Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

The death toll from three days of flooding in Pakistan has exceeded 500, as heavy seasonal monsoon rains bloat rivers, submerge villages and trigger landslides.

More than a million of people have been affected by the floods in the country's northwestern sector and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Chinese authorities have said that heavy rains in the country's northeast caused floods, leaving at least 37 people dead.

The natural disaster has also left a further 35 missing in Jilin province, Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.

China has once again felt the effects of its poor coal mining safety measures in the wake of an explosion, which killed at least 15 people in a northern mine.

The explosion occurred at a coal mine near the town of Linfen in the northern province of Shanxi on Saturday.

A Florida church is promoting Islamophobia and has plans to publically burn the Holy Quran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The Dove World Outreach Center has called for the "International Burn a Quran Day" and asked other religious groups to join in the event, The Huffington Post reported on Friday.

An Iranian official says some of the most popular cigarette brands are contaminated with nuclear substances when smuggled into the country.

"Some of the most famous cigarette brands worldwide including Marlboro, which accounts for the bulk of smuggled cigarettes [into the Islamic Republic] are tainted with [hazardous] nuclear materials," Mehr News Agency quoted Mohammad-Reza Madani from the Society for Fighting Smoking as saying on Friday.

Raging forest fires sweeping across central Russia have left 25 people dead and forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes for safe places.

Accompanied by an unprecedented heat wave and strong winds, the huge fire on Friday continued to consume more lands and homes.

Over 400 people have lost their lives in Pakistan's flash floods and landslides caused by heavy seasonal monsoon rains.

Around 300,000 people have been affected by the floods in the country's northwest and the Pakistani-administered Kashmir, a Press TV correspondent reported on Friday.

Flash floods triggered by torrential rains have killed more than 200 people and rendered thousands homeless in northwestern Pakistan.

Rivers having burst their banks after two days of heavy rain -- the worst in 80 years -- have gone on to destroy whole communities of mud brick huts, a Press TV correspondent reported on Thursday.

Children's Heart surgery at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital has been suspended after four toddlers died within three months of each other.

A report by National Health Service (NHS) published on Thursday said that, in an attempt to prevent its closure, the hospital managers were trying to increase the unit's capacity to take more patients and had recruited a relatively junior surgeon.

140 people have lost their lives in a boat accident in the Democratic Republic of Congo when an overloaded vessel capsized on a river in the west of the country.

Officials say the boat -- carrying passengers and goods -- overturned on the Kasai River in Bandundu province, AFP reported.