At least 25 people have been killed in heavy rains and flooding in the southwestern Angolan province of Namibe, a report said on Sunday.
"We flew over some areas and we learned that the situation was serious," Home Affairs Minister Sebastiao Martins told the Angola Press news agency after visiting at the weekend.
The government has not released estimates on the damage caused in the Atlantic coast area about 750 km (460 miles) south of the capital Luanda.
According to a 2009 Angola, Namibia and Zambia reports, floods are a continuing natural disaster which began in early March 2009 and have resulted in the deaths of at least 131 people and have otherwise affected around 445,000 people.
There are fears that the flood crisis in this neighboring countries could exacerbate diseases already present in the area, particularly cholera and malaria. Cholera is transmitted through contaminated water and is linked to poor hygiene, overcrowding and inadequate sanitation. Though it can be treated easily, cholera is a major killer in developing countries.
This is a troublesome situation as health authorities have previously warned about Cholera outbreak which could take as many lives of people in the region. UNICEF once emphasized on how food insecurity could provoke up to 100,000 severely malnourished children, given the high cost of food, localized rain failures and flooding. Including the ongoing cholera outbreak which resulted in 9,397 cases with 222 deaths according to a 2008 statistics.
Source:
Reuters,"Heavy rains kill at least 25 people in Angola", accessed March 7, 2011
Regions of Queensland (left) have begun re-emerging from the floodwaters, as Brisbane started a mass clean-up following the deluge that has swamped thousands of homes over the past few days.
As the water receded, putrid mud and debris was left covering much of the city, and many were tentatively returning to their homes to survey the damage following one of Australia's worst natural disasters.
"There is a lot of heartache and grief as people start to see for the first 
time what has happened to their homes and their streets," Queensland state premier, Anna Bligh (right), said.
"In some cases, we have street after street after street where every home has been inundated to the roof level."
The flooding across Australia's north-east has so far caused 25 deaths, and another 55 people remain missing.
There is still concern that officials will find more bodies when they are able to reach towns hit by flash flooding (left) on Monday. Most of those missing are from Toowoomba, a city west of Brisbane in the Lockyer valley, where a sudden downpour caused a flood likened to an inland tsunami.
Police commissioner Bob Atkinson they may never be able to find everyone swept away by the torrent.(Right: rescue workers pull cars from flooding)
"We would certainly hope they would find them all," Atkinson said. "Regrettably, we could not exclude completely the possibility that some may never be found."
Military helicopters (left) endeavored to reach those 
stranded today to provide food, clothing and supplies as health officials warned residents to throw away anything that had touched the contaminated waters.
Throughout Brisbane many reported a highly toxic smell of mud and debris spreading through the area.
"What the city has to prepare itself for ... is the unbearable stench," Bligh said. "The smell of it is just unspeakable." (Right: Brisbane flooding)
While power has been restored to 170,000 homes in Brisbane, around 66,000 homes across south-east Queensland remain without electricity.
The prime minister, Julia Gillard (left), doubled the number of defense personnel involved in the recovery effort to 1,200, which is the largest deployment for a natural disaster since Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin in 1974.
"There's a lot of dirt, a lot of filth, a lot of mess that needs to be cleaned up," Gillard said. "We've been through some very difficult days and there's still a lot to go through in the weeks and months that lie ahead." (Right: Major roads still flooded in Brisbane)
Source:
The Guardian,"Australian floods: Clean-up begins in Brisbane", by Lee Glendinning, accessed January 13, 2011
The dam's water flow reached 56,000 cubic meters per second (1.96 million cubic feet), the biggest peak flow this year, with the water height reaching 158 meters (518 feet), the official Xinhua news agency reported. This is about 10% less than the dam's maximum capacity.
Chinese officials for years have boasted the dam could withstand floods so severe they come only once every 10,000 years. The dam is the world's largest hydroelectric project.
Floods this year have killed at least 823 people, with 437 missing, and have caused damage worth tens of billions of dollars, according to the state flood control agency. More heavy rains are expected for the south-east, south-west and north-east parts of the country.
Thousands of workers sandbagged riverbanks and checked reservoirs in Wuhan city in central Hubei province in preparation for potential floods expected to flow from the swollen Yangtze and Han rivers, an official with the Yangtze water resources commission said. "Right now the Han river in Hubei province is on the verge of breaching warning levels," said the official, who gave his name as Zhang.
Though China experiences heavy rain every summer, flooding this year is the worst in more than a decade, as the flood-prone Yangtze basin has seen 15% more rain than in an average year, Duan Yihong, director of the National Meteorological Centre, said in a transcript of an interview posted on the Xinhua website.
"Rains should begin to slow down in August but it is hard to 
Thousands of rescuers in central China's Henan province searched for survivors after a bridge collapsed from heaving flooding in the Yi river over the weekend, killing 37 people with 29 missing, Xinhua reported.
In the southern province of Sichuan rescuers searched for 21 missing after rain triggered a landslide that buried 58 homes.
Source:
The Guardian, "China's Three Gorges dam close to limit as heavy rains persist", accessed July 30, 2010
Several reports from the Eastern, Central and Volta regions says large swathes of land are under water with a number of communities cut from the rest of the country. Much of the urban flooding has been blamed on the illegal construction of buildings on open drains and waterways.
Several roads, including the Accra-Tema motorway, a major link to the east of Ghana from the capital, have been flooded, as the rain continues to fall. A bridge linking Ghana and 
neighboring Togo on the eastern corridor collapsed during the heavy downpour, cutting off travelers from the two West African countries.
Flooding caused by heavy rains has killed at least 24 people, destroying homes and washing out roads, emergency officials in the West African country said on Monday. The worst affected structures were school buildings and a portion of a sports stadium in Agona Swedru, Frank Abban, an assembly member from the area, told the media later on Monday.
Appealing to the government to provide reliefs and shelters for the effected residents, Abban said that about 1,000 houses have been 
destroyed by the rains which started at 1230 GMT and lasted for 5 hours on Sunday.
Eleven bodies were found in around the capital Accra and another 13 elsewhere in the country, said Kofi Portuphy, coordinator of the National Disaster Committee.
Many others were feared dead as search and rescue crews continued getting reports of missing people following two days of downpours.
Police in Accra said some residents climbed trees as their homes were swept away. Eyewitnesses elsewhere say some people are trapped on top of their houses that are under water, while their properties have been lost.
A twelve-bedroom house totally collapsed and about 40 occupants now have no shelter.
Also carried away by the flood were commercial items including bags of rice, cement, sugar, flour and personal belongings, running into thousands of GH Cedis.
Many rivers have burst their banks and have taken over communities. 
The 10-hour downpour destroyed properties worth millions of U. S. dollars while thousands of residents had been rendered homeless by the torrential rains as a number of houses were submerged in the low area of Tema.
The Meteorological Services Agency is yet to give details of the volume of the rain and the police are yet to confirm reports of casualties.
Seasonal rains in West Africa, which tend to start in June and last until October, often cause deadly floods. Ghana experiences perennial flooding, but affected people say this is the worst they have seen in recent memory.
West Africa's yearly rainy season often leads to deadly floods. In 2009, 
flooding killed more than 100 people and displaced more than 2.5 million others in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Benin, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
Ghana is one of the region's top economies, the world's second biggest supplier of cocoa and Africa's second largest gold miner.
Source:
Reuters, "At least 24 die in Ghana floods", accessed June 21, 2010
At least 25 people have been killed in heavy rains and flooding in the southwestern Angolan province of Namibe, a report said on Sunday.
This is a troublesome situation as health authorities have previously warned about Cholera outbreak which could take as many lives of people in the region. UNICEF once emphasized on how food insecurity could provoke up to 100,000 severely malnourished children, given the high cost of food, localized rain failures and flooding. Including the ongoing cholera outbreak which resulted in 9,397 cases with 222 deaths according to a 2008 statistics.
