Weather impacts today - Japan, N. Korea, Bangladesh, Sudan, Norway

Lots of extreme weather news on the wires.

Record high temps and an extended heatwave are "baking" Japan.

A relentless heatwave scorched Japan on Wednesday as temperatures hit record highs in many regions amid concerns of a possible power shortage in metropolitan Tokyo due to a shutdown of a key nuclear reactor. In Tatebayashi city, 70 km (44 miles) north of the capital, the temperature rose to 40.2 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), just below the historical high of 40.8 C marked in 1933, government's Meteorological Agency said.

Estimated 300,000 homeless in North Korea after floods.

North Korea, which has suffered chronic food shortages for years, said hundreds were dead or missing after flooding over the past several days that washed away thousands of structures and ruined cropland in the country's agricultural bread basket. The North's official KCNA news agency quoted an agricultural ministry official as saying on Wednesday the damage to farm crops was heavier than in previous floods, with more than 11 percent of paddy and maize fields submerged, buried or swept away.

Spreading illness marks aftermath of flooding in Bangladesh and Northeast India

More than 53,000 people have contracted diarrhoea in Bangladesh, mostly caused by eating stale food and drinking impure water. A field hospital has been opened in the capital, Dhaka, to treat diarrhoea patients. "The overall diarrhoea situation is grim. Everyday there is a rush of patients," said Ayesha Khatoon, a senior official at the government's health directorate. "We are trying to cope with it."

Sudan's flooding has led to a cholera outbreak

The death toll from a cholera outbreak spread by devastating floods in east Sudan has risen to 53 with a
total of 763 cases identified, Sudanese health officials said on Wednesday. Sudan's health ministry is distributing chlorine to sterilise water, repairing latrines and spraying insecticides to try to stop the spread of cholera and malaria after the worst floods in living memory.

Flooding is devastating parts of Norway

"This is completely unreal," said Ronald Havsten after watching his home sail down the Lauvnes river in Flatanger and head towards the sea.
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Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Administration regional director Einar Sæterbø said that water levels in the region were well over so-called 'five-year flood' norms and were nearing 50-year flood levels, that is, flooding of a type seen only twice a century.

As the flood waters recede

In India and Bangladesh, the flooding displaced millions of people and killed hundreds.

More than 1,000 people have been killed or injured by rising waters, but aid agencies say the figure is expected to rise sharply.

U.N. children's body UNICEF said it had lost track of how many people had been affected by the floods across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

So far about 20 million people are known to have fled their homes or trapped in villages at risk from landslides, snakebites and disease.

"Hundreds of thousands have lost their homes, their possessions, livestock and fields and will have to begin their lives from scratch when flood waters recede," UNICEF said.

The devastation comes on the heels of severe flooding in southern Pakistan, caused when Cyclone Yemyin struck the country's provinces of Balochistan and Sindh in late June.

Villagers are desperate for food, healthcare, medical supplies. Some are clashing with police.

Hospitals in eastern India were packed on Saturday with people suffering from waterborne diseases, and marooned villagers clashed with police as some of the worst floods in living memory ravaged South Asia.

More than 230 people have died over the past 11 days after torrential monsoon rains lashed the region, including much of Bangladesh, causing rivers to burst their banks. About 10 million people are homeless or cut off in their villages, with little or no access to food and health care. Health workers and aid groups in Assam in northeast India were working around the clock to treat and feed many of the 3 million people displaced or surrounded by flood waters in the state with the limited medicines and supplies available. Elsewhere, villagers were getting desperate and hungry.

Meanwhile in England, insurance companies have announced that premiums for next year will rise by 10 percent.

Leading catastrophe-exposure modelling firm Risk Management Solutions has estimated the total cost to the insurance industry of this summer's flooding at 3.3 billion pounds.

Aviva, which owns Norwich Union, said on Thursday that the June and July floods -- brought about by the wettest summer since records began -- would cost it 340 million pounds and affect its general insurance results.

The firm said it expected a bill of 165 million pounds from the July floods, which badly hit central and western parts of England, on top of expected claims of 175 million pounds from the June floods.

It will take some time to evaluate which permanent changes are made by the countries affected by this summer's flooding. Southern Asia is accustomed to the annual monsoons, but this year's has been extreme and possibly an example of how monsoons of the future will behave.

"Poor need to adapt"

Experts gathered in Bangladesh to discuss how the poor must adapt to changing climatic conditions. They acknowledged that regions encountering the most extreme effects of climate change are among the poorest in the world, and that their inhabitants "bear the brunt" of the consequences of rich country practices.

The London-based International Institute for Environment and Development and the Dhaka-based Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies organized the conference to share experiences on local climate adaptation programs across the world.
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Bangladeshi climate change expert Atiq Rahman said if the sea rises by 30 centimeters (a foot), which some researchers say could happen over next few decades, up to 12 percent of the population living across the vast coast would be flooded out of their homes.