Undisclosed number of people held as thousands protest over allegedly botched response to flooding in eastern city of Yuyao

Arrests have been made after large anti-government protests in an eastern Chinese city hit by catastrophic flooding, an official newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Thousands took part in theprotest in the Zhejiang province city of Yuyao on Tuesday and an undisclosed number were arrested for "radical acts", including pelting police with bricks and flipping over government vehicles, the official English-language Global Times reported. It said residents were angered over an allegedly botched response to the flooding and the slow restoration of electricity and other basic services.

Such protests, termed mass incidents by the government, occur regularly around China, sparked by incidents ranging from traffic accidents to industrial pollution and official abuses of power. Public outrage is often exacerbated by perceptions of special treatment for the rich and powerful and by distant and unresponsive autocratic leaders appointed from above by the Communist party.

The flood situation in Odisha continued to remain grim on Sunday, mainly in worst-hit Ganjam district, as the death toll rose to 19.

"All the deaths were due to wall collapse and drowning," Special Relief Commissioner P.K. Mohapatra said.

The low pressured induced rains led to fresh floods in Budhabalang river in Mayurbhanj district with water gushing into district headquarters town of Baripada and 50 villages, official source said.

In Khurda district, breaches occurred near Patapur, Manikapur, Achutarajpur and Srinibaspur of Banapur area after the Salia Dam overflowed, the sources said.

The very heavy rainfall damaged 96 distribution transformers of the Central Electricity Supply in the district.

A population of 16.50 lakh people were affected in 10 districts, as over 60 villages remained marooned in worst-hit Ganjam, the sources said.

The state government was hopeful that the situation would improve soon as the severity of the week - long rains had started declining in most areas.

"Though most parts of coastal Odisha are experiencing rain, the intensity has reduced and the situation will gradually improve," Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Surya Narayan Patro said.

In a sign of relief to the people of Ganjam, major rivers like Rusikulya, Godahada and Vansadhara were now flowing below the danger mark.

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says water has overflowed 12 barriers around tanks holding radioactive water. Tokyo Electric Power Company says some of the water may have reached the ocean.

The utility says workers found water overflowing from five barriers Sunday afternoon. They found additional overflows in seven barriers Sunday evening.

TEPCO says the barriers are 30-centimeter-high. Some of them have already contained at least 20-centimeters of rain water. But workers can pump out only a couple of centimeters a day.

More than 100 millimeters of rain was recorded at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant over four hours on Sunday afternoon.

The operator of the crippled plant also says workers released some of the water accumulated inside barriers into the ground. The utility says the water met safety standards for radioactivity approved by the Nuclear Regulation Authority.

From the BBC - "As many as 500,000 people in India have been evacuated as a massive cyclone sweeps through the Bay of Bengal towards the east coast.

Cyclone Phailin, categorized as "very severe" by weather forecasters, is expected to hit Orissa and Andhra Pradesh states on Saturday evening.

The Meteorological Department has predicted the storm will bring winds of up to 220km/h (136mph).

A super-cyclone in 1999 killed more than 10,000 people in Orissa.

But officials say this time they are better prepared, the BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Orissa reports.

A typhoon caused deadly mudslides that buried people and destroyed homes on a Japanese island Wednesday before sweeping up the Pacific coast, grounding hundreds of flights and disrupting Tokyo's transportation during the morning rush. At least 14 deaths were reported and more than 50 people were missing.

Hardest hit was Izu Oshima island about 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Tokyo. Rescuers found 13 bodies, most of them buried by mudslides, police and town officials said. Dozens of homes were destroyed, and more than 50 people are missing. "We have no idea how bad the extent of damage could be," town official Hinani Uematsu said.

One woman from Tokyo died after falling into a river and being washed 10 kilometers (6 miles) downriver to Yokohama, police said. Two sixth-grade boys and another person were missing on Japan's main island, Honshu, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.

More than 350 homes have been damaged or destroyed, including 283 on Izu Oshima, it said.

A powerful typhoon is bearing down on Japan - and its path is set to go through the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. It's less than 24 hours until the storm is due to hit. The storm has been branded a "once in a decade event".

The country's weather agency has issued warnings of torrential rain and strong winds ahead of the coming typhoon, Wipha.

450 flights have been canceled across Japan in measures against the coming typhoon. The combined cancelations will affect 60,850 passengers, Japan Airlines Co said.

East Japan Railway Co said it had canceled 31 bullet trains going north and west from Tokyo, Reuters reported.

The typhoon is moving towards the country at a speed of 35 kilometers per hour, and is currently to the south of the country in the Pacific ocean.

Near its center, the speed of the typhoon can exceed 144 kilometers per hour.

"Wipha will remain a strong and expansive extra-tropical system as it tracks along the eastern coast of Japan," the US-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported on its website.

The exact track of Wipha is crucial: if its center passes just west of Tokyo, a large storm surge would affect the city of more than 35 million people and potentially bring major flooding.

The events around the world have been unprecedented over the last few weeks. Some of the most dramatic and unbelievable footage I've ever seen from events that took place in the past week or so. Please use these videos for awareness to these ongoing extremes that seem to be getting worse each week. Prepare for disasters in your area! You're no different than others that are already dealing with them and most were not ready...

In just a couple of weeks we saw a devastating typhoon hit Japan and China, a 'one-in-one-thousand-years' flood hit Colorado, record rainfall in Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, Brazil, and India, fireballs turning night into day over Canada and the US, a powerful tornado in Sao Paulo, a 7.7 earthquake in Pakistan that formed a new island in the ocean, followed just 4 days later by 7.2 in the same region, a 7.0 earthquake in Peru, a daytime fireball in Alabama...these are just some of the highlights from the last week of another crazy month on planet Earth!

Thanks for watching here and stay safe!

About two million people in 27 provinces are still being affected by flooding, the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department reported on Sunday.

The death toll from the floods had risen to 31 as of Sunday morning, the department said.

Chanthaburi, Chon Buri and Khon Kaen provinces have recently been hit by flooding, but the situation had eased in Kanchanaburi, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Chumphon, Kalasin, Nakhon Ratchasima, Phayao, Mae Hong Son, Lampang and Mukdahan.

According to the department, the Pasak Jolasid dam was holding 1.04 billion cubic metres of water and was discharging 60.5 million cubic metres of water every three hours.

Water levels in the Chao Phraya river in the eastern part of Ayutthaya's Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya district had risen by five to eight centimetres.

In Ayutthaya's Tha Rua district, water levels continued to rise and 55 villages had been hit by floods.

In Ayutthaya's Nakhon Luang district, water levels in the Pasak river increased to 7.54 metres, about 0.76 metre higher than its banks.

A powerful typhoon has left 75 people missing after sinking three Chinese fishing boats in the South China Sea, media reports say. Citing maritime authorities, Xinhua news agency said on Monday that "three fishing boats have sunk since Sunday afternoon."

The incident took place after the vessels with 88 fishermen aboard encountered strong winds near the Paracel Islands, said a statement released by the Hainan government in south China. "Two of the vessels sank Sunday and contact with the third has been lost," it said. Typhoon Wutip also forced tens of thousands of people to flee high-risk areas in central Vietnam on Monday.

The powerful typhoon, with sustained winds of up to 93 miles per hour, was expected to rock the central coast later Monday. Disaster official Le Tri Cong said more than 43,000 people were evacuated from coastal areas to safe places in Quang Tri Province as of Sunday night.

Many cultures recalled a period of unbearable cold, which they associated with a distant mythical age of 'creation', when the sun did not yet shine or fire had not yet been obtained.

Such tales are hardly surprising for higher latitudes, such as the Viking sagas of Iceland, but present a palaeoclimatological puzzle elsewhere.

For example, the Cherokee (originally along the Tennessee), who should be quite accustomed to climatic extremes, claimed that the first fire was confined to a special tree - arguably an axis mundi - at a time of lasting cold:

'In the beginning there was no fire, and the world was cold, until the Thunders (Ani´-Hyûñ´tikwalâ´ski), who lived up in Galûn´lati, sent their lightning and put fire into the bottom of a hollow sycamore tree which grew on an island. ... This was a long time ago. ... still there was no fire, and the world was cold ...'

Eventually, mythical beings succeeded in acquiring the fire. At tropical latitudes meanwhile, the Quiché Maya (Guatemala) related that their first ancestors were overcome by circumstances most peculiar for central America:

'After that a great downpour began, which cut short the fire of the tribes. And hail fell thickly on all the tribes, and their fires were put out by the hail. Their fires didn't start up again. ... And so again the tribes arrived, again done in by the cold. Thick were the white hail, the blackening storm, and the white crystals. The cold was incalculable. They were simply overwhelmed. Because of the cold all the tribes were going along doubled over, groping along ...'

And the Bibbulmun nation (southwestern tip of Australia) referred to the 'Dreamtime' or the 'ancestral' time (Demma Goomber) as the 'Nyitting times, the cold, cold times of long ago'. As the name says, the Bibbulmun qualified this past era as one dominated by unprecedented cold - and, consequently, by a savage mode of living:

'In that far-off time Australia was not so warm and congenial as it is to-day. It was cold and bleak, and great glaciers of ice covered many of its hills and valleys. ... "the icy cold (nyitting) times of long, long ago". Now, in an icy cold country one must have fires, but there was a time when the Bibbulmun people had no fires, and they had to eat their meat raw and drink the blood of the animals they killed to warm their bodies.

The theme of a cold epoch meshes with the notion of 'primordial darkness' reported universally to have preceded the formation of the present natural environment. Another associated motif is that the embryonic earth was excessively muddy and wet, a necessary consequence of the earth's putative original submersion in primeval waters. In addition, the moist earth is often linked with the aftermath of the deluge and the first appearance of humans and the sun. Though scholars never seem to have compiled the material, let alone considered it, the literature is awash with examples. A selection follows.