A third of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s Cabinet quit en masse today and urged the Philippine leader to step down, saying she has been crippled by an election scandal and has lost the ability to lead.

Helicopters delivered food to survivors and picked up casualties today as flash floods began to recede in the northern Philippines, revealing the magnitude of a disaster triggered by back-to-back storms that killed more than 650 people and left nearly 400 missing.

Rescuers scrambled today to reach scores of people left stranded by a powerful typhoon that sliced through the Philippines on the heels of a rainstorm that killed more than 420 people with possibly hundreds more missing.