Rapid urbanisation has heaped pressure on water resources and drainage systems across Asia, leaving low-lying areas exposed to massive floods such as those that paralysed Jakarta and Manila last year and central Thailand in 2011.

"The lust for land -- driven by urbanisation -- is narrowing drainage across most Asian cities so even small amounts of rainfall can cause massive problems," Kulwant Singh of the UN-HABITAT said at a water security forum in Thailand.

Citing the estimated $45 billion cost of the kingdom's catastrophic floods in late 2011, Singh said "there should be no question" of governments paying for big infrastructure projects to protect cities.

"If ten years of wealth is suddenly wiped out, it makes sense to spend a fraction of that on long-term prevention," he added, urging consideration for ambitious prevention schemes.

Flood management has been in focus in Thailand since the 2011 floods, which inundated swathes of the country for months, deluged parts of the capital and tool a heavy toll on its lucrative manufacturing base.

One ambitious proposal by Thailand Underground Tunnelling Group (TUTG) would see two vast tunnels built beneath Bangkok to siphon off water from heavy monsoons.

Echoing a two-tiered 'smart-tunnel' through the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, the passage could also hold an underground road that could be closed to take water in the event of a major flood.

The scheme, which would cost around $3.5 billion, could return excess water to the city's shrivelling groundwater reserves in an aquifer layer under the city which is in part responsible for it gradually sinking.

"Bangkok is sinking... if we can store water (from heavy rains) we can also recharge the aquifer," said Zaw Zaw Aye of TUTG.

Other sustainable solutions to the water problems facing the region's booming cities include recycling more water -- something successfully pioneered by Singapore -- and stemming leaks and other waste.

"We try to collect every drop that falls from the sky; collect every drop we use and try to use every drop more than once," said Chew Men Leong of PUB -- the city-state's water agency.

One third of Singapore's water is currently recycled, he added.

The Asian Development Bank last month warned that nearly two thirds of people in the Asia-Pacific region have no clean, piped water at home despite the region's strong economic growth, blaming poor management and a lack of investment in infrastructure rather than short supplies.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:39 AEST Chittagong, Bangladesh (AFP) May 17, 2013 - Bangladesh and Myanmar cleaned up on Friday after a killer cyclone wrecked tens of thousands of homes, relieved that the damage was not much worse after the storm weakened as it made landfall.

At least 48 people were either killed by Cyclone Mahasen or while trying to flee its impact, including 31 Muslim Rohingya whose bodies washed up on the shores of Bangladesh after their boat capsized while sailing from Myanmar.

Seventeen people were confirmed as having been killed in Bangladesh by Mahasen, which lashed the southern coast with winds of up to 100 kilometres (62 miles) per hour before being downgraded to a tropical depression.

But there was relief that the toll was not higher, given that cyclones have killed hundreds of thousands of people in both countries in recent decades.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has "expressed gratitude to the Almighty" in Mahasen's aftermath and asked people to "offer thanksgiving prayers", her spokesman Abul Kalam Azad told reporters.

At one stage, up to a million people had taken refuge in makeshift shelters along the Bangladeshi coast, mainly in the densely-populated stretch between the second city of Chittagong and the Cox's Bazaar tourist region.

Most people however returned home after the storm passed over, heading towards India as its strength waned.

Hundreds of thousands of people who live in low-lying areas and islands in the vast Meghna river estuary were the most affected.

Nearly 94,000 mud, straw and tin-built houses were completely or partially damaged by the cyclone in the country's coastal districts, according to a provisional government estimate.

"Of the total, 49,000 houses were completely destroyed and 45,000 houses were partly damaged," the government's disaster management spokesman Abdul Wazed told AFP.

"Crops on a large swathe of land were also damaged," he said, adding the authorities had dispatched relief items to the coastal districts. "We're also distributing rice to the most affected people."

He said a final estimate of the damage would be known by next week.

"We're still assessing the damage. We've sent our officials to do surveys in all the remote islands and areas. We'll get a full picture very soon," Nurul Amin, commissioner of the worst-affected Barisal province, told AFP.

"Tens of thousands of trees have fallen on the roads, disrupting communication to some of the worst-hit areas."

Bangladesh authorities said 31 bodies of Rohingya were found washed up on a beach near the Myanmar border, including 25 children and six women.

Across the border in Myanmar, some 70,000 people were evacuated from villages and camps which are home to large numbers of Rohingya.

However a spokesman for the state government, Win Myaing, said there were no reports of deaths or serious damage.

"There is no more danger from the storm," he said.

He said some of the Rohingya who were evacuated from the camps would return to their tents or shelters, while others would be moved to wooden barracks that the government has been building for them.

The International Organization for Migration, which has joined the damage assessment teams, said the preparations by both countries' governments had prevented a much higher toll.

"If this same storm had hit 20 years ago, we might have seen thousands of deaths. As it is, people are already leaving the storm shelters to go home," he added," said Brian Kelly, the IOM's Asia-Pacific emergency advisor.

India's meteorological department said Mahasen was now headed over northeastern parts of the country such as Assam, Manipur and Nagaland.

But it is now officially a tropical depression and unlikely to do more than trigger flooding in isolated regions.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:39 AEST Algiers (AFP) May 19, 2013 - A 5.5-magnitude earthquake on Sunday struck Algeria's Bejaia region, 250 kilometres (155 miles) east of Algiers, injuring five people and damaging some houses, the APS news agency said, citing medics.

"There are no serious cases -- the victims are mainly suffering from trauma," a medic said.

The injured included two workers who fell from scaffolding when the quake hit, while another panicked and jumped from a window, the medic added.

On May 3, a quake damaged several buildings around Mostaganem city in western Algeria, causing no casualties.

The North African country is regularly hit by earthquakes. It reported nearly 3,000 people dead and 10,000 injured when an earthquake struck the coastal town of Boumerdes near the capital on May 21, 2003.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:39 AEST Greenbelt MD (SPX) May 17, 2013 - The Hurricane Season of the Eastern Pacific Ocean officially began May 15 and the first tropical depression of the season formed. Tropical Depression One-E was seen by NASA's Aqua satellite while it was developing.

The first tropical depression formed around 11 a.m. EDT on May 15. NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Tropical Depression 1-E (TD1E) at 0823 UTC (4:23 a.m. EDT) and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of the storm.

AIRS data showed bands of thunderstorms wrapping into the low-level center from the west, as well as a fragmented band of thunderstorms east of center. Cloud top temperatures of the thunderstorms were as cold as -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius) indicating strong thunderstorms with heavy rainfall potential.

At 11 a.m. EDT on May 15, TD1E had maximum sustained winds near 35 mph (55 kph). It was located far from land, about 650 miles (1,045 km) south-southwest of Acapulco, Mexico, near 9.2 north latitude and 103.6 west longitude. TD1E was moving to the west at 12 mph (19 kph) and had a minimum central pressure near 1006 millibars. There are no coastal warnings or watches in effect.

The National Hurricane Center noted that TD1E will be moving through warm waters over the next couple of days, which will likely strengthen it into Tropical Storm Alvin.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:39 AEST Rome (AFP) May 16, 2013 - A deadly earthquake in the Italian town of L'Aquila in 2009 which killed 309 people "was not unforeseeable", a judge said Thursday, reigniting a heated scientific debate over whether experts should have warned the population beforehand.

"It was an earthquake which was by no means exceptional for L'Aquila and absolutely in line with the area's seismic history," Judge Giuseppe Grieco said in a legal summary released three months after a trial into the collapse of a student residence that killed eight people.

Three Italian builders were found guilty in February of multiple manslaughter after carrying out restoration work on the student housing that was found to have weakened it further. Also, a technician was sentenced to jail for having declared the building safe shortly before the quake.

Grieco said that strong earthquakes in the area were known to have taken place "around every 325 years from the year 1000," and therefore "it was not unforeseeable."

In October last year, six Italian scientists and a government official were sentenced to six years in jail for underestimating the risks of the killer quake and failing to alert the population.

The sentence has been suspended as the seven appeal the verdict.

All seven were members of the Major Risks Committee which met in L'Aquila on March 31, 2009 -- six days before the quake devastated the region, leaving thousands of people homeless.

It met after a series of small tremors in the preceding weeks had sown panic among local inhabitants but gave press interviews saying the seismic activity in L'Aquila posed "no danger".

Survivors said many locals had been falsely reassured and stayed indoors when the first tremors hit, sharply raising the number of causalities.

Enzo Boschi, a committee member and head of Italy's national geophysics institute (INGV) at the time, insisted Thursday that it was not possible to forecast earthquakes.

"No-one has ever so far been able to foresee earthquakes. What it is possible to do, and what developed countries do, is make buildings safer to reduce damage as much as possible," he said.

Critics have long lamented a lack of control on the quality of construction in Italy and the European centre for research in earthquake engineering warned following the quake that 80,000 public buildings in the country were unsafe.

The ruling sparked outrage in the international scientific community, with some likening it to the persecution of Galileo, while others warned it could put experts off advisory roles to the state.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:39 AEST Chittagong, Bangladesh (AFP) May 17, 2013 - Bangladesh and Myanmar cleaned up on Friday after a killer cyclone wrecked thousands of homes, relieved that the damage was not much worse after the storm weakened as it made landfall.

At least 40 people were either killed by Cyclone Mahasen or while trying to flee its impact, including 25 Muslim Rohingya whose bodies washed up on the shores of Bangladesh after their boat capsized while sailing from Myanmar.

Fifteen people were confirmed as having been killed in Bangladesh by Mahasen, which lashed the southern coast with winds of up to 100 kilometres (62 miles) per hour before being downgraded to a tropical depression.

But there was relief that the toll was not higher, given that cyclones have killed hundreds of thousands of people in both countries in recent decades.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has "expressed gratitude to the Almighty" in Mahasen's aftermath and asked people to "offer thanksgiving prayers", her spokesman Abul Kalam Azad told reporters.

At one stage, up to a million people had taken refuge in makeshift shelters along the Bangladeshi coast, mainly in the densely-populated stretch between the second city of Chittagong and the Cox's Bazaar tourist region.

Most people however have since returned home after the storm passed over, heading towards India as its strength waned.

Hundreds of thousands of people who live in low-lying areas and islands in the vast Meghna river estuary were the most affected, as thousands of their houses were levelled by the cyclone.

"At least 15,000 mud-built houses were damaged by the cyclone in our district," Sirajul Islam, government administrator of Noakhali district, told AFP, adding villagers and fishermen in remote river shoals were the worst hit.

It was a similar picture in Laxmipur district, home to many remote river shoals and islands.

"We've evacuated more than 20,000 people from some islands but most of them are returning home to today," district administrator Mizanur Rahman told AFP.

"We're making a full assessment of the total damages but we know that hundreds of homes were flattened.

"We're also distributing rice to the most affected people."

All 15 of the deaths in Bangladesh were reported in the province of Barisal.

"We're still assessing the damage. We've sent our officials to do surveys. We'll get a full picture by end of today," said provincial commissioner Nurul Amin as he confirmed the toll.

He said an estimated 3,000 mud and tin-roofed houses were flattened by cyclone. "Tens of thousands of trees have fallen on the roads, disrupting communication to some of the worst hit areas."

Bangladesh authorities said the bodies of the Rohingya were found washed up on a beach near the Myanmar border.

"We assume they are of the missing Rohingya" due to their clothing, Cox's Bazaar police chief Mohammad Azad Mia told AFP. Twenty of the bodies were those of children.

Across the border in Myanmar, some 70,000 people were evacuated from villages and camps which are home to large numbers of Rohingya.

However a spokesman for the state government, Win Myaing, said there were no reports of deaths or serious damage.

"There is no more danger from the storm," he said.

He said some of the Rohingya who were evacuated from the camps would return to their tents or shelters, while others would be moved to wooden barracks that the government has been building for them.

"We're working quickly to finish them all by the middle of next month. We're trying to finish them before the rainy season," he said of the new accommodation.

India's meteorological department said Mahasen was now headed over northeastern parts of the country such as Assam, Manipur and Nagaland.

But it is now officially a tropical depression and unlikely to do more than trigger flooding in isolated regions.

burs/co/ia

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:39 AEST Chittagong, Bangladesh (AFP) May 16, 2013 - A cyclone ripped into the Bangladeshi coast on Thursday as hundreds of thousands of people hunkered down in evacuation shelters including in a region of Myanmar torn by communal unrest.

One person died as Cyclone Mahasen hit Bangladesh's southern Patuakhali coast, officials said, while heavy rains and strong winds also lashed neighbouring Myanmar's northwest coast, home to tens of thousands of displaced Muslim Rohingya.

Weather officials in Bangladesh said that Mahasen was likely to whip the heavily populated coastline stretching from Bangladesh's second city Chittagong to the Cox's Bazaar tourist region in the afternoon.

But fears of widespread damage receded as Mahasen appeared to have lost some of its power after languishing over the Bay of Bengal for several days, and made landfall packing winds of up to 90 kilometres (56 miles) per hour.

"Cyclone Mahasen started crossing the Patuakhali coast at 9:00 am (0300 GMT) Thursday," Shamsuddun Ahmed, deputy director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, told AFP.

"It is not a severe cyclone. It did not gain strength in the last part of its journey as it hit the coast," said Ahmed.

"Its centre is still in the Bay of Bengal and will hit the Chittagong coast in the afternoon."

Provincial administrator Nurul Amin told AFP one man had drowned in a lake in a coastal district as heavy rains battered the region while low-lying areas were submerged by a one-metre (three-foot) storm surge.

About 800,000 people spent the night in more than 2,000 cyclone shelters as well as schools and colleges along Bangladesh's long coastline.

Of the total, 600,000 people alone were evacuated in the Chittagong region, provincial administrator Mohammad Abdullah told AFP.

"We have enough food, medicine and other facilities in these shelters," he said, adding that the armed forces are on standby to help if needed.

Mohammad Mehrajuddin, an elected local government head of southern Nijhum Dwip Island, told AFP by phone that many villagers in his area did not move to cyclone shelters for fear that their cattle would be stolen in the night.

There was a similar reluctance to move among the Muslim Rohingya across the border in Myanmar's Rakhine state, reflecting a deep mistrust of the security forces and local Buddhists after two outbreaks of communal bloodshed last year.

State media in Myanmar said that by Wednesday 70,000 people had been evacuated from the camps and vulnerable local villages.

About half of the residents at one camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) on the outskirts of the Rakhine capital Sittwe appeared to have moved out overnight, according to AFP journalists who visited on Thursday morning.

Than Win, 38, was among those staying behind to guard his tent.

"Some of the IDPs do not trust the authorities," he said.

"They worry that they will be kept elsewhere and will never be able to come back," he said, adding that the rest of his family had moved to higher ground. "What I'm worried about now is food."

Buddhist-Muslim clashes in the region last year left about 200 people dead and whole neighbourhoods burned to the ground.

Fifty-eight Rohingya were left missing after their boat capsized on Monday as they tried to escape the impending cyclone by sea to higher ground along the coast.

Aid workers have expressed fears for the safety of the coastal dwellers.

"In many of the areas, sub-standard housing means people have little protection from the heavy wind and rain that comes with a cyclone," said Jeff Wright, emergency operations director at World Vision.

"Often housing is destroyed or damaged severely in a storm like this, and livelihoods like crops can be flattened, impacting a family's main source of income."

Rights groups have criticised Myanmar for failing to provide permanent housing sooner for displaced Rohingya, after months of warnings of the danger posed to the camps by this year's monsoon.

Bangladesh and Myanmar have both been frequent victims of cyclones which have left hundreds of thousands of people dead in recent decades.

Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008, killed about 140,000 people.

In November 2007 Cyclone Sidr hit southern Bangladesh, killing at least 4,000 people.

burs/co/jit

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:39 AEST Santiago Xalitzintla, Mexico (AFP) May 14, 2013 - Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano has blown steam for days, prompting authorities to prepare for possible evacuations, but residents are used to their towering neighbor's rumblings and keep fearlessly heading to work.

Popocatepetl, which means "smoking mountain" in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, spewed more steam, gas and ash that rose three kilometers (two miles) above the crater early Tuesday, according to the National Disaster Prevention Center.

National civil protection coordinator Luis Enrique Puentes said the volcano was "totally calm" following the eruption, which belched out glowing rocks. While there was no immediate need to evacuate the population, the volcano could erupt again Wednesday, he added.

The volcano, which is 55 kilometers (34 miles) southeast of Mexico City, has also rumbled and spewed molten rocks in recent days. Last week, it covered several towns in ash, including the capital of Puebla state.

Authorities have raised the alert level to "Yellow Phase Three," the fifth of a seven-stage warning system, restricting access to an area of 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) around the volcano and preparing evacuation routes.

But people living in the nearby town of Santiago Xalitzintla appear calm despite the activity inside the 5,452-meter (17,887-foot) high volcano, known locally as "Gregorio" or "Don Goyo" and considered a magical rainmaker by indigenous populations.

"We go out, we look at it and we go back to sleep very soundly," said Guadalupe de Santiago, balancing a basket of candy on her head near a church in this town just 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) south of the volcano.

"(The volcano) takes care of us. Look at all the water he's sending us," she said as rain fell on her.

Hundreds of soldiers were sent to Santiago Xalitzintla and two other towns in case the volcano erupts and forces the evacuation of 11,000 residents in this area surrounded by corn fields and small cattle farms.

The soldiers checked the condition of roads in case they need to be used for an evacuation and the two shelters were set up in the state of Puebla to house 5,000 people.

Around 4.5 million people live within 50 kilometers (31 miles) of Popocatepetl, which had its last major eruption in 2000, forcing thousands of people to evacuate from surrounding towns.

But few residents evacuated in May 2012 when the volcano belched out ash, forcing the Puebla airport to close temporarily.

"We won't go to the shelter again if they tell us the same thing," Santiago said.

"Things got stolen from our house last year. All our animals were gone and nothing had happened up there," she said, pointing at the crater.

Every March 12, dozens of residents climb part of the volcano in an annual ceremony, leaving flowers, food and drinks as offerings to ask "Gregorio" to produce rain.

"We celebrate his birthday and ask him for rain and a good harvest," said Juan Garcia Agustin, the town's top official.

Agustin, who has checked the dirt roads that will be used in case of an evacuation, said residents would take shelter set up inside a school gym in the town of Cholula if necessary. Some 100 cots were ready, with bags on top of them filled with hygiene products.

But the shelter's doctor on duty, Juan Manuel Garcia, said residents are loath to evacuate.

"People are reluctant to leave their homes because experience tells them that nothing even happened before and that nothing will happen if they disobey evacuation orders," he said. "However, if they risk losing their animals and belongings, they'll listen."

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:39 AEST Sittwe, Myanmar (AFP) May 15, 2013 - A cyclone threatening to lash low-lying coastal areas of Bangladesh and Myanmar appears to have weakened, but still poses a risk to more than eight million people, according to the UN.

Cyclone Mahasen is moving northeastwards over the Bay of Bengal and expected to make landfall on Friday morning north of the Bangladeshi city of Chittagong, sparing Myanmar's restive Rakhine state from its full fury, the UN said.

"The cyclone does appear to have weakened and it has been downgraded to a category 1 cyclone," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement released late on Tuesday.

But it may still bring "life-threatening conditions" for 8.2 million people in northeast India, Bangladesh and Myanmar, it warned, adding Bangladesh's Chittagong and Cox's Bazaar areas could face the worst of a tidal surge and heavy rains.

Cox's Bazaar, a long strip of coastline, is home to ramshackle camps housing many of the estimated 300,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees living in Bangladesh.

Local officials said 113 medical teams had been mobilised to deal with the impact of the cyclone and leave had been cancelled for all government employees.

"We've made all the preparations to face the cyclone," Mohammed Kamruzzaman, a government magistrate in charge of a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazaar, told AFP.

"We have been using loudspeakers to alert both documented and undocumented Rohingya refugees of the dangers of the cyclone.

"We've also stockpiled dry food, kept medical teams and ambulances on stand-by and shifted the sick and pregnant women from the camps to hospitals."

Bangladesh's disaster management minister Mahmud Ali told reporters that the government had made "all-out preparations for the cyclone in all 13 coastal districts".

Experts say Bangladesh is better prepared to handle cyclones than authorities across the border in Rakhine, where tens of thousands of Rohingya made homeless by communal unrest last year languish in flood-prone camps.

Myanmar state media late Tuesday said rescuers were searching for 58 missing Rohingya whose boat capsized after hitting rocks in a coastal waterway after they fled the cyclone's path to escape to higher ground.

A number of other Rohingya in Myanmar have expressed reluctance to relocate, reflecting deep mistrust of security forces following two outbreaks of violence last year that left about 200 people dead and whole neighbourhoods razed.

Rights groups have accused Myanmar security forces of complicity in the unrest.

OCHA said Myanmar planned to move at least 38,000 internally displaced persons out of the cyclone's track by Tuesday, but added that it was unclear how many had actually been relocated.

Myanmar's army has been mobilised to help evacuate those most at risk. But some rights campaigners said the effort had come too late after months of warnings of the danger posed to the camps by this year's monsoon.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:39 AEST Sittwe, Myanmar (AFP) May 14, 2013 - Rescuers were on Tuesday searching for 58 missing Rohingya Muslims whose boat capsized in western Myanmar as they fled a looming cyclone, state media said, as the storm threatened thousands living in makeshift camps.

The boat, which sank after hitting rocks in a coastal waterway on Monday night, was one of seven vessels carrying Rohingya seeking out higher ground from a camp in Pauktaw township in Rakhine state, according to state television.

"The rescue operation is ongoing because 58 people are still missing," it said, adding that 42 people had been rescued.

Cyclone Mahasen has prompted mass evacuations in Rakhine, where about 140,000 people, mainly Rohingya, are living in flimsy tents or makeshift housing after two waves of deadly communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims last year.

Myanmar's department of meteorology on Tuesday said the cyclone was travelling through the Bay of Bengal about 510 miles (820 kilometres) from the state capital Sittwe with wind speeds of about 60 miles (100 kilometres) per hour and would make landfall on Thursday near the Myanmar-Bangladesh border.

It threatens to worsen the humanitarian crisis in Rakhine, which was sparked by two outbreaks of deadly religious violence beginning last June that saw around 200 people killed and the homes of tens of thousands razed.

In Geneva a spokesman for the UN's refugee agency said millions of people living in the area could be hit, with latest estimates suggesting some 69,000 displaced people in three locations were at particular risk.

An update from ASEAN's disaster relief arm said the Pauktaw camps housed 17,000 displaced people and were "particularly vulnerable", adding that camps sited on rice paddies would be swamped by any storm surge.

Fear of the impending storm has spread through the makeshift camps.

"We are holding prayers at the camp not to be hit by the cyclone. We have suffered so much already," Maung Maung, a Rohingya at Thechaung camp near Sittwe told AFP.

He said the authorities had given information and some assistance, but added it was not enough. "We are still living under the rain," he said.

Some Rohingya have reportedly refused to leave their shelters in a sign of the festering mistrust of their ethnic Rakhine neighbours and of security forces.

"We do not want to move to another place in this weather," said another Rohingya Muslim near Sittwe, also named Maung Maung.

"We are better off staying here to die."

Myanmar's army was deployed to help evacuate those most at risk. But some international observers said the effort had come too late after months of warnings of the danger posed to the camps by this year's monsoon.

"If the government fails to evacuate those at risk, any disaster that results will not be natural but man-made," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The warnings have revived memories of Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008 and killed about 140,000 people.

Bangladeshi authorities have warned that the cyclone could barrel into coastal homes there, but have so far stopped short of issuing an evacuation order for residents in the low-lying Chittagong area, home to some 30 million people.

The Muslim nation is also home to a large, longstanding Rohingya refugee population, estimated at around 300,000, with many living in cramped coastal camps just over the border from Rakhine.

An official from Bangladesh's Cox's Bazaar district, the site of a number of such camps, said authorities were using loudspeakers to warn islanders and coastal dwellers of the storm.

Thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar in rickety and overcrowded boats since the Rakhine violence erupted. Scores have died making the perilous journey south towards Thailand and Malaysia.

Myanmar views its population of roughly 800,000 Rohingya as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and denies them citizenship.

]]> Mon, 20 MAY 2013 12:44:39 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D