Queensland storm: Tornadoes and huge hailstones wreak damage

Tornadoes and a thunderstorm "supercell" have swept across Queensland in Australia, injuring four people and causing widespread damage.

The dangerous weather system hit the state's south-east on Thursday, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said.

One tornado struck Tansey, a town 250km (155 miles) north of Brisbane, snapping trees and ripping roofs from houses.

Elsewhere, four people were injured when tennis ball-sized hail shattered car windscreens, authorities said.

One, Fiona Simpson, posted images online of bruises and scrapes across her body.

"I covered my infant with my body to stop her from getting badly injured.... never drive in a hail storm," she wrote of the incident in the town of Kingaroy.

The nation's strongest tornadoes form during supercells - a type of storm that is also frequently accompanied by damaging hail.

But Australia's funnels are typically smaller and weaker than in the US, University of Queensland geographer Prof Hamish McGowan told The Australian.

On Thursday, large hailstones and winds gusting up to 98km/h (60mph) caused extensive damage to buildings and crops. Social media users also reported injuries to animals.

Local man Steven Harland described the storm as "pretty intense", telling the BBC he had seen "flash flooding, countless trees down, and damage to vehicles from the hail".

"It's just a reminder what Mother Nature can do in such a short period of time," he said.

Authorities said they had fielded more than 300 calls for help, including for a driver trapped by a fallen tree.

Almost 10,000 properties remained without power on Friday, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Read More

Hurricane Michael leaves 'unimaginable destruction'

Hurricane Michael left "unimaginable destruction" as it ploughed into coastal areas of Florida, the state's governor, Rick Scott says.

"So many lives have been changed forever," he said. "So many families have lost everything."

The worst hit areas of Florida's northwest coast saw houses ripped from their foundations, trees felled, and power lines strewn across streets.

Hurricane Michael struck on Wednesday with winds of 155mph (250km/h).

It weakened to a storm as it moved inland towards the north-east, but at least six people have died, most of them in Florida.More than 370,000 people in Florida were ordered to evacuate but officials believe many ignored the warning.

Governor Scott said the US Coast Guard carried out 10 missions overnight, saving at least 27 people.

Which areas are worst affected?

Michael ploughed into Florida's Panhandle coast near the town of Mexico Beach at 14:00 (18:00 GMT) on Wednesday, one of the strongest storms to ever hit the US mainland.

Ranked four on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale and with a storm surge of 9ft (2.7m), it lifted homes from their foundations and heavily damaged others in districts closest to the sea in Mexico Beach, CNN helicopter footage showed.

Twenty survivors were found in the town overnight, AP reports, but 285 had refused to obey warnings to evacuate.

Head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brock Long, called Mexico Beach "ground zero" due to the damage.

Trees were downed in Panama City, northwest of Mexico Beach, buildings flattened, boats and electrical cables scattered.

Apalachicola, with 2,300 residents, was also badly affected, the mayor reporting that downed cables were making it difficult to get through the town.

Debris and floodwater are also making some of the worst-hit areas difficult to reach.

Governor Scott urged residents not to return until the authorities "make sure things are safe", given the danger from power lines and other debris.

Silence and sun

By Gary O'Donoghue, BBC News, Mexico Beach, Florida

One of the first things you notice as you walk into Mexico Beach is the stillness.

No wind, almost no-one on the street, just the beating hot Sun and the debris: debris everywhere, tossed and scattered - the calling card of a monstrous storm.

And then you hear faint bleeping sounds coming from all directions - a dissonant symphony of high-pitched notes that turn out to be myriad small alarms, still transmitting their warnings from the batteries which power them.

On the left, as we walk, there's a mattress slumped at the roadside, on the right a Dean Koontz novel lies in the dirt.

Picking our way through a mass of rubble and detritus that was once a house, we spot an American flag on the ground; in amongst it all there is also a toy car and a cracked glass plate from a microwave.

A little further on, and a woman, accompanied by a friend, is sifting through the remains of her home, loading what she can salvage into the boot of a car. This was her dream retirement place she tells me - the last four years spent doing it up. "I'll never step back in there," she says through her tears.

The sheer force of Hurricane Michael has been well analysed, but it's only when you see the everyday stuff of people's lives crushed, broken, smashed to pieces, that you realise they will be living with this long after we have gone.

Who are the victims?

Six deaths have been confirmed - four in Florida,

one in Georgia and one in North Carolina.

Florida officials say one man died when he was crushed in an incident involving a tree in Gadsden County.

In Seminole County, Georgia, a metal car-shelter lifted by a gust of wind hit a mobile home, killing a girl of 11.

Travis Brooks, director of Seminole County's emergency management agency, told ABC News there was "complete and total devastation".

Michael earlier reportedly killed at least 13 people as it passed through Central America: six in Honduras, four in Nicaragua and three in El Salvador.

Winds have knocked out power to more than 900,000 homes and businesses across Florida, Alabama, the Carolinas and Georgia.

Around 6,000 are thought to have sought refuge in official shelters, mainly in Florida.

What is the storm doing now?

With reduced winds of 50mph, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Michael has moved north-east crossing Georgia and is now bringing heavy rain to North Carolina and Virginia.

The NHC warned that communities in north-west Florida and North Carolina faced the threat of life-threatening flooding as rising water moved inland from the coast.

The Carolinas are still recovering from the floods of Hurricane Florence.

States of emergency have been declared in all or parts of Florida, Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina.

And further north, in Virginia 202,000 people are without power, officials said.

Read More

South Korea's Moon optimistic about end to Korean War

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has told the BBC that it is only a matter of time before the US and North Korea declare an end to their state of war on the Korean peninsula.

The war ended in 1953 with an armistice but a peace treaty was never signed.

Mr Moon, the son of North Korean refugees, also said there could be more diplomatic "bumps and bruises" as he tries to persuade Kim Jong-un to give up his nuclear weapons.

But he described Mr Kim as "candid".

In an interview with the BBC's Laura Bicker in Seoul he also said he hoped European leaders would help him to mediate between Mr Kim and US President Donald Trump if negotiations stalled.

Mr Moon has met Mr Kim three times this year and has acted as a mediator between him and Mr Trump.

He said that he had had "ample discussions" with President Trump and other US officials about an end of war declaration.

"If North Korea takes certain measures, the end of war declaration would be a political statement that would announce that the longstanding hostile relations between Pyongyang and Washington had ended," he said.

Mr Moon said he wanted this to happen at the "earliest possible date" and he believed there was a "shared understanding between Washington and Seoul regarding this view".Last month, he became the first South Korean leader to give a speech to the North Korean public during a trip to Pyongyang. He spoke at the Arirang Games - a major propaganda event - and received a standing ovation from 150,000 people.

"I was actually quite nervous to give the speech," he said. "I had to address the problem of denuclearisation and had to receive positive vibes from the North Korean people. And also I had to satisfy the Korean public as well as the global public. So it was not an easy task for me."

He said that Mr Kim had not set any restrictions for the speech.

"He didn't even want to know what I was going to say before the speech. I believe this demonstrates the changes that are happening in North Korea right now."

President Moon told the BBC that he became president of South Korea to help prevent war returning to the peninsula and said that he acutely felt the pain of war and separation.

Mr Moon's parents fled North Korea in 1953 and they never saw their family again.

Where are we in terms of negotiations?

There have been ups and down since a landmark June meeting between Mr Kim and Mr Trump in Singapore saw an agreement to work toward denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula but with few specifics in terms of actions that would be taken.

President Moon went to Pyongyang in September to reinvigorate the stalled negotiations.He returned with concessions that analysts said exceeded expectations. Mr Kim agreed to shut one of the country's main missile testing and launch sites - the Tongchang-ri facility. Significantly, North Korea said international experts would be able to observe and verify the dismantlement.

The South's defence minister and the head of the North Korean army also signed an agreement to reduce military tensions, with a buffer zone to be established along the border to prevent accidental clashes.

But the US has called for further actions - including a full disclosure of North Korea's weapons and nuclear facilities.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited North Korea for the fourth time on Sunday, and held talks with Mr Kim.

"While there's still a long way to go and much work to do, we can now see a path where we will achieve [our] ultimate goal, which is the full and final verified denuclearisation of North Korea," he said on Tuesday at the White House.

He added that international inspectors could soon be arriving at two North Korean nuclear sites.

A second meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Kim will be held after the US mid-term elections, President Trump also said earlier this week.

He has praised Mr Kim on several occasions and again asserted that they had a "very good relationship".

Read More

Search for missing after 15 killed in Europe floods

The search continues for missing people following flash flooding in parts of Spain, Italy and France.

Twelve died - including a British couple - when torrential rain lashed eastern Majorca in Spain. A five-year-old local boy is still missing.

Three Germans and a Dutch woman were among those who lost their lives.

A flash flood on France's south coast killed two people in Sainte-Maxime while a woman was found dead after a storm in Sardinia, Italy.

Looters

The two British victims of the Majorca floods were named as Anthony and Delia Green, a pair of holidaymakers in their 70s, from Moffat in Dumfries and Galloway.

They were discovered in their submerged taxi, which had been swept away in Sillot, near the tourist town of Sant Llorenç. The body of the taxi driver was discovered nearby.

Police in Sant Llorenç say they are dealing with many incidents of looting and have increased patrols.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said it will take months to return the disaster-hit towns to normality.

More than 100 rescue workers searched through the night for the missing five-year-old boy. He is believed to have been in a car with his mother, who is among the victims.

His sister, who was also in the car, survived and was rescued.

Nadal opens centre to Majorca flood victims

The world's number one tennis player, Rafael Nadal, has opened the doors of his tennis academy in Manacor, near Sant Llorenç, and was photographed taking part in the clean-up effort as a volunteer.

Nadal was born in Manacor. He tweeted his condolences to victims' families, calling it a "sad day for Majorca".

Swept away

In southern France the rise of the River Garonnette in Saint-Maxime swept five cars towards the nearby sea.

Two bodies were found in one of the cars, which had been tossed upside down in the water.

Saint-Maxime lies in the Var region, where local authorities had urged people not to take to the flooded roads and to seek shelter during the heavy rainfall.

According to the BFMTV news site, 210mm (8in) of rain fell on Wednesday night - two months' worth of normal rainfall.

Bridge down

In Italy, the Cagliari area of Sardinia was also hit by bad weather, and one woman was found dead on Thursday. Her car had got trapped by the flooding.

Italian news agency Ansa named her as 45-year-old Tamara Maccario and said she and her family had left their home near a river over fear of the impending floodwater. The vehicle was swept away at about midnight on Wednesday.

Ansa reports that one of the woman's daughters was found clinging to a tree, while two other children and their father were found in two separate homes nearby.

Ms Maccario's body was found on Thursday morning. Another man was also reported missing.

Large parts of Cagliari remain underwater, demonstrated in a video posted by Italian firefighters.

Roads and bridges have also been damaged.

Dozens of people have been evacuated, and several roads have been closed due to either collapse or dangerously high water levels.

Read More

Investigation starts into dramatic Soyuz rocket breakdown

Russian officials are investigating the cause of a booster problem that forced a Soyuz rocket capsule to make an emergency landing just after launch.

The two crew members, Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and American astronaut Nick Hague, are in good health, officials say.

They were heading for a six-month mission on the International Space Station when their flight was aborted.

Their capsule separated and landed 400km (250 miles) from the launch site.

What happened during the flight?

The launch appeared to be going smoothly, but some 90 seconds into the flight, the US space agency Nasa reported a problem with the booster rocket between the first and second stages separating.

Live video of the astronauts showed them shaking violently with the vibrations caused by the malfunction.

After around 114 seconds of flight, the emergency escape system sprang into action, separating the crew capsule from the rocket.

The capsule then began what Nasa termed a "ballistic descent", subjecting the crew to greater G-force - the force imposed on a body by rapid acceleration or deceleration - than during a normal landing.

Nasa said the capsule, which later deployed parachutes, took 34 minutes to reach the ground on the Kazakhstan steppe, hundreds of kilometres north-east of the Baikanour cosmodrome launch site.

How have the crew fared?

A rescue mission was launched immediately, Nasa and the Russian Roscosmos space agency said.

Rescue teams using off-road vehicles and paratroopers deployed in helicopters raced to locate the capsule, near the Kazakh city of Dzhezkazgan.

Soon afterwards both space agencies were reporting the astronauts were in good health. Pictures showed the two men seated smiling on a sofa attached to heart rate and blood pressure monitors.

Analysis: An uncomfortable ride back to Earth

By Jonathan Amos, BBC science correspondent

Soyuz is one of the oldest rocket designs but also one of the safest. The malfunction appeared to occur around what is termed "staging", where the ascending vehicle goes through the process of discarding its empty fuel segments.

The onboard astronauts were certainly aware that something was not right because they reported feeling weightless when they should have felt pushed back in their seats. The escape systems are tested and ready for exactly this sort of eventuality. It would have been an uncomfortable ride back to Earth, however. The crew would have experienced very sharp accelerations and decelerations on the return.

There is already much discussion about the current state of Russian industry and its ability to maintain the standards of yesteryear. Whatever the outcome of the inquiry, this event will only heighten those concerns and will underline to the US in particular the need to bring online new rocket systems. These vehicles, produced by the Boeing and SpaceX companies, are set to make their debut next year.

What does this mean for future Soyuz missions?

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said no further manned missions would take place "until we believe that the entire situation guarantees safety".

He rejected suggestions it could harm US relations, saying they recognised it was a "hi-tech industry linked to risk", but he added: "We certainly won't conceal the reasons, it is uncommon for such situations".

Space co-operation is an area which has survived otherwise tense relations between Russia and the US. Nasa has been paying for seats on Soyuz rockets to ferry its astronauts to the International Space Station since the Space Shuttle programme ended in 2011.

The crew already on the ISS will not be affected by Thursday's aborted mission, Russia's Tass news agency reported, quoting an unnamed source as saying they have enough supplies.

But the three - a German, a Russian and an American - might have to stay on the space station into next year due the crash, Interfax quoted a source as saying.

Roscosmos has ordered the setting up of a state commission to investigate the incident and a criminal investigation is also expected.

Have there been similar incidents in the past?

Thursday's incident is thought to be the first launch mishap for a Russian Soyuz booster since a Soyuz mission was aborted in 1983. Then, a rocket malfunctioned shortly before launch, and the crew vehicle was ejected to safety.

In recent years, Russia's space programme has faced a number of technical failures - 13 since 2010.

Last year, contact was lost with a Soyuz rocket's Fregat upper stage, which was carrying a new weather satellite and 18 secondary satellites.

Earlier in 2017, at least nine of a payload of 73 satellites were reported "dead on arrival or severely degraded" after separation from their Soyuz-2.1 launch vehicle.

In August, a hole appeared in a Soyuz capsule already docked to the ISS which caused a brief loss of air pressure and had to be patched. In this instance, Russia said the hole may have been drilled "deliberately".

One of the most serious but non-fatal US incidents involved Apollo 13 - a mission to the Moon in 1970. An oxygen tank exploded two days after launch causing a loss of power and leading to the mission being aborted. The crew were able to carry out repairs and return to Earth six days later.

While space missions may often encounter technical difficulties, fatalities have been relatively rare:

2003: Seven astronauts died when the Columbia space shuttle broke up up on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere due to a damaged protective tile

1986: Seven astronauts died when the Challenger space shuttle broke apart after lift off because of faulty seals on the booster rockets

1971: The three-men crew aboard Soyuz 11 suffocated as the result of an air leak after undocking from the Salyut 1 space station. They were found dead inside the capsule after landing

1967: Crash of Soyuz 1, with one cosmonaut killed as the spacecraft's parachute, intended to slow down descent, became tangled on re-entry

1967: Three-man crew of Apollo 1 died as their command module caught fire on the launch pad

Read More

Teacher banned for claiming extra cash for school trips

A languages teacher has been banned from the classroom for claiming extra cash from parents for school trips, a conduct panel has concluded.

David Malengela, 41, had responsibility for organising overseas trips at St Peter's School in Huntingdon.

The disciplinary hearing was told he asked parents for additional "behaviour deposits" and charged pupils 20 euros each just to board the coach.

The panel said his actions were "calculated and deliberate".

Read more Cambridgeshire stories

The Teaching Regulation Agency's professional conduct panel was told Congolese Mr Malengela planned three residential trips for the 2017 summer term.

Between February and June 2017, the school's finance team made repeated requests for pupil numbers and money, without success.

The three-member panel was told Mr Malengela wrote to parents to say the £390 cost of a trip to Paris had gone up, citing an "additional £20 refundable behaviour deposit for the Hotel Bon-Sejour".

The tour operator was unaware of the deposit, the hearing learned, and a price increase had not been agreed by the school.

Parents were also asked for an additional payment of 20 euros "to be paid to him personally as the children boarded the coach on departure".

'Serious irregularities'

At a briefing session, he also asked families for a security deposit of 25 euros and money to attend a science museum, the panel found.

In its concluding report, the panel said a "subsequent disciplinary investigation by the school alleged serious irregularities in the administration of the trips".

Mr Malengela resigned in May 2017. The total amount of money he received was not revealed.

The panel concluded the teacher's conduct "fell short of the expected standards of the profession" and "the offence of fraud is relevant".

He was banned from teaching in any school, sixth form college or children's home in England indefinitely.

Mr Malengela has 28 days to appeal.

Read More

Hurricane Michael: Record-breaking 'hell' storm mauls US

The third-strongest storm in recorded history to hit the mainland US has battered north-west Florida, flooding beach towns and snapping trees.

Hurricane Michael made landfall on Wednesday afternoon as a category four storm with 155mph (250km/h) winds in the state's Panhandle region.

Two people, including a child, were killed by falling trees, officials say.

The storm left nearly 500,000 people without electricity in Florida, Alabama and Georgia, emergency services say.

Florida officials said a man was killed when he was crushed by a tree in Gadsden County.

A child died when a tree fell on a home in Seminole County, Georgia, CBS news reports.

Michael earlier reportedly killed at least 13 people as it passed through Central America: six in Honduras, four in Nicaragua and three in El Salvador.

How powerful was Michael when it hit?

Only the unnamed Labor Day hurricane, which hit Florida in 1935, and Hurricane Camille, which struck Mississippi in 1969, made landfall with greater intensity.

The Labor Day storm's barometric pressure (the lower the number, the stronger the storm) was 892 millibars and Camille's was 900, while Michael blew in with 919.

Michael was so powerful as it swept into Florida that it remained a hurricane as it moved further inland.

Its rapid intensification caught many by surprise, although the storm later weakened.

How to survive a monster storm

Are hurricanes getting worse?

A guide to the world's deadliest storms

Unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico turbo-charged the storm from a tropical depression on Sunday.

Only on Tuesday it was a category two hurricane but by Wednesday morning it had reached borderline category five, the highest level.

More than 370,000 people in Florida were ordered to evacuate, but officials believe many ignored the warning.

What happened in Florida?

The hurricane made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida, at around 14:00 (18:00 GMT) on Wednesday, according to the NHC.

The coastal city of Apalachicola reported a storm surge of nearly 8ft (2.5m).

Read More