Locust Swarms Are Getting So Big That We Need Radar To Track Them

The desert locust upsurge is yet another of 2020’s horrors. From a report: In June, remote sensing analyst Raj Bhagat noticed a strange signal on India’s weather radar. It looked like a small band of rain near Delhi, moving southwest, but Bhagat was convinced it was a locust swarm. “People began to report it,” he says, referring to sightings on the…

Coronavirus Infection Rates: 10 US States Higher Than Any Country in the World

The New York Times has created a surprising interactive analysis of the number of coronavirus cases (per million residents) in different countries:
With its cases surging since mid-June, the United States is squarely in the top 10. Leading the outbreak now are countries in the Persian Gulf, where the virus has spread rapidly among foreign laborers. [Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait.] Rounding out…

Born in June? Here’s your birthstone

Happy birthday June babies! Your month has 3 birthstones – pearl, moonstone, and alexandrite. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/june-birthstone-pearl-moonstone-alexandrite…

Google Redraws the Borders On Maps Depending On Who’s Looking

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: For more than 70 years, India and Pakistan have waged sporadic and deadly skirmishes over control of the mountainous region of Kashmir. Tens of thousands have died in the conflict, including three just this month. Both sides claim the Himalayan outpost as their own, but web surfers in India could be…

US Cyberattack Hurt Iran’s Ability To Target Oil Tankers, Officials Say

“A secret cyberattack against Iran in June wiped out a critical database used by Iran’s paramilitary arm to plot attacks against oil tankers and degraded Tehran’s ability to covertly target shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf, at least temporarily,” reports The New York Times, citing senior American officials. From the report: Iran is still trying to recover information destroyed in the…