Environment

The poaching crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is not only affecting elephants. The giraffe population has now plunged to only 38, putting the species at immediate risk of extinction there, new surveys have revealed. Sadly, giraffes in the Congo are not alone. Poaching has become a major problem for the animals wherever they are living. Their numbers throughout Africa have dropped by more than 40 percent over the past 15 years. The entire subspecies is at risk of extinction.

At least 11 people were killed when a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Southern Taiwan yesterday causing multiple buildings, including a high-rise residential tower to collapse. More than 200 people have been rescued as emergency teams searched through the rubble. At least 30 people remain missing. Tainan’s mayor said people were alive but trapped under the rubble and all means would be used to rescue them. The epicenter of the quake was located at a shallow depth of 6.2 miles approximately 19 miles east-southeast of Tainan.

On March 5th, 2016, asteroid TX68 will be the closest ever flyby of an asteroid to ever approach the earth, researchers at NASA have said.  The asteroid will pass by the planet at a distance of 11,000 miles (17,000 km). Asteroid 2013 TX68 is currently estimated to be about 150 feet  (45 meters) across and has an estimated mass of about 130,000 metric tons. The space rock is traveling at about 32,211 miles per hour (51,839 kilometers per hour), relative to Earth. The asteroid’s orbit is highly uncertain (condition code 7) and it will be hard to predict where to look for it, experts say.

An official University of California report has concluded that there is a link between oil drilling and earthquakes.  The 2005 spate of earthquakes in California’s Central Valley was triggered by oilfield injection underground, researchers say Yahoo News reports: The research links a local surge in oil company injection of wastewater underground, peaking in 2005, with an unusual jump in seismic activity in and around the Tejon Oilfield in southern Kern County. In Oklahoma and some other Midwestern states, the U.S.

Last August, in a hilarious example of bad timing, Japan restarted its first nuclear reactor since the Chernobyl redux at Fukushima just as a nearby volcano was set to erupt.

Sakurajima, one of the country’s most active volcanos, erupts almost constantly, but experts warned the next eruption could be “the big one”, so to speak.

At the time, The Japan Meteorological Agency raised the warning level from 3 to 4.

4 means "prepare to evacuate."