In Chernobyl, fallout lingers for villages
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No one lives here anymore. Only radiation-danger signs stick up from the ground in this village contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl accident, and abandoned buildings gape silently, their windows broken.
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Many people continue to wonder whether standing next to a microwave while itâs on can expose them to radiation.
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Listening to enigmatic  Koryak-language songs and eating traditional salmon soup and  cutlets in this village, it is easy to imagine indigenous  cultures still thrive on Russia&#39;s Kamchatka peninsula.
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Extensive damage is caused in a mid Wales village after it was hit by what is being described as a small tornado.
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Big politics rarely play out in little places like Stitov. That is no solace to Vaclav Hudec, whose tiny village is caught in the middle of an international debate over U.S. plans to build a missile defense system here and in neighboring Poland.
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FURTHER research to discover whether fall-out from the Chernobyl nuclear explosion has caused an increase in cancer in the north west has been demanded by the region&#39;s public health boss.
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The Villages today is a shambles. The community that describes itself as a place "to enjoy life as you've always dreamed" is now a living nightmare. After suspected tornadoes ripped through central Florida, resident Jack Hurst said: "Within a few yards, there were houses that had no roof, no walls." Christopher Patton at the emergency operations center said: "We have complete devastation."
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As explosions boomed in the distance, a Kurdish woman stood outside her house and pointed to where shells scorched parts of her father's grapes and plum orchards. "It was a bad day when some 20 shells hit our village in a single day last week. We were crying as we prayed to God to protect us from the bombs of the Islamic Republic of Iran," said Serwa Ibrahim, one of the few remaining villagers in Mardow, about 25 miles from the Iranian border.
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BOWARA, Central African Republic  - Driven from their homes by armed raiders, terrified villagers in northwest Central African Republic say they are surviving in the bush eating roots, fruit and leaves.
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A town in the northern Russia remains tense after days of mass race riots, reports say.
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KASHIWAZAKI, Japan  - Officials at the world's biggest nuclear power plant said on Tuesday there had been more minor radiation leaks after an earthquake in Japan that killed nine people and forced thousands from their homes.
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Two decades after an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant sent clouds of radioactive particles drifting over the fields near her home, Maria Urupa says the wilderness is encroaching. Packs of wolves have eaten two of her dogs, the 73-year-old says, and wild boar trample through her cornfield. And she says fox, rabbits and snakes infest the meadows near her tumbledown cottage.
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The signs say "KEEP OUT" and warn of radiation contamination, but the mushroom-pickers trudge right past them carrying their pails. Eighteen years after the reactor at Chernobyl in neighboring Ukraine exploded, spewing a cloud of radiation that blew north and contaminated 22 percent of this ex-Soviet republic, activists warn of a new threat facing Belarusians: the longing to return to normal life.
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KASHIWAZAKI, Japan  - Officials at the world's biggest nuclear power plant admitted on Tuesday there had been more radiation leaks after an earthquake in Japan that killed nine people and forced thousands from their homes.
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There is a quiet battle for the future of this industrial town, one of America's most polluted places.
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ARANDIS, Namibia -- This sandy little company town, with its tree-lined streets and concrete homes set amid a vast, forbidding desert, had all the signs of terminal decline just a few years back. Both banks closed. The only gas station shut off its pumps. And employable young men, realizing the bleak future of the giant uranium mine that gave Arandis life, began drifting away....
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TSOVKRA-1, Russia  - By a quirk of history that goes so far back in time no one really remembers it, nearly every man, woman and child in the remote mountain village of Tsovkra-1 can walk the tightrope.