Environment

For the second day in a row, an earthquake has slammed southwestern Japan near the island of Kyushu. The quake, which was initially rated at 7.4 and later downgraded, hit at 1.26am on Saturday, local time. Kyushu is still recovering from yesterday’s quake which injured thousands and killed nine. A tsunami warning was issued, but has now been lifted. Are these quakes the prelude to a much larger event? USA Today reports: Friday’s earthquake was centered only a half mile from Kumamoto, the capital city of the Kumamoto prefecture on the island of Kyushu, according to the U.S.

A day after yesterday's "biggest quake since 2011's tsunami," Japan was just struck by a Magnitude 7.1 earthquake...

• *EARTHQUAKE REPORTED TO HAVE HIT AT 01:25:04 JAPAN TIME: JMA
• *7.1 MAG. EARTHQUAKE KYUSHU JAPAN :EMSC

and officials have issued a tsunami advisory for southern Japan...

• *JMA ISSUES TSUNAMI WARNING/ADVISORY FOR KUMAMOTO JAPAN

Today's quake is more than 10 times stronger than yesterday's.

Four large earthquakes were recorded on Wednesday and Thursday this week, including one major earthquake in southern Japan which killed 2 people, as well as another in India where Royal couple Kate and William were visiting.

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.