Bison which killed woman in South Dakota to be relocated.

A Bison which killed a 70-year-old Canadian woman in Custer State Park, South Dakota, is to be relocated to another area. The incident happened on 18 May, when the woman and her husband encountered a group of five Bison bulls on the Grace Coolidge Trail, which runs through the park. At this time the bulls were about 500 m ahead of the couple, who allowed them to move off before following. A little while later the couple encountered the Bison again, though this time they were only about 15 m away. The couple waited for them to move before starting to follow, but this time moved while the Animals were still in site, causing one of the bulls to turn and charge.

Bison in Custer State Park, South Dakota. Wikimedia Commons.

The initial charge resulted in the woman being thrown about two metres in the air, sustaining serious injuries to the leg and abdomen. The Bison then stood over the injured woman for about 15 minutes while her husband hid behind a tree and called the local sheriff's office. During this time the woman remained conscious, and was able to talk to her husband. The bull eventually wandered off, after which the husband approached the woman, but this caused the Animal to turn and charge again, this time throwing her about three meters into the air and causing fatal injuries. After this the Bison walked off, and the husband attempted to perform CPR, being joined shortly after by first aid-trained park staff, but it was impossible to save her. The death was the first Bison-related fatality in the park for 21 years.

Following the incident, rumours began to circulate that the park authorities planned to euthanize the Bison, leading to a public outcry, and many people contacting the South Dakota Governor’s Office, the South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks and Custer State Park, asking for the Animal to be spared. On Wednesday 10 June the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Game, Fish and Parks announced that they were willing to rehome the bull and take care of its welfare. 

Bison are large animals, the American Bison can reach 1.8 m in length and weigh around 900 kg, and have notoriously unpredictable tempers, often appearing placid and indifferent to their surroundings, and then charging without warning. They can reach speeds of 35 km per hour, and both sexes have horns, which can make unexpected charging highly dangerous.

North America is thought to have been home to about 50 million Bison at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a number that fell to less than a thousand individuals by the middle of the twentieth century due to over-hunting, not just for the purpose of food, but as part of a conscious effort to change the landscape from one amenable to traditional, Native American, lifestyles to a landscape suitable to European-style farming. However since the mid-twentieth century conservation efforts and breeding programs have reversed this decline, with the population now about 530 000 across the continent, including around 40 000 in South Dakota.

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Comet C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) makes its closest approach to Earth.

Comet C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) will make its closest approach to the Earth today (Saturday 13 June 2026), when it will reach a distance of 2.63 AU (i.e 2.63 times the average distance between the Earth and the Sun), or 392 873 130 km from us. At this time it will be in the constellation of Ophiuchus, and have an apparent optical magnitude of 12, meaning it will be hard to spot without a fairly good telescope to observe it. Nevertheless, this closest approach falls the day before the New Moon on 14 June, so observers with appropriate equipment may be able to see it in the late evening (the comet will set before midnight).

The approximate positions and orbits of the C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS), the Earth, and the planets of the Inner Solar System on 13 June 2026. Gideon van Buitenen.

Comet C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) was discovered on 7 September 2023 by the PANSTARRS sky survey, located at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii. The name C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) implies that it is a Comet (C/), that it was the 1st comet (1) discovered in the first half of September 2021 (period 2023 R), and that it was discovered by the PANSTARRS sky survey.

Image of C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) taken on 25 July 2025. The comet is the point between the yellow cross hairs, the elongate objects are stars, with the elongation being caused by the tracking of the comet over the length of the exposure. Toshihiko Ikemura/Hirohisa Sato/Seiichi Yoshida.

Comet C/2023 R1 (PANSTARRS) is a Parabolic Comet, which is to say a comet that was disrupted from an orbit in the Oort Cloud, and is passing through the Inner Solar System on a parabolic orbit that will probably not bring it back again. This parabolic trajectory is tilted at an angle of 149.3° to the plain of the Solar System.

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Thirty five confirmed deaths following Magnitude 7.8 Earthquake off the southern coast of Mindanao Island, Philippines.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology recorded a Magnitude 7.8 Earthquake at a depth of 33 km off the south coast of Mindanao Island, Philippines, slightly after 7.35 am on Monday 8 June 2026 local time (slightly after 11.35 pm on Sunday 7 June GMT). 

The location of the 8 June 2026 Mindanao Earthquake. USGS.

Thirty five people have been confirmed dead following this event, with another 134 injured, and a large number of buildings damaged or destroyed, with about 10 000 families displaced as a result of this Earthquake. People reported feeling tremors as far away as Manilla and northern Borneo. Countries around the Pacific Rim issued tsunami warnings after the event, although the largest wave recorded was about 1.4 m. Mindanao has subsequently been hit by a number of large aftershocks. 

A collapsed building in the city of General Santos on Mindanao Island, the Philippines. Department of Social Welfare and Development/Wikimedia Commons.

The geology of the central Philippines is Complex. The west of Mindanao Island is located on the Banda (or Sunda) Microplate, and the east on the Philippine Plate, which is being subducted beneath the Sunda (or Banda) Microplate along the central part of the island. Immediately to the east of the Island the Pacific Plate is being subducted along the Philippine Trench, and passes beneath eastern Mindanao as it sinks into the Earth. This is not a smooth process, an the plates constantly stick together then break apart again as the pressure builds up, resulting in Earthquakes.

Subduction beneath the Philippines. Yves Descatoire/Singapore Earth Observatory.

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Woman killed by Elephant in Kerala State, India.

A woman has died after being trampled by an Elephant on Monday 8 June 2026 in the village of Sinkukandam near the town of Suryanelli in the Idukki District of Kerala State, India. The woman, identified as Mari, a 36-year-old widow, mother of two, and day-labourer, encountered a mother Elephant with a calf while escorting her 11-year-old son to catch a school bus, at about 8.30 am local time. Both were attacked by the Animal, and subsequently rushed to a local hospital by a passing auto-rickshaw driver. Here Mari was pronounced dead, while her son, Dakshan, was transferred to the Kottayam Government Medical College Hospital for further treatment.

The funeral of a woman killed by an Elephant in the Idukki District of Kerala State on 8 June 2026. The Hindu.

The village is close to the Chinnakanal Reserve, which is home to a population of 18 Elephants. About 50 people are thought to have been killed by Elephants in and around Chinnakanal since 1990, ten of them by a single male known as 'Arikomban' who was eventually relocated away from the area by the Kerala Forest Department in 2023. This has placed considerable strain on the local Human population, and their ability to live alongside the area's Elephants.  

The major problem appears to be that the Chinnakanal Reserve covers an area of about 4 km², although only about half of this is utilised by the Elephants, who instead spill out into nearby farms and villages, often stealing food from Humans and coming into conflict with them. In an attempt to manage this conflict the Forest Department has set up a system alerts on social media and messaging platforms, which message people warning them that Elephants are in their area. However, local people have complained that they are not simply able to simply stop going about their daily business whenever Elephants wander into the area. On the day of the latest incident an alert had been put out, but visibility was very low due to rains and fog, apparently causing the victims to come close to the Elephants without realising the danger they were in until too late.

In 2022 Raju Francis of the Kerala Forest Development Corporation produced a report recommending the construction of a series of solar-powered electric fences to protect farmland and residential areas from Elephants emerging from the forest. Despite agreeing to this proposal, four years on the Forest Department has yet to install a single stretch of fencing, and is unable to confirm when this will begin, something which local people have described as grossly negligent, leaving their property and families vulnerable to Elephant attacks.

A group of Asian Elephants in Kerala State. Wikimedia Commons.

Asian Elephants, Elephas maximus, are classified as Endangered under the terms of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, as the population has declined by more than 50% over the last three generations (about 75 years for Elephants). There are currently about 50 000 Asian Elephants (although Elephants are notoriously difficult to count, despite being such large Animals) scattered across Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. However, this population is now highly fragmented, with most Elephants living in small groups, reproductively isolated from other groups, and often coming into conflict with local Human populations as the land allocated to Elephants shrinks.

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Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, inundated with pumice following eruption of Titan Ridge submarine volcano.

A series of eruptions from the Titan Ridge submarine volcano, beneath the Bismarck Sea in the southwest Pacific Ocean, has produced a large volume of pumice (a light volcanic rock, produced by the rapid cooling of gas rich lava from submarine eruptions, which can float on the sea), much of which has washed up onto the shores of Manus Island, the largest of the Admiralty Islands and a province of Papua New Guinea. This has caused serious problems for the local population, as it has formed a barrier between them and the sea, too dense to push a boat through, but too quicksand-like to walk across. This in turn has prevented them from harvesting fish and other seafood, the main staples of the island, as well as forcing them to become entirely dependent on the islands limited supply of freshwater for washing and hygiene, rather than bathing in the sea. The large accumulations of pumice are also likely to have smothered local coral reef ecosystems, harming longer-term fishing prospects in the region.

Residents of Manus Island on a beach covered by pumice. ABC.

Pumice forms when hot lava from submarine volcanic eruptions encounters seawater and cools rapidly, simultaneously crystalising and degassing to form a lightweight volcanic rock with many gas filled vesicles (bubbles) within it, which often floats on the sea surface. Big submarine eruptions can produce large volumes of pumice, forming rafts of pumice that cover hundreds of square kilometres, and drift on the ocean surface for months before dissipating or washing ashore. 

Titan Ridge, also known as the Central Bismarck Sea Volcano, is located about 125 km to the southeast of Manus, on the northern edge of the South Bismarck Plate. It is located on the boundary between the Willaumez Transform Fault and an unnamed section of area of seafloor spreading, where the South Bismarck and Pacific plates are being pulled apart, while at the same time the Pacific Plate is moving to the west and the South Bismarck Plate to the east. Here fresh material from the upper mantle is rising up through the fault and being erupted from the volcano as volcanic material, primarily pumice caused by the rapid cooling of a liquid melt containing dissolved gasses. 

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