A hydrogen explosion rocked the plant on Monday, sending a huge cloud of smoke over the area while engineers flooded the three reactors in the complex with sea water in a desperate attempt to prevent what was shaping up as the worst nuclear emergency since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago. Nuclear fuel rods at one of the reactors may have become became fully exposed raising the risk they could melt down and cause a radioactive leak, Japanese news agency Jiji said. U.S. warships and planes helping the relief efforts have moved away from the coast temporarily because of low-level radiation from the stricken nuclear power plant, the U.S. Navy said on Monday. Singapore said it was checking Japanese food imports for radioactive contamination. The nuclear crisis was a triple whammy for Japan, coming on top of the earthquake -- the fifth strongest ever recorded -- and one of the most powerful tsunami in history, which caused scenes of unimaginable destruction in northeast Japan. Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the country was facing its biggest crisis since the end of the Second World War, which was when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "We're under scrutiny on whether we, the Japanese people, can overcome this crisis," Kan told a Sunday night news conference, his voice rising with emotion. The quake caused Japan's main island to shift 2.5 meters (8 feet) and moved the earth's axis 10 cm (2.5 inches), geologists say. The question now is whether the catastrophe will spur other seismic changes in Japan, which has yet to emerge from its "lost decades" of stagnant growth, aging population, and loss of international prestige following the collapse of the Japanese asset bubble in the early 1990s. At the very least, the drama at Fukushima is bound to shake the faith of many Japanese in the safety of their nuclear plants. The catastrophe will also sorely test Kan's deeply unpopular government. And the immense reconstruction effort that is coming may bring changes to rural Japan, where many of its older citizens live.

A magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck central Chile Sunday night, the strongest and longest that many people said they had felt since a huge quake devastated the area two years ago. Some people were injured by falling ceiling material, but there were no reports of major damage or deaths due to quake-related accidents.

The quake struck at 7:30 p.m. about 16 miles (27 kilometers) north-northwest of Talca, a city of more than 200,000 people where residents said the shaking lasted about a minute.

Buildings swayed in Chile's capital 136 miles (219 kilometers) to the north, and people living along a 480-mile (770-kilometer) stretch of Chile's central coast were briefly warned to head for higher ground.

Residents were particularly alarmed in Constitucion, where much of the coastal downtown at the mouth of a river was obliterated by the tsunami caused by the 8.8-magnitude quake in 2010.

Panic also struck in Santiago and other cities, with people running out of skyscrapers, and many neighborhoods were left partly or totally without electrical power. Phone service collapsed due to heavy traffic.

"There are some injuries but nothing serious," said Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter, who was serving as acting president while Sebastian Pinera is on tour in Asia.

Hinzpeter said authorities were conducting a thorough survey of the affected regions to look for damage.

The Chilean navy's hydrographic and oceanographic service and the national emergency office called off a tsunami warning for most of the central coast after an analysis showed the quake wasn't the type to provoke killer waves.

The alert was restored for the area closest to the epicenter after police noticed the ocean had retreated about 130 feet (40 meters) from the shore in the towns of Iloca and Duao. A sharp outsurge of surf sometimes is followed by a tsunami.READ MORE

Across the South and Midwest, survivors emerged Saturday to find blue sky and splinters where homes once stood, cars flung into buildings and communications crippled after dozens of tornadoes chainsawed through a region of millions, leveling small towns along the way.
At least 38 people were killed in five states, but a 2-year-old girl was somehow found alive and alone in a field near her Indiana home. Her family did not survive. A couple that fled their home for the safety of a restaurant basement made it, even after the storms threw a school bus into their makeshift shelter.
Saturday was a day filled with such stories, told as emergency officials trudged with search dogs past knocked-down cellphone towers and ruined homes looking for survivors in rural Kentucky and Indiana, marking searched roads and homes with orange paint. President Barack Obama offered federal assistance, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich declared an emergency Saturday.
The worst damage appeared centered in the small towns of southern Indiana and eastern Kentucky's Appalachian foothills. No building was untouched and few were recognizable in West Liberty, Ky., about 90 miles from Lexington, where two white police cruisers were picked up and tossed into City Hall.
"We stood in the parking lot and watched it coming," said David Ison, who raced into a bank vault with nine others to seek safety. "By the time it hit, it was like a whiteout."
In East Bernstadt, two hours to the southwest, Carol Rhodes clutched four VHS tapes she'd found in debris of her former home as she sobbed under a bright sun Saturday.
"It was like whoo, that was it," said Rhodes, 63, who took refuge with four family members in a basement bedroom that she had just refinished for a grandchild.
"Honey, I felt the wind and I said, `Oh my God,' and then it (the house) was gone. I looked up and I could see the sky."
The spate of storms was the second in little more than 48 hours, after an earlier round killed 13 people in the Midwest and South, and the latest in a string of severe-weather episodes that have ravaged the American heartland in the past year.
Friday's violent storms touched down in at least a dozen states from Georgia to Illinois, killing 19 people in Kentucky, 14 in Indiana, three in Ohio, and one each in Alabama and Georgia.

The head of the U.N. refugee agency said Sunday that drought-ridden Somalia is the "worst humanitarian disaster" in the world after meeting with refugees who endured unspeakable hardship to reach the world's largest refugee camp.
The Kenyan camp, Dadaab, is overflowing with tens of thousands of newly arrived refugees forced into the camp by the parched landscape in the region where Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya meet. The World Food Program estimates that 10 million people already need humanitarian aid. The U.N. Children's Fund estimates that more than 2 million children are malnourished and in need of lifesaving action.
Antonio Guterres, the head of UNHCR who visited Dadaab on Sunday, appealed to the world to supply the "massive support" needed by thousands of refugees showing up at this camp every week. More than 380,000 refugees now live there.
In Dadaab, Guterres spoke with a Somalia mother who lost three of her children during a 35-day walk to reach the camp. Guterres said Dadaab holds "the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable of the vulnerable."
"I became a bit insane after I lost them," said the mother, Muslima Aden. "I lost them in different times on my way."
Guterres is on a tour of the region to highlight the dire need. On Thursday he was in the Ethiopian camp of Dollo Ado, a camp that is also overflowing.
"The mortality rates we are witnessing are three times the level of emergency ceilings," he said. "The level of malnutrition of the children coming in is 50 percent. That is enough to explain why a very high level of mortality is inevitable," he said.
Dr. Dejene Kebede, a health officer for UNHCR, said there were 58 deaths in camps in one week alone in June.


Most of the deaths take place at the registration office and transition facilities of the refugee camps in the southeastern Dollo region of Ethiopia, the health officer said.

Residents still remaining in Minot, North Dakota rushed to pack up their belongings and leave town Wednesday as sirens wailed throughout the city, a warning of what is expected to be the worst flooding the city has seen in over 40 years.

The Souris River -- heavy with intense snowmelt and rain -- overtopped levees 5 hours ahead of an evacuation deadline, the AP reports. Those still remaining of the 11,000 in the Minot evacuation zone were prompted to leave their homes and head for higher ground immediately.

From the AP:

The resulting deluge is expected to dwarf a historic flood of 1969, when the Souris reached 1,555.4 feet above sea level. The river is expected to hit nearly 1,563 feet this weekend – eventually topping the historical record of 1,558 feet set in 1881.

Residents in Minot were told to evacuate earlier this month before the river hit 1,554.1 feet. They were later allowed to return, but were warned to be prepared for the possibility of another evacuation.

According to Reuters, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to increase releases from the Lake Darling Dam to 15,000 cubic feet per second on Thursday, and officials have said flood defenses in Minot were rated to around 9,500 cubic feet per second.

Amtrak has temporarily disabled services in Minot and other areas in North Dakota due to the flooding.