Many of the old all-time high temperature records in the Northeast were set during the Dust Bowl era with several occurring on dates during the blistering summer of 1936. In a number of other locations, the nasty heat waves during July 1966 and August 1918 set the marks to beat. Elsewhere, the all-time list is scattered about various decades through the past century. The high at Washington Dulles Airport was among those that set new all-time records. The mercury soared to 105 degrees, breaking the previous all-time high of 104 set on July 16, 1988. Newark - New Jersey, Reading - Pennsylvania, Hartford and Bridgeport both in Connecticut were also cities which tied or broke their all-time records.

AccuWeather.com RealFeel(R) Temperatures will be significantly higher than the actual temperatures. In some cases, the RealFeel topped 120 degrees during the hottest afternoon hours! While similar to the apparent temperature and heat index, the RealFeel temperature incorporates a half-dozen or so additional variables and gives a more accurate "how it really feels" temperature. Relief is coming to the Northeast in a gradual sense over the weekend into next week. However, no real relief is in sight for the South Central states.

Survivors of the shooting spree have described hiding and fleeing into the water to escape the gunman, but a police briefing Saturday detailed for the first time how long the terror lasted - and how long victims waited for help. The shooting came on the heels of what police told The Associated Press was an "Oklahoma city-type" bombing in Oslo's downtown: It targeted a government building, was allegedly perpetrated by a homegrown assailant and used the same mix of fertilizer and fuel that blew up a federal building in the US in 1995.

In all, at least 92 people were killed in the twin attacks that police are blaming on the same suspect, 32-year-old Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik. Earlier in the day, a farm supply store said they had alerted police that he bought six metric tons of fertilizer, which can be used in homemade bombs. That's at least one metric ton more than was found at the farm, according to police.

Police confessed to not knowing much about the suspect, but details trickled out about him all day: He had ties to a right-leaning political party, he posted on Christian fundamentalist websites, and he rented a farm where police found 9,000-11,000 pounds (4,000-5,000 kilograms) of fertilizer.

Police have charged Breivik under Norway's terror law. He will be arraigned on Monday when a court decides whether police can continue to hold him as the investigation continues. Authorities have not given a motive for the attacks, but both were in areas connected to the Labor Party, which leads a coalition government.

The Norwegian police has been unable to confirm how many explosions hit Oslo Friday afternoon in a bomb attack on Norway's government complex that caused widespread chaos. "We cannot confirm that the bomb was planted in a vehicle," Egil Vrekke, an assistant chief constable of the Oslo police, told the BBC in a blitz interview.

He confirmed that 2 persons have been killed, and eight others have been wounded, and said that the Oslo police is focusing on the ongoing rescue operation.

People are reportedly phoning from Utoya saying they are benig shot at. Multiple ambulances are being sent to the site. The alleged shooter was dressed as a police officer. He travelled on a boat to the island in the uniform and when he arrived he started shooting with a handgun, according to reports. Unconfirmed reports of four dead.

Officials said some people were still inside the damaged buildings, some of which were on fire. No-one has said they were behind the attack. Television footage from the scene showed rubble and glass from shattered windows in the streets - smoke was rising from some buildings where fires were burning. The wreckage of at least one car was on one street.

All roads into the city centre have been closed, said national broadcaster NRK, and security officials evacuated people from the area, fearing another blast. Mr Stoltenberg said all government ministers were believed to be safe, Reuters reports. He said he had been advised by police not to reveal his current location.

Egil Vrekke, Assistant Chief Constable of Oslo police told the BBC: "The latest information we have is that there has been a heavy explosion, quite near the government buildings in Oslo this afternoon and there was extensive damage to the buildings. And we can confirm that people are dead and injured," he said.

Analysts have likened the exercise that the chief executive would be forced to undertake to triage: the frantic, on-the-fly process by which physicians and nurses decide which patients arriving at a hospital's emergency room most urgently require medical attention, and which patients, however great their suffering, must be ignored for the moment.

"Not everything is going to be paid, and someone has to decide what's not going to be paid," said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The bills are higher than the income." An analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center, using previous budget figures to project federal revenues and outlays for the month of August, found that the shortfall would be approximately $160 billion. That figure declines a bit - to approximately $135 billion - if one starts one's calculations for the month on August 3, the day after the Treasury exhausts its reserve funds.

On that date, a large set of Social Security and disability checks is set to go out, worth a total estimated value of $23 billion. Obama has suggested he is uncertain whether those checks would in fact be sent out on that date, in the absence of a deal on the $14.2 trillion debt ceiling. Others suggested the president's statement was either designed to influence Republican lawmakers in the ongoing negotiations or one that might only be true for a limited period of time. In the latter scenario, the Social Security checks would go out on August 4 or 5.

The very first bills the federal government would pay, according to Jay Powell, a former undersecretary of the Treasury under President George H W Bush who is now a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center, would be interest on outstanding debt - even if that debt is held by foreign creditors.

"We really have no choice; you need to pay the interest," Powell told Fox News. "If we default on a bond, no one knows what would happen, but it could actually collapse the world's financial system, as almost happened in 2008. It would make the Lehman Brothers event potentially look like a tempest in a teapot. I honestly tell you it's not a risk that anybody in the Treasury Department would ever take - and they shouldn't."

The report was partly based on an independent review of coverage by Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College, London. Although he found no evidence of bias in BBC output, he suggested where there is a "scientific consensus" it should not hunt out opponents purely to balance the story. He highlighted climate change as an example along with the controversy over the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine potentially leading to autism.

Lord Lawson, chairman of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said, "The BBC is already extremely one-sided on this issue. They have a settled view which is politically correct. The idea that because scientific opinion falls largely on one side you can't have a debate is outrageous. Because there's a strong majority in basic science doesn't mean the issue is off the table, yet the BBC says it should be."

The foundation's director, Dr Benny Peiser, said the report would lead to biased coverage of climate change and stifle any real debate. Dr David Whitehouse, the foundation's editor and a former BBC science correspondent, said the corporation had "lost the plot" when it came to science journalism.

He said the corporation was "grouping sceptics with deniers" which would result in a lack of valid scientific input to its reports. He said: "A sceptic is not a denier, all good scientists should be sceptics. The BBC has got itself into a complete muddle. In seeking to get the science right it has missed the journalism which is about asking awkward questions and shaking the tree."

Sergeant Reed - who eventually arrested a suspect after staking out a Kern County vineyard - is just one of dozens of deputies on the front lines of agricultural crime in California, home to the nation's most productive farms and the people who prey on them. While thievery has long been a fact of life in the country, such crimes are on the rise and fighting them has become harder in many parts of California as many grants for rural law enforcement have withered on the vine.

While other states have their own agricultural intrigue - cattle rustlers in Texas, tomato takers in Florida - few areas can claim a wider variety of farm felons than California, where ambushes on everything from almonds to beehives have been reported in recent years. Then there is the hardware: diesel fuel, tools and truck batteries regularly disappear in the Central Valley, the state's agricultural powerhouse, where high unemployment, foreclosures and methamphetamine abuse have made criminals more desperate, officials say.

"All of our ag crimes are up," said Sergeant Reed, who oversees a unit of two full-time detectives - down from three a year ago - all patrolling a county about eight times the size of Rhode Island. A wet winter and warm summer, after all, have meant healthy crops, he said, and a healthy market means happy thieves.

"Everything this year is doing well," Sergeant Reed said. "And if it's doing well here, there's somebody looking to steal it."

Portions of a National Ground Intelligence Center study on the lethal effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons revealed that the arms are part of China's so-called "assassin's mace" arsenal - weapons that allow a technologically inferior China to defeat US military forces.

EMP weapons mimic the gamma-ray pulse caused by a nuclear blast that knocks out all electronics, including computers and automobiles, over wide areas. The phenomenon was discovered in 1962 after an above ground nuclear test in the Pacific disabled electronics in Hawaii.

The declassified intelligence report, obtained by the private National Security Archive, provides details on China's EMP weapons and plans for their use. Annual Pentagon reports on China's military in the past made only passing references to the arms.

"For use against Taiwan, China could detonate at a much lower altitude (30 to 40 kilometers)... to confine the EMP effects to Taiwan and its immediate vicinity and minimize damage to electronics on the mainland," the report said.

In the end, there were important resolutions to announce after all. Euro-zone heads of state and government agreed on Thursday evening to a second emergency aid package for Greece "and some other things," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel following the special summit of the 17 euro-zone member states in Brussels. She exuded satisfaction and said it had been an "important day."

In the weeks prior to the summit, Merkel had repeatedly insisted that there was no need for the special summit and she made it clear that she was not enthusiastic about participating. As recently as Tuesday, she warned that one should not expect any "spectacular" moves. And the Thursday agreement does indeed fall short of being spectacular, but it provides the clarity that was so badly needed.

The new package provides for 109 billion euros worth of credit for Athens. The majority of the fund comes from the euro backstop fund known as the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Private creditors are to contribute an additional 50 billion euros by 2014 via a combination of debt buybacks and swaps. The level of private involvement in the plan is much higher than had been expected and reflects the position that Germany had been insisting on for months. It can be seen as a personal success for Merkel.

At the same time, the EFSF is to be granted additional, pre-emptive competencies to prevent the euro crisis from spreading to additional countries. Among other measures, the EFSF will have the ability to buy state bonds on secondary markets - from banks and insurance companies for example - in order to support debt-ridden euro-zone countries. It is a further step in the direction of the kind of transfer union that Germany has long insisted must be avoided.

The plan will likely lead rating agencies to downgrade Greece to default status for several days this autumn. But government leaders consider the risk to be manageable. Once the new bonds, guaranteed by the EFSF, are issued, Greece will be upgraded again - according to the plan, at least. How exactly the markets will react, however, remains to be seen.

As much as 50% of the US population was under a heat advisory, officials said. Meteorologists have put the temperatures down to a "dome" of high pressure in the atmosphere. On Thursday, many regions in the central US and parts of the eastern seaboard also saw heat indexes - a combination of temperature and humidity - topping 43C.

"This is an exceptionally strong ridge of high pressure that really has an exceptional scope and duration," Eli Jacks, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told the BBC. "The air is sinking, as it sinks it compresses and gets warmer." It also dries out, so few clouds form to block the high early-summer sun, he said.

The combination of high heat and high humidity made it hard for the human body to cool itself - because sweat does not evaporate efficiently, he added. Across the central and eastern US, people and animals alike have been struggling to keep cool amid the oppressive heat and humidity. As the heat peaks in major population centres on the east coast, the number of deaths is expected to rise, officials warn.

By Friday, the low pressure system moving east is expected to bring thunderstorms with hail to the north-eastern US. Meanwhile, as half of the country's 310 million residents sizzle, states in the north-western region of the country were experiencing abnormally cool temperatures. "I didn't know it could be this cold in July. It is absolutely freezing here in Seattle," said one user of the micro-blogging website Twitter.

The most severe heat-wave in modern North American history took place during the Great Depression in 1936. The heat that summer was blamed for more than 5,000 deaths in the US and Canada.

A spokesman for al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaeda and controls much of the country, accused aid groups of being political. Most Western aid agencies quit Somalia in 2009 following al-Shabab threats. The United Nations World Food Programme was one of those banned. It says it is planning to airlift food into the capital, Mogadishu, in the coming days to help the thousands of malnourished children who face starvation in the country.

Some 10 million people are said to need food aid across East Africa but Somalia is by far the worst affected country, as there is no national government to co-ordinate aid after two decades of fighting. The two districts where a famine has been declared - Bakool and Lower Shabelle - are under al-Shabab control and aid agencies have been wary of resuming activities there amid fears for the safety of their staff.

Al-Shabab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told journalists in Mogadishu on Thursday night: "The agencies we banned are still banned. The agencies were involved in political activities." He admitted there was a drought but said reports of a famine were "utter nonsense, 100% baseless and sheer propaganda. There is drought in Somalia and shortage of rain but it is not as bad as they put it."

On Wednesday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said $300 million (184 million pounds) was needed in the next two months to provide an adequate response to the areas affected by famine. "Children and adults are dying at an appalling rate," he said. Nearly half the Somali population - 3.7 million people - were in crisis, he said, with most of them in the south. These are mostly areas under al-Shabab control.

Billy Whitten can't remember ever having to deal so much water and so little water at the same time, much less having the two extremes right next to each other. "This is very unusual this year to have the drought and the flood at the same time," Whitten says. "Normally, when we have a flood, we have some rain to go along with it. This year we've had the flood and no rain at all, so we're just getting it from both ends. We're either flooded or drought destroyed it."

Flooding impacted more than a half-million acres of farmland in Mississippi. At the same time, 25-million acres, or 84% of the state's land, is under some form of drought. Two hundred acres of Whitten's corn was covered by two to three feet of water for nearly two months, destroying $200,000 worth of crops. Just next to those flooded fields are his 1,150 drought-stricken acres of corn. Whitten says he'll be lucky to harvest half of what he normally does, and can only hope next season will be better.

The total impact of flooding and drought on this year's crop won't be known until after harvest, which usually begins in late August. John Michael Riley, an agricultural economist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, expects damages to be well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. "The estimates for the state range anywhere from $100 million to $500 million worth of damage from the crops that were lost or damaged as a result of the flooding... The drought estimates on row crop in the delta Mississippi could be in that same ballpark of $100 million to $500 million dollars worth of damages," Riley explains.

Eurozone leaders have still failed to address the underlying problem of Greek solvency. Without some form of long term debt relief and a sustainable plan to return the Greek economy to growth, taxpayers will continue to be heavily exposed to a Greek default. A second bailout and the expansion of the EFSF may provide a liquidity boost, but will ultimately transfer risk away from the private sector onto the books of taxpayer-backed institutions.

It looks as if Greece will be forced into some kind of temporary default, but the mechanisms for dealing with this look to be thin on the ground. This plan offers the negatives of a default, albeit a temporary one, without proper backstops or the positives of long term debt relief, which is what Greece, and potentially other struggling eurozone countries, really need.

The deficit reduction debate is coming up against an August 2 deadline when the $14.3 trillion (8.77 trillion pounds) limit on America's borrowing capacity is exhausted, putting in jeopardy payments on US Treasury debt as well as paycheques for federal employees and soldiers. If an agreement is reached to raise the debt ceiling but nothing meaningful is done in terms of deficit reduction, the US would likely have its rating cut to the AA category, S&P said.

"While banks and broker-dealers wouldn't likely suffer any immediate ratings downgrades, we would downgrade the debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the 'AAA' rated Federal Home Loan Banks, and the 'AAA' rated Federal Farm Credit System Banks to correspond with the US sovereign rating," S&P said in its report. "We would also lower the ratings on 'AAA' rated US insurance groups, as per our criteria that correlates insurers' and sovereigns' ratings," the firm said.

However, S&P said it sees a failure to reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling and reducing deficits as the least likely scenario, adding that in such a case the global financial markets would be in turmoil and "likely shove the US economy back into recession." In such a hypothetical case, it envisages the US Treasury curtailing spending sharply and the US Federal Reserve launching another round of quantitative easing to help prop up the economy.

The leaders met in Brussels after the European Central Bank signaled in a policy reversal that it was willing to let Greece default temporarily as part of a plan involving longer official loans at cheaper rates, a debt swap, a bond buyback but no new tax on banks. Minds have been concentrated by the danger that Europe's debt crisis could engulf the much bigger economies of Spain and Italy. Greece, Portugal and Ireland have already succumbed.

The draft summit statement obtained by Reuters showed the EFSF rescue fund would be allowed for the first time to help states earlier with precautionary loans, to recapitalize banks and to intervene in the secondary bond market. "To improve the effectiveness of the EFSF and address contagion, we agree to increase the flexibility of the EFSF," it said, listing those three key steps, all of which Germany had previously blocked.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy crafted a common position in late night talks in Berlin with ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet. "I expect we will be able to seal a new Greece program. This is an important signal. And with this program we want to grasp the problems by their root," Merkel told reporters on arrival in Brussels. Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager said a short-term or selective default for Greece, long vehemently opposed by the ECB, was now a possibility.

"The demand to prevent a selective default has been removed," he told the Dutch parliament.