years since the massively destructive 2011 Japanese earthquake which unleashed a tsunami and led to the Fukushima disaster, moments ago NHK reported that Japan's Kumamoto region had been hit with another quake which had a Shindo shaking intensity of 7 and registered a magnitude of apprxoimately 6.4.

According to the Japanese media this is the strongest quake to hit Japan since the 2011 earthquake. The good news is that so far there has been no tsunami alert.