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<p>Lightning has broken a finger off the right hand of Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.</p> <p>Father Omar, rector of the shrine that holds the statue, told the Globo radio station that lightning frequently strikes the nearly 100-foot tall statue, a symbol of Rio that overlooks the Brazilian city from the peak of the Corcovado mountain.</p>

Lightning has broken a finger off the right hand of Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Father Omar, rector of the shrine that holds the statue, told the Globo radio station that lightning frequently strikes the nearly 100-foot tall statue, a symbol of Rio that overlooks the Brazilian city from the peak of the Corcovado mountain. Its right hand had been damaged sometime ago, but the finger finally broke off in a storm late Thursday.

Counting Earth's Age in Lightning Strikes by Brian Thomas, M.S. * Scientists recently studied the Drakensberg Range in South Africa, discovering that lightning likely damages mountain surfaces far more often than previously thought. Lightning also generates fulgarites, and these two finds call into question old age assignments for Earth's land features. Publishing in the journal Geomorphology, Jasper Knight and Stefan Grab observed that just one lightning strike can gouge a huge divide through solid bedrock. Such a strike partially melts the rocks adjacent to cracks, causing the rock's magnetic minerals to reorient themselves to the direction of Earth's magnetic field....

An amateur astronomer has become the first person to capture a massive lightning strike ‘into space’ above the British Isles. The atmospheric phenomena, known as sprites, had never been recorded in the UK before an amateur astronomer in East Yorkshire managed to take the photographic first. Richard Kacerek, 33, spotted the sprite – caused by an upward lightning discharge five miles east of Hull – and has sparked excitement in the scientific community with his image. An amateur astronomer has become the first person to capture a massive lightning strike ‘into space’ (pictured) above the British Isles An amateur astronomer...

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld of the New York-based American Center for Democracy's Economic Warfare Institute warns that last July "al-Qaeda's English-language online magazine, Inspire, published an article called 'It Is of Your Freedom to Ignite a Firebomb,' which featured instructions on how to build an incendiary bomb to light forests on fire. "A few months later, Russia's security (FSB) chief, Aleksandr Bortnikov warned, 'al-Qaeda was complicit in recent forest fires in Europe' as part of the terrorists' 'strategy of a thousand cuts.' Bortnikov spoke of 'extremist sites [that] contained detailed instructions of waging the forest jihad and stressed that such a...

Canada-based Brightex Lightning has incorporated in the United States and opened an office in Charlotte, North Carolina as it prepares to begin marketing to the U.S.-based oil and gas industry its technology solution to address the threat of lightning strikes. Brightex's compound plasma lightning rejection (CPLR) system generates a plasma ion cloud that shields and protects assets inside the protected sphere. The system neutralizes and shields a facility from the effect of normal polarization, said Lee Binns, head of international business development for Brightex, in an interview with Rigzone. The CPLR is used with the fore alarm – which operates...

Prescott Fire Department confirmed 19 firefighters have died while battling the Yarnell Hill fire on Sunday night. They're part of the Prescott Granite Mountain Hot Shots. The wildfire was likely caused by a lightning strike Saturday night. The Yarnell Hill fire, about 35 miles southwest of Prescott, has burned about 1,300 acres and forced the evacuation of 50 homes. The fire started Friday and has not yet burned down any structures, but Sunday night firefighters pushed the blaze back away from communities, hoping to keep the blaze from overtaking any homes. A growing fire in Yarnell forced about 600 residents...

google "boy scouts" and "lightning" to get the story.

Back in Ben Franklin’s day, no one worried about lightning causing a chemical tank to explode or shutting down the electronic controls to a nuclear reactor. Technology has raised the stakes since Franklin invented the lightning rod – lightning-sparked fires caused more than $1 billion in insured homeowners’ losses in 2010 alone, according to the Insurance Information Institute. The costs can be even higher for the oil and gas industry; a 2006 study published in the Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries found lightning strikes are the most common cause of accidents involving storage tanks at refineries and...

News hit the Net yesterday afternoon that lightning had struck The Vatican twice, just hours after Pope after Pope Benedict XVI's sudden resignation. As a lightning photographer and weather photo hoax buster, I investigated to see if the photo was real. #PHOTO: Lightning strikes St Peter's dome at #Vatican on day the #Pope announced resignation, by Filippo Monteforte twitter.com/AFP/status/301...— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) February 11, 2013 When the picture first started circulating on Facebook, Meteonetwork Puglia e Basilicata ONLUS (a division of Associazione MeteoNetwork Onlus) and commenting members of the Facebook page thought that the photo might be faked (loose internet...

Explanation: How fast is lightning? Lightning, in fact, moves not only too fast for humans to see, but so fast that humans can't even tell which direction it is moving. The above lightning stroke did not move too fast, however, for this extremely high time resolution video to resolve. Tracking at an incredible 7,207 frames per second, actual time can be seen progressing at the video bottom. The above lightning bolt starts with many simultaneously creating ionized channels branching out from an negatively charged pool of electrons and ions that has somehow been created by drafts and collisions in a...

This wasn't the one-in-a-million strike a Kansas lotto player was hoping for. A Wichita man was hit by lightning on Thursday night just hours after buying three tickets in the record-setting $656 Mega Millions lottery, drawn on Friday. Bill Isles, a volunteer storm spotter for the National Weather Service, even made an eerie quip to a pal about his long odds moments after buying the tickets at a local grocery store. "I've got a better chance of getting struck by lightning" than winning the jackpot, Isles said, according to Reuters. The wannabe mega-millionaire had toted his ham radio into his...

TAMPA — In all he did, Justin Inversso made it a mission to do the work of a higher power, his father, Frank, says. In his job as a lifeguard supervisor at Adventure Island, a job he had held since March, the 21-year-old University of South Florida engineering student not only protected lives, but strived to enrich souls of those around him. "He was a strong young man, conscientious of living his life according to the ways of the Lord," said Frank Inversso, a bailiff with the Pasco County Sheriff's Office. "He was a true lifeguard. He was committed to...

There was a small storm moving across the way this morning. With the sun just coming up it was producing a rainbow effect in the storm. So I got my little Kodak camera out and started filming, hoping to catch some of the lightning, too. When I was looking at it frame by frame to see how well one of the lightning strikes showed up, I was surprised with this 3 frame sequence. This bolt of lightning seemed to generate itself in my backyard. The storm was a couple of miles away. Thought it was interesting. Thought I would share.

A couple of second-half goals gave the U.S. a 2-0 win over North Korea and a strong start to their Women's World Cup run. The eighth-ranked North Koreans have the youngest team in the tournament with an average age of 20. Still, their discipline and skill gave the U.S. a lot of trouble in the first half before controversial starter Lauren Cheney justified her selection by heading in the first goal in the 54th minute and defender Rachel Buehler scored a second in the 76th minute. After the match, North Korea manager Kwang Min Kim shocked the congregated press by...

EXCERPT: Barack Hussein Obama ignored Easter yesterday. He issued no statements of any kind, no “Happy Easter”, no nothing. By comparison he has issued glowing, effusive statements of praise for each and every Muslim holiday since he took office. Hasn’t missed one of them. So it is quite interesting that yesterday as believers celebrated the Risen Lord Jesus around the the globe, that the God of Heaven who controls the wind and the weather chose to strike the White House with lightning. Excerpts from http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=4280

Seven deer -- including six huddled in a circle -- were found apparently killed by lightning in a southern Wisconsin farm field, neighbors and authorities said Tuesday. The deer were likely killed Sunday night, said neighbor Randy Lantz, 54. “It’s bizarre,” Lantz said. After neighbors found the deer Monday and called authorities, a Kenosha County Sheriff's deputy on Tuesday went out to the rural field located near Salem, Wis., about 5 miles from the Illinois border, and found the six dead deer lying in a circle with another one a distance away. In the center of the group of six...

Seven deer -- including six huddled in a circle -- were found apparently killed by lightning in a southern Wisconsin farm field, neighbors and authorities said Tuesday. The deer were likely killed Sunday night, said neighbor Randy Lantz, 54. “It’s bizarre,” Lantz said.