Asia, Natural Disaster | featured news

Slow-moving Typhoon Nanmadol remained dangerous Sunday despite weakening as it struck the tip of the mountainous northern Philippines, leaving at least eight people dead and scuttling a visit by a U.S. Navy battleship group, officials said. Taiwan issued sea and land warnings and planned to evacuate about 6,000 people in its eastern and southern regions as it braced for the typhoon. Troops and rescue equipment were deployed for any contingency, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said.

Heavy rain sent landslides barreling through South Korea, killing 17 and leaving at least three missing, officials said.

Nearly 1,000 residents have fled two villages near an Indonesian volcano that has been erupting this week.

A 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the east coast of northern Japan Sunday, prompting tsunami advisories for several coastal regions, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.

More flooding across central China has killed 41 people, state media reported Friday, bringing the total killed in seasonal flooding this year to at least 95.

A landslide buried 20 boys and four adults at a Malaysian orphanage Saturday where scores of rescuers were digging by their hands in soil softened by the rains to find the missing, police said.

A contraction in the first quarter at an annual rate of 3.7 percent was worse than economists had expected.

Filipino rescuers who dug by hand to save people buried by a landslide were losing hope of finding 21 still missing in the disaster that killed at least three people in a remote gold mining village, officials said Saturday.

Japan's shelters are still packed, with no firm word on when evacuees may return home. Cleaning up the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl is likely to take decades and cost Japan an untold fortune.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that America would stand by Japan, saying she was confident the country will fully recover from its tsunami and nuclear disasters....