Almost half the United States – the North Central region, the Midwest and the Northeast – faces a high risk of spring flooding over the next two weeks, government forecasters said on Thursday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its spring forecast that the stage was set for potential widespread, record flooding, particularly in the North Central United States for... 

Japan suspends work at stricken nuke plant due to surge in radiation. Japan suspended operations to keep its stricken nuclear plant from melting down Wednesday after surging radiation made it too dangerous to stay. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the workers dousing the reactors in a frantic effort to cool them needed to withdraw. “The workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the... 

Disaster: A satellite picture shows the remains of four reactors. By last night three of them had been hit by explosions while one had caught fire. -California ‘monitoring situation closely’ amid dramatic escalation of disaster -Japan’s nuclear crisis now appears worse than the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 – but not yet as bad as Chernobyl in 1986 -Japan PM tells... 

The partially collapsed Sea Quest Rafting Adventures building following a tsunami wave that struck Keauhou Bay, on the island of Hawaii. Lost homes, sunken boats and damaged piers caused tsunami damage estimates to jump into the tens of millions of dollars Monday. The rough estimate combines damage to homes, businesses, hotels, boats, piers and government infrastructure. The most serious damages were... 

Japan faced a potential catastrophe on Tuesday after a quake-crippled nuclear power plant exploded and sent low levels of radiation floating toward Tokyo, prompting some people to flee the capital and others to stock up on essential supplies. The crisis appeared to escalate late in the day when the operators of the facility said one of two blasts had blown a hole in the building housing a reactor,... 

Devastation: The earthquake that struck off the coast of Japan on Friday was a once-in-a-millennium event, scientists say. The earthquake that struck Japan on Friday was so powerful that it actually moved the whole planet by 25cm, experts say. According to Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology the 9.0 magnitude ‘quake was so powerful it shifted the axis around which the... 

Officials in protective gear near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, in Koriyama, March 13, 2011. An American nuclear expert says radiation from Japan could spread across the Pacific and reach the United States if a complete meltdown occurs at a Japanese nuclear facility damaged as a result of last week’s earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Nuclear expert Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund... 

An official scans a woman for signs of radiation in Nihonmatsu City. Nuclear experts have warned the next few days will be crucial in determining exactly how bad the fallout from the Fukushima power plant disaster could be. They say advanced Japanese engineering at the 40-year-old facility will avoid a Chernobyl-style disaster, but any radiation leak could still have disastrous consequences. During... 

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday that the United States rushed coolant to a Japanese nuclear power plant as a precaution after a 8.9-magnitude earthquake hit the U.S. ally. Obama told reporters at the White House that when he spoke to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Friday morning, he ” specifically asked him about the nuclear plants and their potential vulnerability as a consequence... 

Catastrophe: The true scale of the devastation that the tsunami unleashed is clear in this picture of the port city of Minamisanriku town where 10,000 people are unaccounted for. Half of the population of a Japanese coastal town are still unaccounted for as the death toll from the massive earthquake and tsunami looks set to rise. Government officials revealed the fate of 9,500 people in the north eastern... 

In photo taken on March 12, 2011, people wait to be rescued from building rooftops in the city of Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, where houses have been swept away by tsunami following a catastrophic earthquake in Japan the previous day. Damage caused by Friday’s catastrophic earthquake in Japan expanded Saturday, with the combined number of people who have died or are unaccounted for is feared... 

A file photo of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. An explosion and feared meltdown at a Japanese nuclear plant Saturday exposed the scale of the disaster facing the country after a massive quake and tsunami left more than 1,000 dead. Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the 8.9-magnitude quake and the terrifying tsunami which followed were an “unprecedented national disaster” and... 

More than 10,000 people in parts of eastern Russia were evacuated Friday amid fears of a tsunami hitting the region after the massive earthquake in northern Japan, Russian media reported Friday, citing national emergency services. Evacuation efforts focused on the island of Sakhalin and the island group of South Kurils, with a special focus on the Kuril islands of Kunashir and Shikotan. Residents... 

A zombie ant infected with the parasitic fungus bites the neck of one of its dead fellows, mistaking it for a leaf vein. ‘Zombie ants’ may sound like the title of an Ed Wood movie, but, according to National Geographic, they are quite real. Oddly, there’s nothing very zombie-like about the actual ants. It’s only when a particular fungus takes over the ant’s brain that... 

Part of houses swallowed by tsunami burn in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture (state) after Japan was struck by a strong earthquake off its northeastern coast Friday, March 11, 2011. A ferocious tsunami spawned by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded slammed Japan’s eastern coast Friday, killing at least 60 people as it swept away boats, cars and homes while widespread fires burned out of control....