When South Australian farmer John Gregory entered his piggery he could not believe what he saw - mice attacking his pigs.

Since he first saw them dining out on his prized stock he has been at his wit's end about how to get rid of them.

Now, as a desperate last resort, he is covering his pigs at a farm property in Wynarka, 130km east of Adelaide, in engine oil to protect them from the mice, with the rodents apparently turned off by the taste.

"The mouse problem got really bad in April," Mr Gregory said.

"We went away in the school holidays and when we came back we drove up the driveway and it looked like the ground was moving - there were hundreds of thousands of them."

Mr Gregory, 50, said he put engine oil on his 15 pigs to protect them from the sun about once a month.

Unpredictable weather coupled with a decline in natural predators is responsible for a recent plague of caterpillars in parts of the country.

Though the phenomenon is centered largely in Probolinggo, East Java, smaller reported outbreaks in Central Java, West Java, Bali and, most recently, Jakarta have prompted fears of a widespread infestation.

But Aunu Rauf, an entomologist at the Bogor Institute of Agricultural (IPB), says there is no connection between the outbreaks in Probolinggo and those in the other areas.

"There are at least 120,000 types of caterpillars in the world, so those found in Bekasi [West Java] and Probolinggo would be different from each other," he told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday.

"I'm sure the ones in Tanjung Duren [West Jakarta], where people have claimed to have been 'attacked' by caterpillars, are also a different type."

Since March, millions of hairy caterpillars have cropped up in at least five subdistricts in Probolinggo, invading fields and homes. They have also caused itchy rashes among residents.

The Colombo City is facing the worst dengue epidemic ever Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) said yesterday revealing that there had been 195 cases reported this month. CMC which dropped a bomb shell, said in and round the National Hospital Colombo, Military Hospital and vicinity of the Colombo Port had been identified as the major mosquito breeding grounds in the city.

There had been 885 reported dengue cases in the city this year out of which 50 percent is reported to be school children.

Chief Medical Officer CMC Dr. Pradeep Kariyawasam told a news conference yesterday that few doctors attached to the National Hospital Colombo had fell victim to Dengue while the nurses quarters is also found to be a breeding ground. In addition, several Chinese nationals who were working at development projects in Colombo were also infected.

He also warned that new complication of dengue DEN 3 had also raised its head in the city.

Dr. Kariyawasam claimed that the school principals have turned a deaf ear to the repeated requests made by the CMC to keep the schools clean while lack of public support as a whole had been one of the reasons for the epidemic.

He said all school principals in the city had been called for a meeting by the Special Commissioner, CMC, Omar Kamil on Thursday to brief them on the situation.
However, he said the Colombo City only accounts to 7 percent of the country's total number of cases though there is a school of thought that most reported cases are from the capital city. He said the disease had come from elsewhere though there is an idea that the germs had existed within the city itself.

He said the CMC had conducted dengue prevention campaigns but lack of public support, legal impediments have not brought much results.

Another natural phenomenon has hit the Southern States as swarms of cicadas return after 13 years hibernating underground.

Every 13 years the inch-long insects emerge from their underground lairs to plague America's Deep South in a feeding and breeding frenzy.

It adds to the natural phenomena the region has battled with after tornadoes last month and floods in Mississippi this week.

Apart from their intense 120-decibel mating racket and the frustration of finding them in hair, clothes and lunch-boxes, they're completely harmless to humans.

This article was first published in issue 13, volume 1 / 2011 of The Dot Connector Magazine, official publication of Sott.net.

"Comets are vile stars. Every time they appear in the south, they wipe out the old and establish the new. Fish grow sick, crops fail, Emperors and common people die, and men go to war. The people hate life and don't even want to speak of it." -Li Ch'un Feng, Director, Chinese Imperial Astronomical Bureau, 648, A.D.

In 2007, a meteorite fell in Puno, Southeastern Perú. José Macharé - scientist of the Geologic, Mining and Metallurgic Institute in Perú - said that the space rock fell near a muddy area by Lake Titicaca, making the water boil for around ten minutes, and mixing with the soil and emanating a gray cloud, the components of which remain unknown. Having discarded radioactive poisons, this toxic cloud is said to have caused headaches and respiratory problems in at least 200 persons from a population of 1500 inhabitants. Other than this event, how often do we hear about people getting sick due to a rock coming from space? How about birds, fish or other animals? Ancient astrologers cite comets as ill omens of death and famine, but are there any other causes other than the ones due to physical/mechanical consequences of comet impact devastation in our fragile environment of which we should be aware?

As a physician, I usually concentrate strictly on medical and health-related issues, not history or catastrophism. However, like so many other people, I see signs of atmospheric changes on our planet which, according to many experts, may well be due to increasing comet dust loading. When I read about increasing reports of fireballs all around the world, and I know that these factors must have an effect on the health of individuals and societies, it motivates me to do the research to find the connections so that I am better prepared for what may lie in our future. If our planet is entering a new cometary bombardment cycle, and if these comets harbor new species of microbes unknown to mankind's collective immunological systems (as may well be the case), then being forewarned is being forearmed.

According to the late Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe of the University of Wales at Cardiff, viruses can be distributed throughout space by dust in the debris stream of comets. Then as Earth passes though the stream, the dust and viruses load our atmosphere, where they can stay suspended for years until gravity pulls them down. They compare numerous plagues throughout our history which coincide with cometary bodies in our skies. These researchers are certain that germs causing plagues and epidemics come from space.

In a letter to Lancet [1],Wickramasinghe explains that a small amount of a virus introduced into the stratosphere could make a first tentative fallout east of the great mountain range of the Himalayas, where the stratosphere is thinnest, followed by sporadic deposits in neighboring areas. Could this explain why new strains of the influenza virus that are capable of engendering epidemics, and which are caused by radical genetic mutations, usually originate in Asia? Wickramasinghe argues that if the virus is only minimally infective, the subsequent course of its global progress will depend on stratospheric transport and mixing, leading to a fallout continuing seasonally over a few years; even if all reasonable attempts are made to contain an infective spread, the appearance of new foci almost anywhere is a possibility.

Walking along the edge of Crescent Lake this week, Mike Flanagan found something that has become a concern around this close-knit neighborhood: dead ducks.

In recent weeks, more than 25 Dave Bairam, a St. Petersburg environmental analyst, takes a water sample at Crescent Lake Park on Tuesday. He said tests are measuring the lake's oxygen levels.have died along the shores of the lake just north of downtown. Then on Sunday, fish started floating to the surface. Also dead.

"This is not normal," said Flanagan, president of the Crescent Lake Neighborhood Association. "Obviously our concern is, could we lose all the animals on the lake."

On Tuesday, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission performed a necropsy on one of the dead ducks.

The culprit: duck virus enteritis. Also known as duck plague.

Residents in Pangbourne and parts of west London have been warned to steer clear of a toxic caterpillar.

The Forestry Commission has issued a caution not to touch the caterpillars of the oak processionary moth.

Their hairs contain a toxin that can cause itchy skin rashes as well as eye and throat irritations.

The Forestry Commission's Stewart Snape said residents can report sightings but that the caterpillars should only be removed by pest control operators.

Officials are now dealing with outbreaks of the moth in Pangbourne in West Berkshire and the London boroughs of Ealing, Brent, Hounslow, Richmond upon Thames and Hammersmith & Fulham.

Health Protection Agency director Dr Brian McCloskey said: "We strongly advise people not to touch or approach the caterpillars or their nests because of the health risks caused by the toxin-containing hairs.

Swarms of caterpillars which can cause skin rashes have invaded the Indonesian holiday island of Bali, an official said Wednesday, but tourist areas have not been affected so far.

The dark, wriggly insects were first sighted in a village on Friday and the swarms have since spread to six districts, including the provincial capital of Denpasar, Bali agricultural chief Made Putra Suryawan told AFP.

"The situation is under control. Since Friday, workers have been spraying insecticide and burning garbage in affected areas to stop the spread," he said.

"Tourists need not be alarmed. The caterpillars have not spread to tourist areas yet. The threat to tourists is minimal," he added.

Thousands of caterpillars have reportedly descended on parts of neighbouring Java island in the last two weeks, attacking fruit farms and invading residential areas.

Washington -- In Canada's Fraser River, a mysterious illness has killed millions of Pacific salmon, and scientists have a new hypothesis about why: The wild salmon are suffering from viral infections similar to those linked to some forms of leukemia and lymphoma.

For 60 years before the early 1990s, an average of nearly 8 million wild salmon returned from the Pacific Ocean to the Fraser River each year to spawn.

Now the salmon industry is in a state of collapse, with mortality rates ranging from 40 percent to 95 percent.

The salmon run has been highly variable: The worst year came in 2009, with 1.5 million salmon, followed by the best year in 2010, with 30 million salmon. But the overall trend is downward.

Hold your horses. It hasn't arrived in the Clarence Valley - yet but increasing numbers of horses displaying unusual neurological symptoms across three states have prompted the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA) to caution all owners.

In NSW alone there have been 87 confirmed cases of the unidentified illness.

While tests conducted by the NSW Department of Industry and Investment have ruled out Hendra virus, AVA president Dr Barry Smyth believes the illness may be the result of a mosquito-borne disease.

"Diseases associated with mosquitoes are very uncommon in normal years," he said.