Disasters

The Department of Public Safety said Gov. Mark Dayton approved the request for help from Todd, Cass and Crow Wing Counties. The agency found in a preliminary estimate the counties had $1.3 million in damage qualified to receive aid.
St. Cloud police say the fire started accidentally from a cigarette. A 70-year-old woman died and a man, 42, was injured.
Deadly explosion rocks Thailand's capital city
At least one bomb exploded at an intersection near a shrine popular with tourists in the center of Bangkok. Multiple news reports put the number of people killed at more than a dozen.
The 43-year-old man had been swimming near a floating dock Sunday evening when he went underwater and didn't resurface.
After Katrina, new artists found inspiration in a recovering city
At New Orleans exhibits commemorating the 10th anniversary of the hurricane, NPR's Neda Ulaby found three artists who said they wouldn't have become artists if it hadn't been for the storm.
10 years after Katrina, hopes for recovery in Waveland, Miss., unfulfilled
Hurricane Katrina sent a 30-foot wall of water crashing into coastal Mississippi, and the small town of Waveland, Miss., near the Louisiana border, was one of the hardest-hit places.
Indonesian plane with 54 aboard crashes
An Indonesian twin-turboprop plane carrying 54 people crashed in the country's mountainous and densely wooded Papua province, Transportation Ministry officials confirmed.
The Italian navy found them in the hold of a smuggling boat off the Libyan coast, apparently killed by fuel fumes. More than 300 others were rescued.
China evacuates Tianjin blast site; 104 dead
Chinese authorities are clearing the area around a fire and explosions in Tianjin over fears of sodium cyanide poisoning from Wednesday's massive explosion that has killed more than 100.