At least 15 persons succumbed under cold weather conditions in Uttar Pradesh as the winter chill gained in intensity in northern India today with dipping temperatures in Jammu and Kashmir and heavy snowfall in Uttarakhand.

In Delhi, the maximum and minimum temperatures were slightly higher than that recorded yesterday although the conditions continued to be bleak under largely overcast skies.

In UP, falling temperatures coupled with a spell of rainfall led to a worsening of the conditions, leading to five deaths in Jaunpur district and three in Hamirpur.

Two casualties each were reported in the Etah, Barabanki and Sitapur districts while one person died in the cold in Bhadoi, sources said.

The national capital recorded a minimum of 11.4 degrees Celsius today, which was four notches above the normal and higher than the 8 degrees at which it had settled yesterday.

Wildfires in Southern California near Azusa Pacific University have claimed at least 1,700 acres and destroyed at least six homes.

But amid the flames, one iconic structure is still standing.

A 10- to 12-foot cross on top of a mountain peak in the Azusa mountains is visible for miles. The cross was originally erected in 2007, and many local residents often hike up to the lookout spot where it stands overlooking the San Gabriel Valley.

This week, flames ripped through the area and the cross appeared to be lost, according to early local reports. But the wood structure, which has become a fixture on Azusa Peak, survived unscathed.

"Everything in the mountains is burnt and gone, including the "A" for Azusa. After houses were burnt down, hundreds evacuated and the city covered in smoke, there was one thing left, not only standing, but untouched. God is good, God is powerful and God is worthy of all praise," one local person posted on Facebook.

A three-week drought that parched Argentina's Pampas farm belt in December is quietly wilting this year's corn crop estimates for the South American grains powerhouse and will likely nudge world food prices higher. Local traders and analysts have cut their harvest estimates for this season to the 18 million to 25 million tonne range, way under the prediction offered by the farm minister just a month ago of more than 32 million tonnes. Plummeting forecasts in the world's No 3 corn supplier will likely support global prices after the US Department of Agriculture last week bucked trade expectations by cutting its forecast for US 2013/14 corn ending stocks. Weeks of record heat took a toll on budding Argentine corn fields last month. Later-planted soy, Argentina's main crop, was in earlier stages of development, shielding it from the irreversible hurt suffered by corn growing in adjacent fields.

The death toll in days of floods and landslides in Indonesia has climbed to 23, an official says, as torrential rain pounded the capital.

Families in Jakarta neighbourhoods waded through murky chest-high flood waters, clutching their belongings, while others were ferried to safety in rubber dinghies, local TV stations showed.

"Five people have died in Jakarta so far from drowning or electrocution in the floods," National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nurgoho said.

More than 4300 people in the capital have been displaced by the floods, which also worsened the city's notorious traffic jams.

Meanwhile the death toll rose to 18 late on Friday in the northern part of Indonesia's Sulawesi island, which has suffered flash floods and landslides.

Two people there are still missing, Mr Nugroho said.

Traffic has come to a halt in downtown Detroit after a sinkhole opened up in the middle of one of the city's main streets.

The disruption occurred just blocks from the North American International Auto Show and could take days to repair.

The hole originally was about twice as big as a manhole cover but now measures about 14 feet by 10 feet and is on Randolph street at the intersection of Jefferson, next to the Coleman A. Young municipal building and the Millender Center, WWJ-AM reports.

About four dozen pilot whales in shallow waters off of southwest Florida are being monitored by wildlife officials.

Two of the whales died and a third will be euthanized, officials said.

A handful of the whales stranded near shore in Lee County, while more than a dozen others swam nearby, said Kim Amendola of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service.

An additional 12 whales were spotted farther offshore earlier in the morning.

Necropsies would be performed on the three beached whales, said NOAA regional stranding coordinator Blair Mase.

The remaining whales were listless and emaciated, and many wouldn't react if a boat approached them, Mase said.

Dozens of Azle residents are planning a trip to the state capitol to send a message to the Texas Railroad Commission.

Organizers have named the bus trip "Shake the Ground in Austin," and they expect at least 50 people to show up for the regularly scheduled Texas Railroad Commission meeting Tuesday morning.

Some Azle residents believe there is a link between local fracking injection wells and a series of recent earthquakes. In a one-month span, about 30 minor earthquakes hit the area.

The Texas Railroad Commission regulates oil and gas operations. Earlier this month, more than 800 Parker County residents attended a meeting hosted by TRC Commissioner David Porter at Azle High School and pressed him for answers about the earthquakes. However, some residents left the meeting more angry and frustrated than when it began.

"We need to get some relief for people who are having their homes damaged by these earthquakes," said Sharon Wilson, Texas organizer for Earthworks Oil & Gas Accountability Project.

Four people were killed and 18 others were injured, at least four of them critically, in two separate explosions at industrial plants in Nebraska and Oklahoma on Monday, authorities said.

Two died when the three-story International Nutrition Inc. animal feed plant collapsed and burst into flames about 10 a.m. (11 a.m. ET) in Omaha, Neb., officials said. Four of the 17 other people injured there were critically wounded, interim Omaha Fire Chief Bernie Kanger said Monday night.

Witnesses described hearing a loud noise and then seeing a fireball seconds before the building collapsed.

Six hours later, two more people died and a third suffered head burns when a furnace exploded at the Mid-America Steel and Wire facility in rural Madill, Okla., the Marshall County Sheriff's Office told NBC News. The condition of the third person couldn't immediately be determined Monday night.

Both of the victims of the Omaha incident were on the second floor of the International Nutrition building. One of the bodies was recovered late Monday afternoon, but the second remained at the scene Monday night. Operations to recover that body were suspended Monday night because of severe weather.

All of the 36 other employees who were in the building when it collapsed were accounted for, Kanger said. Ten were taken to hospitals, four of them with critical injuries. Seven other people with minor injuries were treated at the scene.

Gyrfalcon in Kerry again - Fenit in north Kerry this time.

The same bird that was seen in Ballyferriter and Liscannor (http://www.irishbirding.com/birds/web) in November?

Locations not far apart as the falcon flies.

What a stunning bird.

* Draft report outlines solutions to climate change

* World doing too little to meeting temperature goal-UN

* Suggestions include burying emissions, planting more trees

Governments may have to extract vast amounts of greenhouse gases from the air by 2100 to achieve a target for limiting global warming, backed by trillion-dollar shifts towards clean energy, a draft U.N. report showed on Wednesday.

A 29-page summary for policymakers, seen by Reuters, says most scenarios show that rising world emissions will have to plunge by 40 to 70 percent between 2010 and 2050 to give a good chance of restricting warming to U.N. targets.

The report, outlining solutions to climate change, is due to be published in Germany in April after editing by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It will be the third in a series by the IPCC, updating science from 2007.

It says the world is doing too little to achieve a goal agreed in 2010 of limiting warming to below 2 degrees (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, seen as a threshold for dangerous floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.

To get on track, governments may have to turn ever more to technologies for "carbon dioxide removal" (CDR) from the air, ranging from capturing and burying emissions from coal-fired power plants to planting more forests that use carbon to grow.

Most projects for capturing carbon dioxide from power plants are experimental. Among big projects, Saskatchewan Power in Canada is overhauling its Boundary Dam power plant to capture a million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

And, if the world overshoots concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere consistent with the 2C goal, most scenarios for getting back on track "deploy CDR technologies to an extent that net global carbon dioxide emissions become negative" before 2100, it says.