Fans watching a soccer match in Mendoza reported feeling the Malvinas Argentinas stadium shake, but the game was not interrupted, the Argentine daily newspaper Clarin said in its online edition. The stadium is about 1,000 kilometers (640 miles) west of Buenos Aires.

Civil defense officials told the independent television news network Cronica that the quake was felt in the provinces of San Juan, San Luis, La Rioja and Cordoba. It occurred at 6:08 p.m. local time (2108GMT), at a depth of 140 kilometers (85 miles).

It was the third quake above a 5.0-magnitude to strike the region in four weeks, none of which caused injury or damage.

On Sept. 17, a 6.1-magnitude quake sent panicked residents fleeing from homes close to the epicenter near Pampa de las Salinas, 1,400 kilometers (745 miles) northeast of Buenos Aires. That quake was also felt in the provinces of Mendoza, San Juan and La Rioja.

On Aug. 24, a 6.4-magnitude quake struck about 110 kilometers (70 miles) west of San Salvador de Jujuy, near the border with Chile.

A firefighter videotaped two twisters moving through St. James, said Phelps County emergency management director Bruce Southard. He estimated the tornadoes were on the ground for 10 minutes.

"It's devastating," he said. "We've got nice houses that are just tore to pieces."

In northwest Arkansas, Deborah Massey, 51, died when her boat was struck by lightning as she and Preston Starritt, 36, both of Prairie Grove, were on Bob Kidd Lake, Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder said. Starritt was injured and treated at a hospital.

Several tornadoes were reported in the region, where power was knocked out, trees broken and at least one home damaged.

"I've seen storms come through, but nothing that's taken down poles like this," Springdale police Sgt. Billy Turnbough said flagpoles bent sideways.

In Missouri, 12-year-old Devin Wilburn said students at St. James Middle School had just completed a tornado drill. Thirty seconds later, they interrupted their science test to rush back into the hallway for the real thing. The children knelt down and put their hands over their heads, he said.

"I just heard a bunch of thunder and ripping, because the top of the roof came off," Devin said.

No teachers, children or staff members were injured.

Preliminary information indicates a tornado warning was issued about 30 minutes before the storm hit, said Gino Izzi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Springfield.

A tornado also destroyed about half of the Manchester Packaging Co. plant, which makes polyethylene film and bags, according to its Web site. Southard said the twister ripped 70-foot-by-70-foot holes in the main building of a Wal-Mart distribution center and another Wal-Mart building used to service trucks.

Devin's father, Chuck Wilburn, was sleeping when he was awakened by a "roaring wind noise." Wilburn, 42, said he ran to let the dogs in from outside.

"I opened the door and saw the barbecue grill flying across the yard," Wilburn said, whose house lost a window and some siding.

Southard estimated between 100 and 125 homes were damaged. He said most the damage was to roofs but some porches also collapsed.

The storm also ripped down trees, blocking traffic and leaving about half the city of about 6,000 people without power. St. James is 86 miles southwest of St. Louis.

Authorities also reported that two other small tornadoes downed trees and took off shingles in rural parts of southeast Missouri. Tornadoes and hail were also reported in northern Arkansas.

In Illinois, high winds destroyed three mobile homes and a log home in Massac County, and about a dozen homes were damaged in Jackson County, said Patti Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.

About 15,000 Commonwealth Edison customers in the Chicago area were without electricity after a storm downed trees, the utility said.

In western Kentucky, state police dispatcher Shari Clapp said weather spotters in Livingston County had reported three unconfirmed sightings of tornadoes near the Ohio River.

Some highways in Livingston and Henderson counties closed because of fallen trees and flash flooding, authorities said.

"So far nearly 100 bodies have been retrieved from the sea at half a dozen spots," said an official in the badly hit coastal district of Barguna.

Authorities say that while many boats have managed to return to shore, the navy and coastguard are still looking for hundreds of fishermen who remain unaccounted for.

Surviving fishermen said they had been caught off guard as weather authorities had failed to warn them of the impending storm. Dhaka's weather office denied this, saying an alert was issued well in advance.

The storm also left around 10,000 people in coastal areas homeless, and flash floods inundated crop fields.

In the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, the incessant rains and flooding have killed around 30 people, and forced 350,000 living mainly in coastal areas from their homes.

"People have been killed mostly from houses collapsing, lightning, trees landing on them," said Mriganka Biswas from the state's relief department.

"Victims are now living under tarpaulin sheets provided by the government," he said, adding that around 70,000 homes had been destroyed in the state.

In West Bengal's capital, Kolkata, police used boats on Friday to rescue hundreds of families stranded in low-lying slums.

"The situation will be very grave in Kolkata if rain continues," said Sourav Chakraborty, a police officer involved in the rescue operations.

The storms also killed more than 40 people and left nearly 15,000 homeless in Andhra Pradesh state on India's east coast.

In particular, the ministry wanted to cover up the operation of a secret unit dedicated to UFO investigations within the Defence Intelligence Staff. UFO conspiracy theorists have likened the unit, called DI55, to a sort of "Men in Black" agency for defending the Earth against invasion but the released documents show this is far from the truth. One 1995 memo from DI55 to the MoD's public "UFO desk" said: "I have several books at home that describe our supposed role of 'defender of the Earth against the alien menace' - it is light years from the truth!"

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The files were made public following FOI requests by David Clarke, a lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University and his colleague Andy Roberts.

"These documents don't tell us anything about UFOs but they do show how desperate the MoD have been to conceal the interest which the intelligence services had in the subject," said Dr Clarke.

The trail begins with a request, in 1976, from a UFO enthusiast called Julian Hennessy for access to the MoD's records on UFO sightings. A note from the UFO desk to the MoD's head of security on March 23 shows that officials intended to refuse him access on the grounds that the files contain confidential information and "very little of value to a serious scientific investigator".

But the note continues: "This is not to say that the investigation is not taken seriously. The branches have their own methods - and [the public UFO desk] has no 'need to know' about them - but we are aware that DI55 for example sometimes makes extensive inquiries.

"It is undesirable that even a hint of this should become public and we are currently consulting the [Air Historical Branch] on ways of expurgating the official records against the time when they qualify for disclosure [at the Public Records Office]."

Hearing of the background to his fob off 30 years ago Mr Hennessy, who is a local magistrate, was not surprised. "Everything led me to believe there was a major cover up going on," he said."They didn't want to let the public know just how interested they were in these phenomena."

Attempts to alter the public record went on into the 90s. In a note dated April 28 1993 from DI55 to the public UFO desk the unnamed author argued the unit's involvement should be excised from records due to be released under the 30-year rule. But the cat was already out of the bag. A clerical error in 1983 had meant that the distribution list was incorrectly left on a publicly released UFO-related document, so UFO enthusiasts were already asking questions.

"Since then they have obviously been bombarded by people saying who is this DI55, what do they do, what is the extent of their involvement," said Dr Clarke.

Eventually, DI55 decided to allow its involvement to be made public. A note from DI55 to the public UFO desk on 5July 1995 said: "I see no reason for continuing to deny that the [Defence Intelligence Service] has an interest in UFOs. However, if the association is formally made public then the MoD will no doubt be pressured to state what the intelligence role/interest is. This could lead to disbelief and embarrassment since few people are likely to believe the truth that lack of funds and higher priorities have prevented any study of the thousands of reports received."

At this point someone, presumably from the public UFO desk, has scribbled "ouch!" in the margin.

"The lengths they went to to remove any mention of the Defence Intelligence Staff's central role in investigating sightings suggests they had something to hide," said Dr Clarke. "But what they were hiding was not evidence of ET visits but embarrassment at the fact they were never allowed to spend public money on investigating the subject in any depth." The full extent of DI55's involvement has subsequently been made clear by a report released to Dr Clarke in May and reported in the Guardian. That threw up a 500-page document which brought together everything the unit knew about UFOs, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) as the MoD prefers, including more than 10,000 sightings. It said the existence of UAPs was "indisputable", but blamed the most vexing sighting on airborne "plasmas" formed during "more than one set of weather and electrically charged conditions", or during meteor showers.

Sighting aliens or otherwise?

August 10 1965 A man reported seeing a crimson ball fly out of the side of a hill in Warminster, Wiltshire. A fortnight later, another man photographed a UFO in the centre of Warminster. In 1994 it was claimed the photo was a hoax and the object was made from a cotton reel and a button.

Boxing Day 1980 A UFO reportedly crash landed in Rendlesham forest, Suffolk, near the Woodbridge US air force base. The incident was nicknamed Britain's Roswell in a reference to the famous UFO sighting in New Mexico in 1947. Witnesses said the craft was covered in markings similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs and aliens emerged from it. An airman later confessed the incident was a hoax.

November 28 1980 Policeman Alan Godfrey reported seeing a six-metre wide dome-like object hovering in the air in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. He returned to the site with colleagues and they found the area where the object had supposedly been hovering was dry even though the rest of the road was wet because of earlier rain.

Early 1990s A string of sightings by residents in north Scotland of a UFO regularly flying overhead at great speed. Documents released earlier this year suggested the aircraft was a spy plane called Aurora, designed by the Americans to take covert pictures of the Soviet Union.

May 2006 The MoD released details of Project Condign, a four-year secret study into possible explanations for UFOs. The report concluded that many sightings could be explained as by glowing "plasmas" of gas created by charges of electricity.