Disasters

Rescue workers dug desperately for survivors on Thursday and struggled to reach areas cut off by raging floods and landslides that have killed at least 388 people in one of Brazil's worst natural disasters in decades.

Amid reports of looting in Brisbane and Ipswitch due to heavy floods, Police Minister Neil Roberts and Commissioner Bob Atkinson have announced Operation Safeguard to deploy 100 policemen from Brisbane and another 100-member squad drawn from interstate police services on Thursday.

Space shuttle Discovery's final mission is delayed again due to additional small cracks on the shuttle's tank. The mission is now off until late February.

The number of weather-related natural calamities rose last year, showing further proof of the growing impact of climate change.

Following the explosion onboard Russian aircraft Tu-154B in Serbia on Saturday, the country’s Federal Transport Overseeing Service, Rostransnadzor, has asked airlines to ban services of the passenger jet until the causes of the explosion are known.

Belgian nationals visiting Sri Lanka can be relieved now, as Belgium government relaxed travel advisory for Sri Lanka from this month, owing to a better security situation in the country, said a statement.

Six years after the tsunami disaster of December, 26, 2004, a technical set-up of tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean has been completed, researchers say.

Delegates at the UN climate change conference in Cancun have agreed on a deal to curb climate change and fund developing countries on Saturday. Bolivia however, raised objections to the proposals drawn up the host Mexico. The draft comes as respite as the last summit in Copenhagen failed to agree on the best way to cut emissions.

No central bank ever began a hyper-inflationary policy because it feared inflation. Such disasters always come because of vanished credit and economic depression. And whether in Germany nine decades ago, or in Argentina twenty years back, or in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe around the turn of this century, stuff actually gets cheaper - not more expensive - in real terms during hyperinflation.

China will have an aging population problem comparable to that of Japan and Western Europe in 30 years or so with perhaps important implications for elderly care and manufacturing.