A failing dam has sparked emergency evacuations of two towns in north-west Puerto Rico as the US territory struggled with flooding, an island-wide blackout and other dangers in Hurricane Maria's wake.

LONESOME GEORGE passed away ‘peacefully’ at the Charles Darwin Research Centre in the Galapagos.

THE strongest typhoon in years to crash into the Philippines killed at least three people yesterday, leaving a wasteland of fallen trees and power poles and sending thousands scampering to safety in near-zero visibility.

Super Typhoon Megi slammed ashore along the Philippines' north-eastern coast today with ferocious winds of 140mph – the strongest cyclone to hit the country in years.

A congressman killed in a bomb blast outside the Philippine legislature was a former member of an al-Qaida-linked militant group who switched sides to support a US-backed offensive against them, police said today.

THE world’s oldest person, Emiliano Mercado del Toro, died yesterday at his home on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, a relative said. He was 115.

Winds and rain from an approaching typhoon hampered rescue efforts today in the eastern Philippines, where at least 350 people died in flash floods and landslides in the storm-weary region.

At least 20 convicted murderers, rapists and robbers have escaped a prison in the northern Philippines.

Muslim rebels who kidnapped around 24 hostages, including three Americans, have dumped the beheaded bodies of two of their captives near a main road outside the capital of a remote island in the southern Philippines.

Deadly street battles erupted in a southern Philippines town today as a self-styled ‘‘suicide squad’’ of Muslim extremists invaded a hospital and church, seizing patients, doctors and a priest.