At least 12 persons were killed in rain-related incidents as heavy to moderate rains lashed several parts of Uttar Pradesh since yesterday.

While nine presons were killed in Farukkhabad district in separate incidents of roof collapose, drowning and lightning, two persons were killed in Fatehpur and one in Jaunpur district of the state, official sources said here.

Four persons were killed when the roof of a house collapsed due to heavy rains in Gangapar area and two children were struck down by lightning at village Achara yesterday, they said.

In Fatehpur, two persons, including a 38-year-old woman, were killed in separate incidents of wall collapse triggered by heavy rains, the sources said.

A 16-yar-old girl was killed and three girls perished after being hit by lightning in Baksha area of Jaunpur district, they said.

Jhansi recorded the maximum rainfall of 39.6 mm followed by 35 mm at Fursatganj and 22 mm in Agra, Met office said.

In Lucknow, which recorded a rainfall of 6.8 mm, mercury dropped considerably and the maximum temprature was 31.4, six notches below normal, they said

Recent heavy rain is boosting the Missouri River another 6 to 8 feet - not enough for major trouble but a lesson in this summer's higher risk of flooding.

Saturday through Monday, thunderstorms dumped rain across central and eastern Missouri. Hardest hit was the St. Louis area, with 5 to 6 inches. Jefferson City and Columbia each had 2 inches.

The Missouri River already was at or near flood stage across the state because of record discharges from swollen flood control reservoirs in the upper Great Plains. The recent rain is pushing up the river from Jefferson City to St. Charles, where a crest 5 feet over flood stage is expected Saturday.

That won't quite be enough to flood St. Charles' Frontier Park, but the city is moving Riverfest, the July 4 festival, to nearby Riverside Drive and some adjoining parking lots. A spokeswoman said heavy rain made the park too muddy for carnival rides and other activities.

Wes Browning, chief of the National Weather Service office in Weldon Spring, said the Missouri's rise underscores the warning of a greater chance of major flooding on the river this summer. The Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the reservoirs upriver, has said it must discharge water at a record rate through August because of heavy snowmelt and record springtime rain in Montana and the Dakotas.

Said Browning, "When we get concentrated bursts of rain like this, the river will quickly go up."

The upriver discharges have topped a few levees upstream of Kansas City and inspired widespread grumbling over Army corps policies. The Missouri at St. Charles is expected to run at least 9 to 14 feet higher than normal for most of the summer.

Residents fled in terror today from a block of flats that was set on fire by a bolt of lightning as storms caused chaos across Britain.

The building in Bermondsey, south-east London, was struck at around 2pm - the same time as a control tower at Gatwick Airport was hit, forcing flights to be suspended.

Meanwhile, a teaching assistant escaped unhurt after he was knocked to the ground by a lightning strike at his primary school today.

And tennis fans at Wimbledon were swamped by heavy rain - as were spectators watching the England vs Sri Lanka cricket match at the Oval.

Lightning also hit railway signals, causing serious delays to train services around the South East. It came after 33c heat yesterday also caused problems on the tracks.

Tons of radioactive water were discovered on Tuesday to have leaked into the ground from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, the latest in a series of leaks at the plant damaged in a March earthquake and tsunami, the country's nuclear watchdog said.

More than three months after the disaster, authorities are struggling to bring under control damaged reactors at the power plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

About 15 metric tons of water with a low level of radiation leaked from a storage tank at the plant on the Pacific coast, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

Spectacular footage showing a massive lighting bolt striking a commercial airliner. I wonder how the people on board reacted to that?

There was the brown booby, the plunge-diving tropical seabird that inexplicably hopped aboard a crab boat this spring in Willapa Bay.

And fishermen have caught spear-snouted striped marlin off the Washington coast and a 6-foot leopard shark in Bellingham Bay. The shark, in particular, is hardly ever seen north of Coos Bay, Ore.

Even Bryde's whales, which normally range from Chile to northern Mexico, have washed up dead on southern Puget Sound beaches. Twice. Just since early 2010.

"What Puerto Rico Trench?" Exactly.

The arrows in the map above show the direction the underlying Caribbean tectonic plates are moving, with the resultant build-up of pressure releasing into a myrid of earthquakes in the region over the years. Puerto Rico is the smaller green island in the middle, with the Dominican Republic the larger island to the left. The string of other Caribbean islands is buried under the earthquake markers that flow down the page to the lower right.

You can see the Puerto Rico Trench wraps around the entire zone.

A few little known facts came to the fore as I was researching this area after spotting the recent increase in seismic activity in the Caribbean region.

1. The Puerto Rico Trench is the biggest and deepest such trench in the entire Atlantic ocean.
2. This trench is capable of producing 8.0 earthquakes and above.
3. The risk of a major quake, underwater landslide and mega tsunami are as great as that of the Seattle area. In fact, one recent risk assessment put it at 35 to 55%!
4. The zone hasn't ruptured in over 200 years and that has geologists seriously concerned.

In other words, something major will happen. No one knows when, but it will happen, as it has in the past there.

Add that to the fact that 35 million people live in surrounding low lying areas and you have a monumental disaster just waiting to happen.

The number of flood disasters Russia will suffer over the next five years is likely to be much higher than the average owing to global climate changes, Vladislav Bolov, head of the Emergencies Ministry's Antistkhiya Center said on Tuesday.

"Amid the expected rise in maximum water storage in the snowpack, the intensity of spring floods on the rivers of the Arkhangelsk region, Komi Republic, Yenisei and Lena river basins and the Ural territories will increase," Bolov said.

Radioactive strontium has been found on the seabed near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Kyodo reported on Tuesday.

Tokyo Electric Power Company said strontium-89 and -90 was discovered in the seabed soil about 3 kilometers off the coast, some 20 kilometers north and south of the nuclear complex.

Between 10 and 44 becquerels per kilogram of strontium-90 were detected, which has a half-life of 29 years.

Shigeharu Kato, a member of the Nuclear Safety Commission, said further examination was needed to determine if or how the substances can accumulate in marine life, the NHK news agency reported.

A section of Highway 148 near Luskville, Ontario, is now a canyon 18 metres deep, a victim of Friday's heavy rains.

Remarkably, the family living next to the giant gap owns a construction company with expertise in exactly the type of work that will be needed to fix the road.

Not only does James Nugent, of R.H. Nugent Construction, have 35 years of experience in the field, he has the heavy machinery parked only a few hundred meters from the caved-in road.

"We were called in right off the bat," he said. "There's nothing signed, but we probably will be proceeding with the work under an emergency situation. They want a company that can start right away."

Nugent said the large pipe that ran under that stretch of the highway seems to have been blocked at the intake. The torrents of water late last week stressed the situation causing the pipe to buckle and the ground above the pipe became waterlogged and gave way.