Deaths, Natural Disaster | featured news

The death toll slowly rose Saturday from a series of tornadoes that churned through ten states Friday, leaving behind a battered path of death and destruction.

A powerful system that produced multiple reports of tornadoes early Wednesday laid waste to small towns in Illinois and Kansas while also roughing up the resort town of Branson, Mo.

Flash floods devastated a southern Philippines region unaccustomed to serious storms, killing more than 400 people while they slept, rousting hundreds of others to their rooftops and turning two coastal cities into muddy, debris-filled waterways that were strewn Saturday with overturned vehicles and toppled trees.

A strong storm system that produced several possible tornadoes hit the Southeast on Wednesday, damaging dozens of homes and buildings. At least four people were killed and more than a dozen others were injured. Suspected tornadoes were reported in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, and thousands of people were without power as trees and power lines were downed.

Turkey struggled to provide shelter on Wednesday to tens of thousands left homeless by an earthquake that killed nearly 500, and rescue teams began taking painful decisions to call off searches for those buried alive.

Turkish families wept in joy and sorrow Monday as a few lucky survivors and many more victims were pulled out of the rubble after a 7.2-magnitude quake leveled over a hundred apartment and office buildings....

As night fell over eastern Turkey on Sunday following the most powerful earthquake in at least a decade, citizens were using flashlights and shovels as they clambered over the rubble of collapsed buildings looking for survivors. At least seven aftershocks rattled the region, one of the nation's poorest. The extent of casualties was not immediately known.

Back-to-back typhoons left at least 59 people dead and rescuers scrambling on Sunday to deliver food and water to hundreds of Philippines villagers stranded on rooftops.

Manila residents waded through waist-deep floodwaters and dodged flying debris Tuesday as a powerful typhoon struck the Philippines, killing at least 16 people and sending waves as tall as palm trees crashing over seawalls....

A powerful typhoon slammed into Japan on Wednesday, leaving 13 people dead or missing in south-central regions and halting trains in Tokyo before grazing a crippled nuclear plant in the tsunami-ravaged northeast....