At the city's LaGuardia international airport, one of the main terminals had to be shut down after the power went out at 8:00 am (1200 GMT), leaving hundreds of passengers stranded.

The electricity utility Con Edison said the spike in commercial and domestic power demand had caused problems with the main feeder cables servicing the airport.

Monday saw the mercury hit 98 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) at LaGuardia -- the highest temperature registered since records started being kept in 1948.

Six hours after the outage began, Con Edison teams were still struggling to restore power.

The terminal closure affected American Airlines and Delta Shuttle flights.

"It hasn't been a madhouse. It's been largely manageable," said Port Authority spokesman Pasquale DiFulco. "That said, we'll be happy when everything's back up and running."

One of New York's main subway lines servicing western Manhattan also lost power Tuesday, grinding to a halt for one and a half hours shortly after the morning rush hour.

"We're not sure if the heat was to blame, but it certainly didn't help," said one New York City Transit official.

The municipal authorities ordered the opening of so-called cooling centers across the city -- air-conditioned facilities normally located in senior citizen and community centers, for use by the general public.

The four-day heat wave, caused by a high-pressure system to the south pumping in hot air from Mexico, resulted in heat advisories being posted in the South, Midwest and Northeast United States.

Record temperatures were also set in Stockton, California (110 degrees) and Salt Lake City, Utah (103 degrees).

"A heatwave like this usually comes about once a year," said a spokesman for the National Weather Service. "The important thing is for people to exercise some common sense, drink enough water and wear light clothes."

A cold front moving in from the Northwest was expected to bring some relief to the country on Wednesday.

Forecasters in Britain said temperarures would peak Wednesday, reaching 39 degrees Centigrade in parts of the southeast. Belgium, Germany and Scandinavian countries were also experiencing unusually hot weather.

The heatwave recalled the summer of 2003, when some 30,000 mainly elderly people died across Europe as a result of dehydration and heat-stroke, but medical authorities in France and elsewhere said lessons had been learned and a repeat was unlikely.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was to visit an old people's home in Paris Wednesday to review procedures.

"There is no reason for disquiet, but we have to be vigilant and the health protection messages have to be constantly repeated," said Health Minister Xavier Bertrand.

In France the electricity supplier EDF was buying in energy from neighbouring countries because of the high use of air-conditioning, and falling output from hydro-electric and nuclear power stations as a result of low, warm rivers.

The soaring temperatures were likely to fall somewhat from Wednesday evening with the arrival of thunderstorms from the west, but it would remain hot, forecasters in France said.

The head of a French research laboratory said the unusually high temperatures were linked to global warming.

"The rules are changing, there's no doubt about it. This is the start of a process. We can expect heatwaves to be more frequent and more extreme as a result of the general rise in temperatures linked to greenhouse gas emissions," said Herve Le Treut , drector of the National Centre for Scientific Research.

Italy's main farmers' union said the country was suffering one of the worst droughts in 30 years with the situation in the north and the centre particularly bad.

Water levels in the lakes of northern Italy have fallen to historic low levels, making the irrigation of crops difficult, the Coldiretti union said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for Britain's Met office said: "We think there's a possiblity of the record being broken in the area to the west of London, where there is a concentration of hot air."

The highest temperature ever recorded in Britain was 38.5 C in Kent on August 10, 2003.

The London underground system, the oldest in the world, was a furnace on Tuesday with a record temperature of 47 C. Bus passengers fared even worse, with temperatures on buses in the City of London, the main financial district, reaching 52 C.

Britain's trade union body the TUC has called for workers to be allowed to cast off their jackets and ties and dress casually to help beat the heat and lessen reliance on air conditioning.

Assistant Fire Chief Mark Pare said the 600-foot tanker was unloading gas when lightning struck nearby and set off a fire. He said no injuries were reported.

The blaze had been largely contained by early Wednesday morning, although firefighters were allowing smoldering flames near the dock to burn out, said Armand Randolph, a spokesman for the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency.

The state Department of Environmental Management is investigating whether any fuel spilled into the harbor, said Jeff Neal, a spokesman for Gov. Don Carcieri.

Early, incorrect reports were that the ship was burning. The immediate scene of the fire was not visible to reporters.

Roy Nash, Coast Guard captain of the port for southeastern New England, said ship traffic was temporarily suspended in Providence Harbor until the tanker was able to dock elsewhere. He said the ship was under its own power, and was believed to still have some fuel on board. He said it would be checked for any damage.

Forecasters at the National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm watch for the area earlier in the evening, and bolts of lightning flashed overhead as firefighters poured water onto the flames.

Truck driver John Garrett said he was resting in his truck near the port facility when the storm hit. Looking out a window, he saw a bolt of lightning hit near the dock, followed immediately by a large explosion and fireball.

Garrett said he could feel the heat from several hundred feet away. "I've never seen anything in the world like this," he said.

The fire happened at a terminal owned by Motiva Enterprises, a Houston-based joint operation between Saudi Refining Inc. and Shell Oil Co.

Darci Sinclair, a spokeswoman for Motiva, said the company was investigating.

"Anya was bathing, and I was sitting under a tree," Marina says.

"When it started to rain and thunder struck, I ran to get our things from the meadow. Probably then the lightning struck. I remember falling down and saying, 'I'm unwell.' Then everything went dark."

The lightning struck Marina in the temple, went down through the body and left it near the navel. The gold cross and chain she had been wearing, a Christian symbol, melted and evaporated, leaving deep burns on her neck and chest.

Anya, who evaded the direct strike, fainted too.

"I was running to the tree for shelter, when thunder struck very near, so loudly that I covered my ears, then I saw a flash of light right in front of me... Then I came to myself lying in the grass. I crawled on my elbows to the bag with my mobile phone and called my parents."

A company having a picnic not far away carried the girls into the car and drove them to the hospital.

Marina came to her senses an hour later. Doctors say her survival is a miracle. At first she could not feel her legs, but the doctors said it was just stress, and indeed the next day Marina was already on her feet.

She is still in the hospital, because the deep burns on her neck need constant attendance. The marks will remain on Marina's neck forever.

"Marina is fine, even her heart is working perfectly well, though usually when a person is struck by lightning, the heart stops immediately. It's a really unique case. There are only a few people who survived a lightning strike, and most of them develop telepathic or psychic abilities," says her doctor.

However for now, Marina feels no supernatural abilities. The pain has weakened, and in two weeks she is leaving the hospital.

Communications networks have been severely disrupted, making it difficult to collect reliable information on casualties, the Federation said.

"There has also been widespread damage to roads and bridges, which has left many people displaced or stranded," Timmer said in a statement.

The typhoon, which struck last Friday, totally or partially destroyed more than 11,500 houses, the Red Cross said.

It also destroyed out vast swathes of farmland, a major blow for the secretive communist nation which has long relied on international food handouts after failed harvests.

The Federation said that the North Korean Red Cross mobilized more than 2,300 volunteers to provide first aid and rescue and evacuation support in affected provinces.

The North Korean Red Cross, with Federation help, has sent blankets, kitchen sets, plastic sheeting, water containers and water purification tablets to almost 10,000 families whose homes were completely destroyed in South Pyongan, North Hwanghe and Kangwon provinces.

The rains have also pounded South Korea, leaving at least 19 people dead and 31 missing.

Most victims came from the eastern mountainous province of Gangwon where 17 were killed in landslides or flash floods, South Korean authorities said, adding that more than 3,700 people are homeless.

A slow turn toward the north-northwest or northwest was expected later Tuesday or Wednesday.

The tropical storm watch, indicating tropical storm conditions are possible within 36 hours, extended along the coast from north of Cape Lookout to south of Currituck Beach Light.

"We are watching the storm very closely. With the projected track at this point we're not anticipating problems, but certainly things can change quickly," said Dorothy Toolan, a spokeswoman for Dare County, N.C., which includes the state's northern Outer Banks.

The first named storm of the June-November Atlantic hurricane season, Tropical Storm Alberto, splashed ashore in Florida in mid-June, then plowed northward along the coast past North Carolina's Outer Banks. It was blamed for one drowning.

Experts say the Atlantic Ocean is in the middle of a cycle of increased hurricane activity. Last year, there were a record 28 named storms and 15 hurricanes, including destructive Katrina.

"We believed we were living on firm ground. So this is very shocking," a middle-aged woman told Fuji television after a landslide in central Fukui prefecture.

As much as 500 millimeters (20 inches) of rain has drenched parts of Japan since Saturday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Heavy rain was expected to continue from western to central Japan with "continued risks of serious disasters," an agency advisory said. "Strong caution is needed for landslides and rising rivers causing floods."

Five people died in central Nagano prefecture including a 75-year-old man whose body was found inside a house that was shoved back some 50 meters (160 feet) by a flash flood, officials were quoted by Kyodo news agency as saying.

At least six others went missing in the mountainous province including one rescuer. Nagano authorities piled sandbags to protect residential areas after banks of the major Tenryu river collapsed.

In western Shimane prefecture, a 15-year-old was found dead on flooded farmland after he fled for shelter with his grandparents, police said. "We are yet to learn the whereabouts of his grandparents," a local police officer said.

Rescuers in Shimane also dug an unconscious 69-year-old woman out of her house that was levelled by a mudslide. She was declared dead as paramedics transported her to a hospital, police said.

Her 67-year-old husband managed to dig himself out shortly after the mudslide with only minor injuries.

A 66-year-old man at Yamanashi near Mount Fuji died after falling into a swollen river, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

One mudslide -- which stretched 60 meters wide -- plunged for some 30 meters to destroy the house in Fukui prefecture of a man who went missing along with his 75-year-old mother. A body thought to be the mother was later found, according to police and prefectural officials.

The mudslide also hit a liquefied petroleum gas storage tank, causing a leak that forced an evacuation.

An 80-year-old woman was also found dead after a mudslide buried her house in Okayama prefecture, Kyodo said.

The disaster agency said two other people had died since the rainy season began last month, with one of them buried by a mudslide in late June and the other falling into an irrigation system earlier this month.

Thirty-two people have been injured, four of them seriously, the agency said. Sections of highways were closed by mudslides or cave-ins.

Eleven people remained unaccounted for across Japan, according to the agency.

Suharjono, head of the earthquake division at Jakarta's meteorological agency, told Metro TV that based on the initial estimate of Wednesday's quake strength, it was not strong enough to trigger a tsunami.

But he urged people to be on guard.

On Monday, a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 7.7-earthquake slammed into Java's southern coast, killing more than 530 people. A series of strong aftershocks have rattled the region since then.

The epicenter was located in a sparesly populated pasturing area on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at 33.0 degrees north latitude and 96.3 degrees east longitude, about 70 kilometers south to the county seat of Yushu.

The area was hit by another earthquake measuring 5.0 degrees on the Richter scale on Tuesday.

No casualties from both the quakes have been reported, according to the bureau.

Mahmood did not have information on where exactly the tremor was centered in the frontier region.

Earthquakes are commonly felt in Pakistan.

On October 8, a magnitude 7.6 quake struck the country's northwest and its portion of the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, killing more than 80,000 people and leaving more than three million others homeless.

Peshawar is about 150 kilometers northwest of the capital, Islamabad.

Seventy-eight infestations were confirmed in South Hampton Roads between 1990 and 1999, compared with 124 detected between 2000 and the first part of 2006.

Of the 318 cases of infestation in Virginia, 64 percent have been in South Hampton Roads, according to state records.

The ants also have been discovered in Accomack, Chesterfield, Henrico, York, Isle of Wight, Gloucester and James City counties, and the cities of Hampton, Newport News, Richmond, Williamsburg and Franklin.

The number of Virginia infestation cases has increased because of dry weather conditions that interfered with the treatment process. The chemical used to combat the pests, Dursban, also was phased out and a less effective treatment was introduced.

Another major factor has been an increase in the building of homes, subdivisions and malls, which require the importation of soil, mulch, plants, sod and other products that can be infested by the ants.

Imported fire ants were brought inadvertently by ship to the United States from South America in the 1930s, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In many Southern states, but not Virginia, quarantines are in place to regulate the movement of plants, soil, mulch and other lawn and garden products to ensure shipments do not harbor the ants. The shipments of the articles outside of quarantined areas require inspection and treatment.

The ants are known for their aggressive behavior and venom-packed sting

"If you get them in your backyard, you can't go out and have a picnic," said Frank Fulgham, program manager for the Office of Plant and Pest Services. "And with kids, they can't play out in the yard."

The ants are highly sensitive to disturbances of their mounds and react with swarming, relentless attacks. Some people are allergic to the bites, which typically leave blistering but are rarely life-threatening to humans.

"In the South, they will kill animals," Fulgham told The Virginian-Pilot. "It could be a cow or a dog, if it's something that can't get away from them."

Experts believe the ants will reach a northern point where the winter weather will stop their progress, perhaps Richmond or northern Virginia.

For now, however, they're making their mark in southeastern Virginia.

"We've found them on the Virginia Beach Boardwalk before, so they can pop up anywhere," said Fulgham, who urges residents to contact his agency whenever the ants are detected.