Floods

High in the Himalayas, above this peaceful valley where farmers till a patchwork of emerald-green fields, an icy lake fed by melting glaciers waits to become a "tsunami from the sky." The lake is swollen dangerously past normal levels, thanks to the global warming that is causing the glaciers to retreat at record speed. But no one knows when the tipping point will come and the lake can take no more, bursting its banks and sending torrents of water crashing into the valley below.

Tens of thousands of cycling, hockey and basketball fans will converge at Staples Center in a weekend packed with post-season games and the final stage of the 2012 Amgen Tour of California - events that authorities are warning will close streets and delay traffic in the downtown Los Angeles area. The biggest wrench in traffic will be crowds overlapping for the Kings game and the bike race Sunday. Street closures were scheduled to begin after the Lakers game Saturday night - along Figueroa Street from Pico to Olympic boulevards and on Chick Hearn Court/11th Street from Flower Avenue to Georgia Street - when two pedestrian bridges will be erected so Kings fans can cross the bike route Sunday morning for Game 4 of the NHL Western conference finals.

When I was a little girl about 75 years ago, we were camping in Yosemite by the Merced River and it started raining very hard. The river flooded all the campsites. We had to pull up stakes and move to higher ground, but not before we watched watermelons, a slab of bacon and various camping equipment heading downstream. Floods are here to stay, but hopefully we can improve on the situation and fool "Mother Nature" someday! VIRGINIA THOMAS Alhambra

WASHINGTON - A hard-hitting commercial blasting President Obama's stimulus spending as a "failure" flooded television sets last week in eight swing states that will be decisive in November's presidential election. It was not the product of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, nor of the national Republican Party. Instead, it was made by Americans for Prosperity, a Virginia-based nonprofit that for months has poured millions into anti-Obama commercials. Its latest buy totaled $6.1 million in airtime.

Robert Lee was standing in his frontyard near the intersection of Coldwater Canyon Avenue and Dickens Street in Studio City late Saturday night when he heard a low rumble and saw water at his feet. Then he saw water gushing from a sinkhole. "Maybe 10 to 15 feet in the air, and it was making a beeline for our front door," Lee said, adding that a friend with him was swept off his feet by the rushing water. A rupture in a nearly 100-year-old, 62-inch water trunk line caused flooding several feet deep on some nearby streets, officials said.

Three days of heavy rain and flash floods have killed at least 408 people in Pakistan, authorities said Friday, as rescue teams struggled to evacuate thousands of stranded villagers from submerged hamlets and towns in the country's northwest. Swollen rivers washed away mud-hut villages and wrecked bridges, roads, hospitals and communication networks across the region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, formerly known as North-West Frontier Province. The death toll was highest in the northwest, where the destruction was the "worst natural calamity in the province's history," Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said.

Here in Pakistan's southern Punjab province, the tawny waters of the Indus and Chenab rivers have swallowed up vast swaths of verdant rice paddies, sugar cane fields and mango orchards that usually feed the nation. Floodwaters have submerged the village of Basti Dopiwala, leaving farmers and their families stranded on a small patch of dry land to ponder survival without the fields that sustain them. Along the banks of the Chenab, the river gently laps the boughs of mango trees that stretch to the horizon and are a source of national pride.

Heavy rains have destroyed or damaged hundreds of shelters housing ethnic Tamils displaced during Sri Lanka's civil war, the United Nations said Monday. The weekend flooding has added to concern over the welfare of nearly 300,000 people who have been living in tents and makeshift shelters since the May defeat by government forces of the Tamil Tigers, ending their 25-year armed campaign for a homeland for the ethnic Tamil minority. Parts of the Manik Farm camp in the island's northeast were inundated, and about 1,925 shelters may have been damaged or destroyed, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement.

The state of Georgia faced continuing headaches and heartache Tuesday from a pernicious series of rainstorms that had claimed the lives of at least seven people and flooded more than 1,000 homes -- although weather forecasters said the worst of the deluge likely had passed. On Tuesday morning, Gov. Sonny Perdue formally asked President Obama for an emergency declaration that would make the hardest-hit areas eligible for federal disaster relief funds. A day earlier, Perdue had declared a state of emergency in 17 counties in the Atlanta area and north Georgia.

People here remember when hundreds of Pakistani Taliban militants roamed through the forested ridges flanking the Chail River, armed not with AK-47s but with axes. Employing termite-like efficiency, the militants felled and carted away vast swaths of Himalayan cedar, blue pine and oak, leaving mountainsides dotted with stumps. Through illegal logging, the Taliban generated quick cash to keep its arsenals stocked. But nearly a decade of tree felling by militants and 35 years of deforestation by unscrupulous timber businesses and wealthy landowners have had an unforeseen consequence.

Eight years ago, the Los Angeles Board of Education adopted an ambitious plan to have all students take college-prep classes to raise academic standards in the nation's second-largest school district. Now, that plan is about to take effect: Beginning this fall, incoming freshmen will have to pass those classes to graduate. On Tuesday, district officials backtracked, offering details of a proposal to reduce overall graduation requirements and allow students to pass those classes with a D grade.

Inside his mini-mart in the desert town of Indio, store manager John Stafford is busy stockpiling caffeinated drinks. Monster and Red Bulls mostly. He knows from experience that he'll need plenty this weekend. Tens of thousands of visitors will descend upon the desert region beginning Friday for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. "Cigarettes and energy drinks," Stafford said. "They need to stay awake out there. " Fans and bands may need an extra stamina boost this year.

Las Vegas-area home sales are on the mend as cash rules supreme. The long-suffering Las Vegas housing market last month had its strongest sales for a February in six years, according to San Diego real estate research firm DataQuick. Sales were up 5.0% from January and 8.9% from February 2011 to total 4,240 homes sold in Clark County. New home sales hit a four-year high and sales of previously owned homes were at their strongest since 2005. Cash buyers purchased 52.9% of Las Vegas-area homes last month, a sign of just how prevalent investors are in that market.

Danielle Pepers is such a fan of"The Hunger Games"that she had the book's unofficial mascot - a mockingjay - tattooed on her right arm this month. But her intrigue with the books and movie, which hit theaters Friday, didn't stop there. On a recent Wednesday, Pepers, 27, was shopping for T-shirts and jewelry at Hot Topic, a teen-oriented chain store at the Glendale Galleria that sells pop-culture ephemera. A mound of movie tie-in merchandise greeted her at the door. There were knee socks, pillowcases and nail polish.

Torrential downpours from Texas through the Mississippi River area brought flash floods Wednesday as the region coped with a slow-moving storm system bringing winds, rain and possibly some tornadoes. The National Weather Service posted flood and flash flood warnings for parts of eastern Texas, eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana , Missouri and western Mississippi, where up to 10 inches of rain have fallen. “A slow-moving cold front will continue to be a focus for heavy rain and thunderstorms across this area, as well as across eastern Arkansas,” according to the weather service.

President Obama sure can pick 'em - at least as far as NCAA brackets are concerned. While most Americans and even so-called experts saw their brackets busted in the opening rounds of the college basketball tournament, Obama fared surprisingly well. He ranks in the 98th percentile in ESPN's "Tournament Challenge," with 460 out of a possible 640 points. That's good for a rank of No. 131,052 out of the millions submitted on the network's website. Obama missed on 13 of the 48 games played so far. The overall leader on ESPN missed just six games.

As the death toll from this week's flash floods rose to at least 800 Saturday, authorities tried desperately to rescue thousands of stranded villagers and deliver emergency relief to stricken areas. The country's hardest-hit region was the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said the record-breaking monsoon rains had trapped at least 26,700 people on the roofs of buildings and mud huts. Hussain said the threat of further flooding had subsided in many areas in the northwest but that authorities were struggling to provide relief to thousands of victims, many of whom were in dire need of food, drinking water and medicine.

With floodwaters finally receding, Georgians began the unglamorous task of cleaning up Wednesday, while taking stock of the destruction from an unprecedented autumn deluge that has claimed nine lives and caused an estimated $250 million in damage. Across the state, roads opened and residents returned to view the damage to their homes. In the early hours Wednesday, work crews managed to fix much of the damage to a city of Atlanta water-treatment plant that spilled millions of gallons of water into the Chattahoochee River.

Four southern Louisiana parishes were under a state of emergency Tuesday after heavy rains poured through the region, causing flash flooding. According to the governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness , a state of emergency was declared in Acadia, St. Landry, St. Martin and Lafayette parishes. No injuries were reported, but at least 77 residents had to be rescued from high water in Carencro , a town in Lafayette Parish, the state agency said.