Quick heavy rains poured across metro New Orleans Saturday afternoon, dumping several inches of rain in a short amount of time.

A flood advisory was placed over New Orleans until 4 p.m. According to a WWL-TV report, the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board said 4.22 inches of water fell over the metro area in a single hour, causing many roadways to flood.

By 3 p.m., New Orleans' emergency preparedness Twitter account, @nolaready, said the system was 'nearly stationary' over a large portion of the Uptown and Central Business District neighborhoods, with up to an inch of rain expected to fall.

The NOLA Ready Twitter account also reported flooding at the intersections of Tulane and Carrolton, Orleans and Broad, Paris and Burbank and Esplanade and Carrolton, while ProjectNOLA's Facebook page said significant flooding stretched throughout the Mid-City area towards Treme.

Two people died as incessant rainfall caused flood-like situation in Birbhum, West Mindapore and East Midnapore districts of West Bengal on Sunday.

In Saithia at Birbhum, Arnab Chatterjee drowned and died as water level increased in Bakreshwar river while a woman, Satabdi Bajikar drowned in Kuye river whose level had risen at Labhpur in Birbhum.

Several villages and roads in Birbhum district remained submerged as continuous rainfall added to the misery of the people.

Met department's prediction of heavy rainfall in different districts of south Bengal over the next couple of days has added to the apprehension of the flood situation getting worse.

A state of emergency has been declared in Dunedin, Timaru, Waitaki and the wider Otago region, and many residents are leaving their homes with river levels continuing to rise "significantly".

About 100 homes were evacuated in Outram, a rural town west of Dunedin, in the early hours of Saturday morning as water flowed into the township.

Civil Defence said the evacuations impacted on "effectively everything below Orme St", and that evacuations in the rest of Outram may follow.

"It is not safe to drive on roads in and out of Outram. As a result, residents in these streets are being moved to higher ground," Civil Defence said in a statement.

The California state Assembly passed a $3-billion subsidy program for electric vehicles, dwarfing the existing program. The bill is now in the state Senate. If passed, it will head to Governor Jerry Brown, who has not yet indicated if he'd sign what is ostensibly an effort to put EV sales into high gear, but below the surface appears to be a Tesla bailout.

Tesla will soon hit the limit of the federal tax rebates, which are good for the first 200,000 EVs sold in the US per manufacturer beginning in December 2009 (IRS explanation). In the second quarter after the manufacturer hits the limit, the subsidy gets cut in half, from $7,500 to $3,750; two quarters later, it gets cut to $1,875. Two quarters later, it goes to zero.

Given Tesla's ambitious US sales forecast for its Model 3, it will hit the 200,000 vehicle limit in 2018, after which the phase-out begins. A year later, the subsidies are gone. Losing a $7,500 subsidy on a $35,000 car is a huge deal. No other EV manufacturer is anywhere near their 200,000 limit. Their customers are going to benefit from the subsidy; Tesla buyers won't.

This could crush Tesla sales. Many car buyers are sensitive to these subsidies. For example, after Hong Kong rescinded a tax break for EVs effective in April, Tesla sales in April dropped to zero. The good people of Hong Kong will likely start buying Teslas again, but it shows that subsidies have a devastating impact when they're pulled.

That's what Tesla is facing next year in the US.

In California, the largest EV market in the US, 2.7% of new vehicles sold in the first quarter were EVs, up from 0.4% in 2012, according to the California New Dealers Association. California is Tesla's largest market. Something big needs to be done to help the Bay Area company, which has lost money every single year of its ten years of existence. And taxpayers are going to be shanghaied into doing it.

To make this more palatable, you have to dress this up as something where others benefit too, though the biggest beneficiary would be Tesla because these California subsidies would replace the federal subsidies when they're phased out.

Lightning turned night into day across the UK after thunderstorms battered much of southern Britain overnight causing flash floods which ripped through a Cornish village.

A four-foot torrent of water has ripped through Coverack, Cornwall, on Tuesday night, tearing up roads and damaging homes, while lightning was also believed to have been the cause of a fire in east Sussex.

Rescue services were also sent out to pump water out of properties in the south east overnight after heavy downpours caused water levels to rise.

Meanwhile teams in Kent spent two hours overnight removing water from homes in Tunbridge Wells after sixty emergency calls were made in less than an hour including reports of more than 3ft of water in some properties.

Today more warnings are in place for thunder, heavy rain and possible hail across almost the whole of England and Wales apart from the South Coast, with potential for 1.2in of rain in an hour, or even up to 2in (50mm) of rain where conditions linger.

Emergency services said the first reports of flooding came in from Coverack around 3.40pm, before a major incident was declared at 5.20pm as at least seven people were trapped, including six on a rooftop.

Coastguard helicopters were filmed winching a 70-year-old couple from their home after they also got stranded.

In what authorities described as a natural disaster, Istanbul was inundated with flash floods Tuesday that left people stranded on top of their vehicles and stopped some mass transit services

What started as a midnight shower turned into a heavy rainfall by Tuesday morning in Istanbul, triggering flash floods across the country's most populated city. Rainfall disrupted daily life, leaving motorists stranded in their cars and interrupting metro and bus services during morning rush hour when millions of Istanbulites were struggling to get to work. Authorities described the chaotic scenes as a result of one of the worst natural disasters linked to rainfall in the city in recent memory.

The Directorate General of Meteorology warned Monday of heavy rains and possible flooding, saying that summer temperatures were expected to drop from over 30 degrees Celsius to 20. A few showers hit Istanbul late Monday, before it started to pour rain early Tuesday. The rain reached its height at 8:30 a.m., with huge black clouds covering the sky.

Meteorologists said an amount of "rainfall normally seen in a one-month period" hit the city in just a couple of hours. Doğan News Agency reported it was the most severe rainfall in the past 32 years, with 128 kilograms (282 pounds) of rainwater hitting some districts on the European side of the city. Average rainfall for July so far was 32.5 kilograms per square meter. The flash floods also hit northwestern provinces of Çanakkale, Tekirdağ and Balıkesir provinces.

Transport Minister Ahmet Arslan described the heavy rainfall as a "disaster." He said it took just 90 minutes of heavy rain to create the "extraordinary situation."

Heavy rain pounded the central region on Sunday, leaving four people dead and two missing. The Ministry of Public Safety and Security said that more than 300 millimeters of torrential rain battered Cheongju and Boeun cities in North Chungcheong Province over the weekend, displacing over 300 people. More than 680 homes were flooded, as well as about five thousand hectares of farmland, and 517 people were displaced across the nation. Two people died in a landslide in Cheongju, and two others, who went missing while crossing a bridge on Sunday in Goesan County, were found dead on Monday morning.

A flood warning was issued for the county when the water level at a local dam almost surged to a maximum 137-point-65 meters, with 54 local residents evacuating. Train operations for North Chungcheong Province were suspended for about five hours on Sunday as part of the train tracks were submerged by heavy rain.

Officials in Afghanistan reported on 16 July that at least 16 people have been killed and 19 others injured in recent flash floods in the north eastern province of Badakhshan.

Afghanistan's Office of the State Minister for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Affairs (SMDM) said that flooding affected 15 villages three districts of Nusay, Shekiay and Kuf Ab.

Around 250 houses were destroyed and over 100 others left damaged. It is thought that over 300 families have been displaced. SMDM says it is distributing compensation and relief supplies, including food items.

Parts of neighbouring Pakistan have suffered severe flooding since late June. In a report of 04 July, Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said that at least 38 people had died in flooding across the country since 26 June, 2017.

At least nine people drowned while swimming in an Arizona river when they became overwhelmed by flash flooding following heavy rains in the drought-stricken region, officials said on Sunday.

Authorities were searching for at least one other missing person after the incident on Saturday afternoon in the Verde River near Payson, about 90 miles (145 km) northeast of Phoenix, Water Wheel Fire and Medical District Fire Chief Ron Sattelmaier said.

Local media reported at least two children were among the dead. The Gila County Sheriff's Office did not give details of the deceased or those missing.

A search-and-rescue operation was under way involving sheriff's deputies and the Arizona Department of Public Safety Ranger Helicopter, as well as members of the local Whispering Pines Fire Department and U.S. Forest Service, Sheriff Adam Shepherd said in a statement.

Seventeen low-lying villages in Kabuntalan town, Maguindanao, have been flooded for two months now because there's nowhere for stagnant water to go and rivers continue to overflow.

The local government said it expects the flooding to subside by September.

Flood-water levels are almost 2 feet high, submerging the Sangguniang Bayan headquarters, the police station and several houses.