The United Nations said on Friday that the famine that has killed tens of thousands of people in Somalia this past year has ended, thanks to a bumper harvest and a surge in emergency food deliveries.

But conditions are still precarious, United Nations officials warned, with many Somalis dying of hunger and more than two million still needing emergency rations to survive.

“The crisis is not over,” said José Graziano da Silva, director general of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, who just returned from Somalia.

More than 10,000 Australians were Friday stranded by flooding in the country’s east, with thousands ordered to leave their homes or businesses and the military called in to airlift supplies.

The New South Wales State Emergency Service said about 10,500 people were thought to be isolated by the waters that have rushed across the state’s north and southeast Queensland after days of constant rain.

More than 2,000 people have been ordered to evacuate buildings in the New South Wales town of Moree, which is preparing for its second flood in a matter of months.

Leaks of radioactive water have become more frequent at Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant less than two months after it was declared basically stable.

The problem underlines the continuing challenges facing Tokyo Electric Power Company as it attempts to keep the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant under control. A massive earthquake and tsunami badly damaged the plant last March, resulting in the melting of three reactor cores.

King Abdullah's Relief Campaign for Pakistani People will provide funds amounting to US $120,000 to Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD) with the purpose to install water pumps and filtration plants in the flood-ravaged areas of Punjab and Sindh.

In this connection, KARCPP signed a Memorandum of Understanding with HHRD, here on Friday, under which the latter would install water pumps and filtration plants in the flood-affected areas, especially hospitals and mosques, aimed at providing safe and clean drinking water to the community.

Heavy summer rains across eastern Australia prompted authorities to issue flood warnings for vast areas of Queensland and New South Wales states on Thursday, including coal mining areas in the Hunter Valley.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued the flood warnings with heavy rain expected over the next 24 hours, following saturating rains over the past week which have already swelled rivers in New South Wales and Queensland.

An exceptional harvest after good rains and food deliveries by aid agencies have ended famine in Somalia although conditions remain fragile and could worsen, the United Nations said on Friday.

The U.N. declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia last July and extended the famine warning in September to six out of eight regions in the anarchic Horn of Africa country.

Thirty-eight more deaths from a cold snap have been registered in Ukraine in the past 24 hours, bringing to 101 the toll from freezing temperatures across the former Soviet republic, the Emergencies Ministry said on Friday.

Ukraine is experiencing the coldest winter in six years, with overnight temperatures sinking as low as minus 33 Celsius (minus 27 Fahrenheit).

The ministry said that of the 101 people who have died over the past seven days, 64 were found dead on the streets, 26 in their homes and 11 died while receiving medical care.

Weird weather kept vexing large swathes of the United States over the last week, with unseasonably warm and dry conditions melting northern snows and spreading drought through the southwest, even as heavy rains soaked parched pastures in Texas and Oklahoma, according to climate experts.

Unseasonably warm temperatures were noted in Kansas and across many areas of the central Plains, with Kansas recording temperatures well above 60 degrees Fahrenheit this week.

The Sri Lankan Cabinet of Ministers has given permission for the government to conduct negotiations with the International Bank for Reconstruction & Development (IBRB) of the World Bank to obtain US $213 million loan for the implementation of the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project.

The President, as the Minister of Finance and Planning, has submitted the proposal seeking the financial assistance.