Cyclone Kills 89 People in Eastern India

A cyclone packing winds of more than 100 mph (160 kph) demolished ten of thousands of mud huts in northeastern India, killing at least 89 villagers, officials said Wednesday.
The cyclone struck close to midnight on Tuesday in northeastern parts of West Bengal and Bihar states, uprooting trees and snapping telephone and electricity lines, West Bengal Civil Defense Minister Srikumar Mukherjee said. Hundreds of people were injured and many thousands left homeless

Devesh Chandra Thakur, Bihar state's Minister for Disaster Management, said there was no cyclone warning from the weather department, so villagers were unprepared.
Television footage showed uprooted trees lying across shanties and sheets of corrugated metal ripped from the roofs of homes. Small children sat outside their damaged huts as parents tried to salvage their belongings from inside.
Namita Biswas, 51, a housewife in West Bengal, told The Associated Press by phone she and her husband were sleeping in their hut when it was crushed by a tree that broke from the impact of the cyclone. Her husband was killed.The cyclone demolished nearly 50,000 mud huts in West Bengal and thousands more in Bihar, officials said.
The worst-hit villages in West Bengal state were Hematabad, Raiganj and Kiran Dighi, where police and rescue teams have recovered 39 bodies, Ramanuj Chakraborty, a senior local official told The Associated Press.
Another 50 people were killed in the northeastern Bihar districts of Araria, Kishenganj and Purnea, according to government officials.
By Wednesday evening, authorities had begun rushing medical teams and food supplies to the cyclone-hit area, Ramanuj Chakraborty, a West Bengal official said. Temporary shelters were also being set up for those who had lost their homes, he said.
A prison wall collapsed in Bihar's Araria district, forcing authorities to shift more than 600 inmates to another prison, officials said.

Forget the Flash. Let's See Your Nectar

A female purple-throated carib isn't just interested in the plumage of a male hummingbird. She also wants to know what he owns. Good looks and a nice personality are secondary.

In what is believed to be a unique relationship in the world of birds, a male purple-throated carib doesn't just protect his own territory. He also holds a significant portion of his kingdom in reserve for females only, thus attracting many potential mates that he can observe and either select or shoo away.
"I don't know of anything else like it," John Kress, a botanist with the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said in a telephone interview. Kress and a colleague, Ethan Temeles, an ornithologist and biology professor at Amherst College in Massachusets

, disclosed their discovery in the online edition of The Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Apple Delays International iPad

U.S. buyers have been snapping up the iPad so quickly that Apple Inc. is delaying the tablet computer's overseas debut a second time, the company said Wednesday.
Apple said it will now start taking orders for the iPad from international buyers on May 10.
In January, it said the iPad would be sold worldwide in late March. After analysts reported production delays would limit the number of units available, Apple postponed the U.S. launch to April 3 and delayed plans

for the international launch until late in April.
Word of the second delay didn't faze Apple investors, who are eager to see signs the iPad is selling well. Apple shares rose $2.39, or 1 percent, to $244.82 in morning trading.
"We know that many international customers waiting to buy an iPad will be disappointed by this news, but we hope they will be pleased to learn the reason — the iPad is a runaway success in the U.S. thus far," Apple said in a statement.

Apple said has delivered more than 500,000 iPads in the U.S. and has taken "a large number" of orders for the coming models that can go online over cellular broadband rather than solely where Wi-Fi is available. Those versions cost $629, $729 or $829, depending on the storage capacity.