Emergency officials in Pakistan say water levels in flood-stricken southern Pakistan are beginning to recede.

They warned, however, that water levels on the southern reaches of the Indus River were still "exceptionally high".

The floods, triggered by torrential monsoon rains in the north-west, have moved south through the country, submerging towns and farmland.

More than 1,600 people have died and about six million left homeless in Pakistan's worst flooding.

In total, about 17 million of Pakistan's 166 million people have been affected by the disaster.

Five years after Katrina, much has been done to help bolster the Gulf Coast against devastation if another Katrina comes along. Still, problems remain, many tied to Mother Nature. Wetlands erosion , Diminishing delta, A city continuing to sink, Living too close to shore, Will the levees hold? [ MSNBC ]

New Orleans has only gradually resurrected itself after the city drowned five years ago this week following Hurricane Katrina. That process echoes an unpleasantly familiar drama that has played out countless times around the world during human history.

Building on the coasts and near the fertile floodplains of a river has allowed settlements access to water for trade and agriculture since the earliest days of Egypt and Mesopotamia, according to Greg Aldrete, a historian at the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay. That choice has often come back to haunt people when the floodwaters rose.

"That tension has existed since the very dawn of civilization," Aldrete told LiveScience. "People tend to build cities in floodplains." [Graphic:What Happened in New Orleans]

Earthquakes strike along California's San Andreas Fault more often than scientists previously thought, a new study suggests. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and Arizona State charted temblors that occurred there stretching back 700 years.

They found that large ruptures have occurred on the Carrizo Plain portion of the San Andreas Fault — about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles — as often as every 45 to 144 years. But the last big quake was in 1857, more than 150 years ago.

The researchers said that while it's possible the fault is experiencing a natural lull, they think it's more likely a major quake could happen soon.

In Longnan, in poor and remote Gansu province, 20 died and more than 10,000 were trapped following torrential rains and landslides, state television said. Another four died in Gansu's Tianshui city and dozens are missing province-wide.

More than 1,000 people died in the nearby town of Zhouqu when an avalanche of mud roared down the slopes of a mountain last weekend after unusually strong downpours.

More rain is forecast for Zhouqu over the next few days. [ YAHOO NEWS ]

More than 700 people are now known to have died in a massive landslide in north-west China - making it one of the deadliest incidents so far in the country's worst flooding in a decade.

A frantic search is continuing for the more than 1,000 people still missing.

Buildings were hit by a wall of mud so mighty that buildings seven storeys high crumpled like paper, says the BBC's Chris Hogg, in Gansu province.

He says rescuers are searching by hand in the remote, mountainous region.

In Pakistan, the United Nations said the government's estimate of 13.8 million people affected by the country's worst-ever floods exceeded the combined total of three recent megadisasters — the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Rescuers in mountainous Indian-controlled Kashmir raced to rescue dozens of stranded foreign trekkers and find 500 people still missing in flash floods that have killed 140. [ YAHOO NEWS ]

The United Nations said Monday that massive floods in Pakistan had affected 13.8 million people and eclipsed the scale of the devastating 2004 tsunami , as anger mounted among survivors.

The Pakistani government and UN officials have appealed for more urgent relief efforts to cope with the worst floods in more than 80 years, with President Asif Ali Zardari due to return home after a heavily criticised European tour.

The entire northwestern Swat valley, where Pakistan fought a major campaign to flush out Taliban insurgents last year, was cut off at the weekend as were parts of the country's breadbasket in Punjab and Sindh.

"This disaster is worse than the tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake and the Haiti earthquake ," Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told AFP. He said the 13.8 million affected outstripped the more than three million hit by the 2005 earthquake, five million in the tsunami and the three million affected by the Haiti earthquake. The United Nations estimates 1,600 people have died in Pakistan's floods. About 220,000 were killed by the December 26, 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia.

Floods caused by torrential rain left 14 people dead and several others missing in Central Europe over the weekend, with residents rescued from rising waters in boats, buses and helicopters.

While rivers burst their banks and dykes were breached in Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, in western Europe about 500 firefighters tackled wildfires in Portugal.

Three people drowned in southwestern Poland, near the border with Germany and the Czech Republic, Polish Interior Minister Jerzy Miller told reporters on Sunday.[ THE PROVINCE ]

The BBC's Michael Bristow: "A wide river of mud has cut a swathe through towns and villages"

Landslides and floods triggered by torrential rain have engulfed a town in north-western China, killing at least 127 people and leaving 1,300 missing.

Nearly 3,000 soldiers and 100 medics have been sent to assist local rescue teams in Zhouqu, in an isolated, mainly Tibetan region of Gansu province.

More than 45,000 people have reportedly already been evacuated from the area.

Local officials say thick mud, more than 1m (3.3ft) deep in some places, is hampering rescue efforts. [ BBC NEWS ]

The worst floods in Pakistan's history have hit at least 14 million people, officials say.

Twelve million are affected in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces, while a further two million are affected in Sindh.

In Indian-administered Kashmir, at least 113 people died in mudslides.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that a charity connected to a group with alleged al-Qaeda links has been providing flood relief.

Flooding has submerged whole villages in the past week, killing at least 1,600 people, according to the UN.

And the worst floods to hit the region in 80 years could get worse, as it is only midway through monsoon season. [ BBC NEWS ]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration slightly lowered the outlook it released in May, but an above-normal season was still expected, said Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center in Washington.

The updated forecast calls for 14 to 20 named tropical storms, down from a range of 14 to 23. The hurricane season started June 1 and ends Nov. 30, but the peak period for hurricanes runs from August through October.

Eight to 12 storms could become hurricanes, and four to six of those hurricanes could become major storms, blowing winds of 111 mph or more, forecasters said.

"August heralds the start of the most active phase of the Atlantic hurricane season and with the meteorological factors in place, now is the time for everyone living in hurricane prone areas to be prepared," NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said in a statement. Historically during active storm seasons, multiple hurricane strikes are much more likely for both the Gulf Coast and the East Coast in the U.S.

The worst floods in memory in Pakistan have devastated the lives of more than 3 million people, a U.N. spokesman said on Tuesday, while outrage over the unpopular government's response to its people's plight spreads.

The catastrophe, which started almost a week ago and has killed more than 1,400 people, is likely to deepen as more rains are expected. A breakout of water-borne diseases such as cholera could create a health crisis.

The disaster has also, once again, called into question the leadership of President Asif Ali Zardari, already hampered by problems ranging from a stubborn Taliban insurgency, widespread poverty to chronic power cuts in the nuclear-armed U.S. ally.

Pakistan's civilian governments have long been perceived as riddled by corruption and largely ineffective, leaving the powerful military to step in during troubled times.

Up to 2.5 million people have been affected by devastating floods in north-west Pakistan, the International Red Cross has said.

Rescuers are struggling to reach 27,000 people still cut off by the floods, which are the worst in 80 years. At least 1,100 people have died and thousands have lost everything.

"In the worst-affected areas, entire villages were washed away without warning by walls of flood water," the Red Cross said in a statement. There are fears diarrhoea and cholera will spread among the homeless. Food is scarce and water supplies have been contaminated by the floods.

The flooding capped an already deadly week in Pakistan, which is no stranger to calamities, natural or otherwise. A passenger jet flying in bad weather slammed into hills overlooking the capital, Islamabad, on Wednesday, killing all 152 people on board.

Three days of heavy monsoonal rains across the northwest caused scores of rivers to burst their banks, tearing down 60 bridges and scores of roads and buildings. Hundreds of villages and towns, along with massive swaths of agricultural land, were under several feet of water. [ YAHOO NEWS ]

Chilean authorities are working with seismologists in order to prepare for a possible earthquake that could strike the country "any day".

A group of researchers studied the effects of the massive earthquake that jolted the nation in February, killing almost 500 people.

They found that the quake raised the land by as much as 2.5m near the coast and shifted the coastline out to sea.

The findings appeared in the journal Science.

An international team of scientists, led by University of Chile geologist Marcelo Farias, measured land-level changes at 24 sites along the county's coast and in nine estuarine valleys.

They said the 8.8-magnitude earthquake was "the fifth largest event in modern seismology".

The hardest hit region was the northwest, where at least 60 people died and hundreds of thousands were stranded in the region's worst flooding in decades.

Two elderly men clung to a fence post and each other as a raging torrent swept over their heads in the northwest Peshawar area, footage on Pakistan's Dunya TV showed. It was unclear whether they survived.

People were forced to trudge through knee-deep water in some streets in the Swat Valley. A newly constructed part of a dam in the Charsadda district collapsed, while the U.N. said it had reports that 5,000 homes were underwater in that area. At least 10 of 60 people reported dead in the previous 24 hours died near Peshawar when their homes crumbled. [ YAHOO NEWS ]

A village in southern China is suffering after an enormous landslide - triggered by an overwhelming rainstorm - buried dozens of homes, the Associated Press reports. Photos of the aftermath paint a stark picture of lives and livelihoods destroyed.

This is only the most recent flood and landslide to strike China. So far this year, floods have killed at least 823 people and inflicted tens of billions of dollars in property damage - and more rains are expected this week.

[ In Photos: Huge landslide in China ]

Storm-chasing scientists have wrapped up the most dangerous stage of the largest-ever study on why some storms become tornadoes and others don't.

In its latest tropical storm update, WSI called for 19 named storms, down from 20 in its June forecast, but maintained its outlook for 11 hurricanes and 5 intense hurricanes of category three or higher. The 2010 forecast is well above the 1950-2009 averages of 10 named storms, 6 hurricanes, and 2 intense hurricanes.

"Record warm tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures and an enabling wind shear environment should result in a very active tropical season this year," said Dr. Todd Crawford, WSI's chief meteorologist. The disappearance of the El Nino event and a decrease in vertical wind shear both point to the potential for more Atlantic storms, WSI said.

The situation along the nation's longest waterway was at a "critical point", Wang Jingquan, head of the flood control office at the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission, told AFP.

"If heavy rain hits the upper reaches of the river, the Yangtze River basin could suffer from flooding similar to 1998," he said. "And if you add the (imminent) landfall of Typhoon Conson, the situation along the Yangtze River basin is even less optimistic."

China experienced massive deadly floods in 1998 in parts of the Yangtze River basin, which acts as an unofficial dividing line between the north and south of the country. The disaster killed 4,150 people and forced over 18 million more out of their homes, causing economic losses of 255 billion yuan (38 billion dollars), according to state media reports. [ YAHOO NEWS ]

In Yunnan, four people were killed and 42 others went missing after landslides and floods hit Xiaohe Township, Qiaojia County, Zhaotong City, early Tuesday.

As of noon, 53 people had been injured in the disaster.

The provincial government has sent a relief team and relief supplies to Zhaotong. [ Xinhuanet ]

A seismic fault in the Sierra Nevada, believed to have been quiet for more than 3 million years, is active after all and capable of triggering strong quakes with magnitudes of 6 or even 7, scientists say.

The Kern Canyon Fault, stretching for nearly 90 miles from north to south above the San Joaquin Valley east of Bakersfield, cuts beneath a major flood control dam on the Kern River.

For a half-dozen years those who oversee the 57-year-old Isabella flood control dam above Bakersfield, as well as California Institute of Technology geologists, have been studying the fault closely.

"It came as a surprise to see that a long-inactive fault can produce significant quakes," said geologist Elisabeth Nadin of Caltech, who has hiked the sparsely populated rugged terrain and mapped where evidence showed the fault ruptured violently at least 3,300 years ago.

Geologists working for the Army Corps of Engineers have also studied the fault's potential for rupturing and are surveying the dam to determine whether it needs strengthening against future large quakes.

The fault emerged some 86 million years ago when the immense granite mass of the Sierra was uplifting, said Nadin, who has found the evidence of past violence in the rocks around it.