US stocks edged higher today as technology companies and banks rose with the Standard & Poor's 500 index closing above 2,500 for the first time as stocks had one of their best weeks this year.

Shares in insurers jumped in markets from Europe to Florida amid signs that predictions about Hurricane Irma’s damage were excessively dire.

Hurricane Irma has pummelled Florida, packing winds up to 130mph, swamping homes and boats, knocking out power to millions and toppling massive construction cranes over the Miami skyline.

US stocks climbed on Wednesday as investors cheered a report of stronger economic growth. Technology companies, retailers and travel providers all made solid gains.

Latest: President Donald Trump has offered reassurances to Texans who felt the wrath of Storm Harvey, promising residents during a visit to the state: "We are going to get you back and operating immediately."

Hurricane Harvey, the fiercest cyclone to hit the US in more than a decade, has slammed into Texas, lashing a wide swathe of the Gulf Coast with strong winds and torrential rain.

Hurricane Franklin has roared ashore on Mexico's central Gulf coast, threatening to pound a mountainous region prone to flash floods and mudslides with torrential rains and heavy winds.

Crude oil turned positive yesterday, reversing course on reports that Saudi Arabia has told Opec officials it wants to continue cuts for an additional six months.

Two boys have been electrocuted by power lines downed during violent weather in Texas, officials said.

A freight train has crashed into a coach in Biloxi, Mississippi, pushing the bus 300 feet down the tracks and leaving at least four people dead, authorities said.

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Mexican police have found the tortured bodies of nine men and two women on the outskirts of the Gulf coast city of Veracruz.

The administration issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking officials to identify which employees had worked on efforts to tackle climate change, says Victoria White.

US president Donald Trump has signed executive actions to advance the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines.

Hurricane Hermine gained strength as it roared towards Florida's Gulf Coast, as residents were warned to flee inland if necessary amid a "life-threatening situation".

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Residents on Florida’s Gulf coast filled sandbags, schools planned to close early, and governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency as Tropical Storm Colin gained speed and churned towards the state, threatening serious flooding.

A century after it transformed global markets, the Panama Canal is about to redraw world trade again.

Brilliant sunshine and rising temperatures followed the mammoth blizzard that paralysed much of the US east coast.

A travel ban for the New York area was lifted but Washington was still at a standstill after a blizzard paralysed the north-eastern United States, killing at least 24 people.

A blizzard with hurricane-force winds brought much of the US East Coast to a standstill today, dumping as much as three feet of snow, stranding tens of thousands of travellers and shutting down Washington and New York City.

Former US president George W Bush returned to New Orleans to praise the region’s recovery on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

SCOTLAND: A student and his dog donned graduation robes after the pet helped his owner complete his university degree.

Such is his relationship with Augusta National that the Masters often holds a sting in the tail for Graeme McDowell, but it was a brush with an actual bee that nearly derailed him last night.

A US appeals court has upheld a judge’s approval of a multi-billion-dollar settlement between BP and lawyers for Gulf Coast businesses and residents who claim the company’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill cost them money.

A deep freeze spread from the US midwest to the east and south, setting record low temperatures from Boston to Birmingham, and leaving 21 people dead.

A US judge rejected BP’s argument that a multibillion-dollar settlement over the company’s massive 2010 Gulf oil spill should not compensate businesses if they cannot directly trace their losses to the spill.

The White House has signalled that it would be open to a short-term hike in the US debt limit as the United States moved a step closer to its first-ever default while a separate impasse, a partial government shutdown, entered its second week.

The trial for the federal litigation spawned by BP’s massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico resumes today, with a focus on the company’s response to the deadly disaster.

Fifty-eight people are missing feared dead after a massive landslide smashed through a tiny coffee-growing village deep in Mexico’s southern mountains as storms battered the country.

Tens of thousands of tourists have been stranded in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco by floods brought on by a tropical storm.

The remnants of Hurricane Ingrid and Tropical Storm Manuel drenched Mexico with torrential rains yesterday, flooding towns and cities and setting off landslides in a national emergency that caused at least 34 deaths.

BP has asked a judge to temporarily suspend all settlement payments to Gulf Coast businesses and people who claim they lost money after the company’s 2010 oil spill while former FBI director Louis Freeh investigates alleged misconduct by a lawyer who helped administer the multibillion-dollar settlement programme.

Michael Weissenstein reports from Mexico City on the arrest of drugs cartel baron Morales

Firefighters have been unable to continue searching for more victims of the Canadian oil train disaster because the wreckage of the town where it caught fire and exploded is still too dangerous.

The company which leased the Deepwater Horizon rig to oil giant BP has been fined $1.4bn (€1.06bn) after admitting its role in the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

An explosion and fire ripped through a Gulf oil platform in the US today as workers used a cutting torch, sending four people to a hospital with burns and leaving two missing in the sea off Louisiana.

New York has imposed a petrol rationing plan that allows motorists to fill up every other day as the city continued to feel the effects of Superstorm Sandy.

Superstorm Sandy disrupted the US presidential race as President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney both cancelled campaign events.

Actress Daryl Hannah has been released from a Texas jail following her arrest as she protested against a pipeline designed to bring crude oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast, it has emerged.

Daryl Hannah has been arrested in Texas.

A man believed to be the leader of the Gulf drug cartel, which controls some of the most valuable and violently contested smuggling routes along the US border, has been arrested by Mexican marines, the navy said.

US president Barack Obama is taking his re-election campaign into the South on Labour Day, where he will offer a presence and promises of help to those flooded out recently by Hurricane Isaac.

US President Barack Obama is embarking on a four-day march through battleground states and the storm-battered Gulf Coast in the lead-up to his party’s convention.