In the city of Bandar Mahshahr (population of about 110,000 as of 2010), the air felt like a searing 165 degrees (74 Celsius) today factoring in the humidity.

To achieve today’s astronomical heat index level of 165, Bandar Mahshahr’s actual air temperature registered 115 degrees (46 Celsius) with an astonishing dew point temperature of 90 (32 Celsius).

Capital Weather Gang reader, John Hagner, who lived in Dhahran for several years starting in 1992, shared his experience via email:

When the winds come off the Persian Gulf you just can’t imagine how awful it gets.

On the hottest and most humid days, you’d walk outside and it felt immediately like someone pressed a hot wet towel, like you sometimes get on airplanes, over your entire head. I wear glasses, and they’d immediately fog up. You sweat instantly. People just avoid being outside in any way they can. In the summers, my friends and I would become nocturnal as a way to beat the heat. Crime is basically non-existent, so my parents didn’t worry about us being out all night. I’d usually have breakfast with my dad and then sleep through the heat of the day, waking up when he got home from work. At night it was still stifling, but the edge was off.

Air conditioning is everywhere. You can trace the population explosion in the country directly to the advent of air conditioning – it allowed people to settle down and stop living the nomadic life that was common into the middle of the 20th century. We lived on a compound for employees of the Saudi national oil company, and they treated air conditioning repair like ambulances or fire trucks – they had crews on 24-hour call, and you could have them dispatched at a moment’s notice by calling the special air conditioning emergency hotline. In the summer, the air-conditioned school buses would stop outside every individual kid’s house, so they didn’t have to wait at a stop and could stay in the AC. Off the compound, air conditioning is still common, even for the poorest migrant workers there. Shopping was done in huge air-conditioned malls. The great open-air souks operate in the winter or very early in the morning on summer weekends

Safari Club International is suspending the membership of the Minnesota hunter accused of illegally killing a protected lion in Zimbabwe and wants a 'full and thorough investigation' into the lion's death.

The club, which promotes big-game hunting worldwide, issued a statement late on Wednesday saying memberships for Walter Palmer and his guide in Zimbabwe, Theo Bronkhorst, will be on hiatus until investigations are complete.

Snip
The Safari Club says 'those who intentionally take wildlife illegally should be prosecuted and punished to the maximum extent allowed by law.'

This comes as the US Fish and Wildlife service admitted they have been unable to find or speak to the Minnesota dentist, agency director Dan Ashe said on Thursday.
The admission from the Fish and Wildlife Service that they cannot locate Dr.Palmer comes after it emerged he could still face prosecution inside the United States for killing Cecil.

A University of Cincinnati officer who shot a motorist during a traffic stop over a missing front license plate has been indicted on murder charges, a prosecutor said Wednesday, adding that the officer "purposely killed him" and "should never have been a police officer." ....

"He fell backward after he shot (DuBose) in the head," Deters said, adding that it was a "chicken crap" traffic stop.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwean police said Tuesday they are searching for an American who allegedly shot a well-known, protected lion with a crossbow in a killing that has outraged conservationists and others.
Walter James Palmer was identified on Tuesday by both the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force and the Safari Operators Association of Zimbabwe as the American hunter, which police then confirmed.

Emmanuel Fundira, the president of the Safari Operators Association of Zimbabwe, said at a news conference that Palmer is from Minnesota and his current whereabouts were unknown.

The American faces poaching charges, according to police spokeswoman Charity Charamba.

Authorities on Tuesday said two Zimbabwean men--a professional hunter and a farm owner — will appear in court for allegedly helping with the hunt.

MAHWAH, N.J. (AP) — Police say a man drove off with a bag containing $150,000 in cash after two employees who were replenishing ATMs mistakenly left it on a lawn in northern New Jersey.

Mahwah police say in a news release that the ATM employees had stopped at a business on Industrial Avenue when one of them placed the satchel on the front lawn as he moved items around in their vehicle.

They drove off, forgetting the bag.

A large, handsome creature with a lush mane tinged with black, the 13-year-old lion was called the “biggest tourist attraction” at Hwange, the country’s premier wildlife park.

But earlier this month, Cecil was found dead -- skinned and headless -- on the outskirts of Hwange. According to reports, a hunter allegedly shelled out $55,000 to kill and decapitate the lion.

It's believed that Cecil was lured out of the national park into an adjacent hunting concession area with bait in the form of a freshly killed animal. At that point, the lion was shot with a bow and arrow, National Geographic reports. The dying lion, who was wearing a GPS collar, was then followed by the hunter for 40 hours before he was finally killed with a rifle.
Snip:
“We have to give up for dead his six cubs, as a new male won’t allow them to live so as to encourage Cecil’s three females to mate,” he said.

In 1984, a researcher named Roger Ulrich noticed a curious pattern among patients who were recovering from gallbladder surgery at a suburban hospital in Pennsylvania. Those who had been given rooms overlooking a small stand of deciduous trees were being discharged almost a day sooner, on average, than those in otherwise identical rooms whose windows faced a wall. The results seemed at once obvious—of course a leafy tableau is more therapeutic than a drab brick wall—and puzzling. Whatever curative property the trees possessed, how were they casting it through a pane of glass?

That is the riddle that underlies a new study in the journal Scientific Reports by a team of researchers in the United States, Canada, and Australia, led by the University of Chicago psychology professor Marc Berman............
Snip
After controlling for income, education, and age, Berman and his colleagues showed that an additional ten trees on a given block corresponded to a one-per-cent increase in how healthy nearby residents felt. “To get an equivalent increase with money, you’d have to give each household in that neighborhood ten thousand dollars—or make people seven years younger,” Berman told me.
Snip
The health benefits stem almost entirely from trees planted along streets and in front yards, where many people walk past them;
trees in back yards and parks don’t seem to matter as much in the analysis.