Bangladesh put its army on full alert yesterday as devastating floods hit two-thirds of the country, officials said.
They said more than 90 people had died and some 10 million were suffering the effects of the flooding, including one million marooned in remote districts.
Officials in the flood-hit districts said 93 people were killed, many of them drowned, but others were crushed by collapsing houses.
Reports from Beijing said devastating rains pounded three central China provinces last weekend, adding 145 deaths to the toll of more than 1,100 dead from summer flooding.
Flooding caused by heavy rains from July 17th to July 20th affected 21 million people in 71 counties in the provinces of Jiangxi, Hubei and Hunan, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.
The floods also destroyed 780,000 houses and hit 1.26 million hectares of farmland and about 180,000 hectares reported total crop failure, it said.
Meanwhile, doctors in Bratislava yesterday appealed for medical supplies to check disease spreading in eastern Slovakia, where more than 100 people are feared dead in floods which have hit five central European countries.
The call came as the funerals were held for the victims of floods which hit the impoverished region of the mountainous state last Monday, one year after floods caused devastation and death across the region.
The death toll rose to 11 in neighbouring Poland and the Czech Republic, farmland remained underwater in Hungary and Austria also suffered damage from torrential downpours.
In the Czech Republic three rivers burst their banks and cut off one village. Four people were confirmed dead and two are still missing, officials said yesterday.
The death toll in Poland rose to seven after torrential rains on Thursday night.
In Austria, torrential rain caused damage to bridges, while in Hungary 4,000 hectares of farmland remained underwater. The devastation revived memories of floods which affected central and eastern Europe in July last year, killing dozens in Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and eastern Germany. Weather experts say the consecutive summer flooding is probably just a "tragic coincidence" and not a result of global climate change.
"The weather situation is different from last year - this year it hasn't been days on end of torrential rain," said Mr Andy Yeatman of the UK Meteorological office. "It's very difficult to say that central Europe is getting wetter summers because of global warming," he added.
Meanwhile US sniffer dogs have been flown to Papua New Guinea's tsunami disaster area to search for survivors in swamps behind Sissano lagoon, itself a watery graveyard for hundreds.
Relief officials hope the dogs may find survivors, possibly children, too scared or unable because of injuries to come out from where they were driven by three tsunamis which devastated the area six days ago.
One of the tsunamis, which smashed through a string of villages along the Sissano lagoon coast last Friday night, was estimated by survivors to have been 10 metres high.
Australian government officials yesterday said that the official death toll stood at 1,500. About 5,200 people were in care centres and 700 in provincial hospitals and an Australian army field hospital. That left 2,000 to 3,000 people still missing from a local population of between 8,000 and 10,000.
The task of retrieving bodies from Sissano lagoon was called off on Thursday with hundreds of bloated, disintegrating corpses still in the water. Rescue officials also said the threat from disease and crocodiles had made the lagoon too dangerous to continue the retrieval operation.
The Florida-based sniffer dogs are trained to track bodies under water and in swampy land. "If someone is scared and they are actively attempting to evade you, they hear you coming," said Mr Arthur Wolf, one of 10 serving Miami policemen and firemen who voluntarily brought the specially trained dogs to Papua New Guinea.
On Thursday, the US delivered relief supplies to the capital Port Moresby. These included tents, beds, clothing, water containers, tools, lanterns and medical supplies.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, will make a brief stop in Port Moresby next week to discuss how the US can help the Pacific nation reconstruct.