Weather, Natural Disaster | featured news

A storm packing 170 mph winds was bearing down on the southern end of Japan's Okinawa Island, where locals and U.S. military personnel stationed at several bases were quickly stocking up and battening down.

Guatemala's Fuego volcano erupted on Thursday, spewing smoke and ash into the sky and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people, local emergency services said.

A volcano in western Nicaragua erupted Saturday, shooting gas and ashes some 2.5 miles into the sky, a government agency said.

Rescue workers cleared roads Saturday so they could search for survivors and rush aid to a remote mountainous area of southwestern China after twin earthquakes killed at least 80 people....

Two shallow 5.6 magnitude earthquakes hit mountainous southwestern China on Friday, killing at least 50 people and forcing tens of thousands of people from damaged buildings, state media said.

A powerful, magnitude-7.6 earthquake shook Costa Rica and a wide swath of Central America on Wednesday, collapsing some houses, blocking highways and causing panic and at least one death from a heart attack.

A magnitude-3.2 quake hit Beverly Hills, Calif., before dawn on Monday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

David Frum says the drought is driving up world food prices, and history suggests that is likely to produce unrest within poor nations. Prediction: 2013 will be a year of serious global crisis. That crisis is predictable, and in fact has already begun. It will inescapably confront the next president of the United States. Yet this emerging crisis got not a mention at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. We'll see if the Democrats do better.

For most of the U.S., Hurricane Isaac has come and gone, and now Southerners and Midwesterners are grappling with the good and bad it left behind. Evacuation orders eased for parts of Louisiana, and many Missouri residents saw the possible end of a long and painful drought when Isaac passed over the state Friday and Saturday, dumping much of its strength before going on to Illinois and Indiana.

North Korea says a typhoon that hit the peninsula last week killed 48 people and left 21,000 homeless. The update from the official Korean Central News Agency said Monday that Typhoon Bolaven also left more than 50 people injured or missing, damaged 50,000 hectares (123,550 acres) of farmland and destroyed or inundated 6,700 houses.