Flooding across large parts of Myanmar has displaced more than 100,000 people, causing two deaths, while dramatic riverbank erosion has washed away a Buddhist pagoda, officials, residents and state media said on Monday.

Water levels have risen steadily since unrelenting monsoon rain began to lash the heart of the Southeast Asian country in early July, driving some people to higher land or seek shelter in Buddhist monasteries, a disaster relief official said.

"The situation is under control, but what happens now will depend on the weather," Ko Ko Naing, director general of the ministry of social welfare, relief and resettlement, told Reuters.

"We are prepared to support the flood-hit areas because flooding happens every year."

The government has provided food and other assistance to a total of 116,817 displaced people by Monday, as well as longer-term shelter for those outside settlements where flood waters are not expected to subside immediately, he said.

One man drowned in the floods in the Sagaing region and another was swept away while crossing a stream in Chin state, said a resettlement official in the ministry, Kay Thwe Win.

When it rains, it pours! Just ask residents living just outside Harrisburg, Pa., where a quick-hitting but exceptionally intense downpour dumped an unbelievable amount of rain.

In a single hour, just before 7 p.m., the atmosphere unloaded 4.27 inches at Harrisburg International Airport in Middletown, Pa. Over an inch came down in a mere 10 minutes between 6:15 and 6:25 p.m.


Harrisburg's chance of getting even 3.5 inches in an hour was just 0.1 percent, much less over four inches, tweeted meteorologist Alex Lamers.

In all, 4.71 inches of rain fell Sunday, shattering records for the date and ranking as one of the top five daily rain totals ever recorded in the Harrisburg area.

Roughly 120,000 Akita Prefecture residents were ordered or advised to evacuate on Sunday as the risk of flooding and landslides rose following torrential rain in Tohoku, authorities said.

No injuries have been reported so far.

On Sunday afternoon, the Meteorological Agency warned of more flooding as an active rain front that brought record rainfall to parts of Akita decided to park itself over the Tohoku region.

The cities of Yurihonjo, Daisen and Senboku, as well as the town of Misato, collectively ordered 24,000 residents to evacuate after it was reported that houses had been flooded and landslides had struck various parts of Akita, local officials said.

Another 96,000 people in six cities and three towns in the prefecture on the coast of the Sea of Japan were issued evacuation advisories and urged to prepare for floods and landslides, the officials said.

The storm caused flooding along stretches of the Omono River, while several other rivers were deemed at risk of overflowing their banks.

The little town of Pearl City, Ill. is experiencing what their fire chief is calling a 100-year flood.

"This is probably our fourth 100-year flood in about 14 years," Pearl City Fire Chief Brent Schneider told KWQC.

He says that current flood waters are about a foot above the level they reached in 2010, and the flood has yet to crest.

All roads in and out of the town from the North, East, and West are impassable. Schneider says that though there are a few roads to the South that are usable, all but one are still difficult to navigate.

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."