Asia, Natural Disaster | featured news

The death toll from Thailand's worst floods in half a century climbed past 500 Sunday, as advancing pools of polluted black water threatened Bangkok's subway system and new evacuations were ordered in the sprawling capital....

The central business district of Bangkok dodged severe flooding Saturday afternoon, but surrounding areas of the bustling capital faced further inundation at the next high tide.

Thailand announced a five-day holiday on Tuesday to give people the chance to escape floods closing in on Bangkok as authorities ordered the evacuation of a housing estate on the outskirts of the city after a protective wall gave way.

Relief workers reinforced barriers on Sunday to help defend Thailand's capital, Bangkok, from the country's worst floods in half a century and efforts were stepped up to protect a huge industrial estate to the city's north.

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....

Tens of thousands of people are displaced by floods in India even as torrential lashes Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Bihar states.

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....

Eleven people -- six in India and five in Nepal -- died when a magnitude-6.9 earthquake struck the northern Indian state of Sikkim near the border between the two nations Sunday night, police said.

Japan's death toll from tropical depression Talas, earlier downgraded from a tropical storm, has risen to 25 with 52 missing, the government said Monday, as torrential rain pounded the west of the country at the weekend, triggering mudslides and bursting river banks.