The intensity of solar storms is expected to peak in 2013 and may devastate critical infrastructure like satellite communications, navigation systems and electrical transmission equipment, a top scientist has warned.

Kathryn Sullivan, assistant secretary of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said countries should prepare for

Malda/Alipurduar, May 15: Two storms, separated by a distance of over 350km, cut a swathe through Birpara in Jalpaiguri district and Malda

In the tornado-torn rural stretches and cities of the South, the scope and size of a newly homeless population are beginning to sink in.

Shirley Baker, 54, lost her Tuscaloosa apartment in the storms and has moved in with her mother, but no one wants the situation to be long-term.

There are as yet no solid estimates of the number of people who need places to live, although it surely will be

Four people were killed, scores injured, hundreds of houses razed, trees and power supply poles uprooted as nor'wester lashed Thakurgaon, Bogra, Nilphamari and Manikganj on Monday and Tuesday.

Surreal beach sight: Half-smashed houses with fronts wide open, and people still living
We were on a beach, somewhere close to Puducherry. It was a surreal sight: half-smashed houses with fronts wide open, and people still living in them. The devastation was caused not by a sea storm or cyclone, but by the eroded beach.

About 100 houses were smashed to the ground and a large number of trees were uprooted as a short lasting violent storm lashed Uttar Suti Para village of Kundopukur union of sadar upazila on Monday night (02 May). 10 people were also injured and power supply was disrupted in surrounding villages as the storm lashed.

Four people were killed and three others injured in separate lightning strikes in Chuadanga, Comilla, Kishoreganj and Satkhira while four passengers injured and another was missing as boat capsized during storm in Bhola on Wednesday.

One person was killed and at least 700 houses were damaged as nor'wester lashed Moulvibazar, Rangpur and Nilphamari districts on Monday night and early yesterday.

In Moulvibazar, a day labourer was killed and over 100 houses were damaged as nor'wester swept over Dolubari, Bhunobir, Shasan, Boulashir and Mirjapur villages in Srimongal upazila on Monday night.

The dead was identified as Musabb

While tornadoes and floods have ravaged the South and the Midwest, the remote western edge of the Oklahoma Panhandle is quietly enduring a weather calamity of its own: its longest drought on record, even worse than the Dust Bowl, when incessant winds scooped up the soil into billowing black clouds and rolled it through this town like bowling balls.

With a drought continuing to punish much of th

Environmental groups on Tuesday sued the city of Chicago's water treatment authority, charging its sewage promotes algae growth that is choking Midwestern rivers and contributes to the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone."

The federal lawsuit demands Chicago's Metropolitan Water Reclamation District deal with frequent runoff of untreated sewage into local waterways during storms that cause problems dow