A television tower and a number of trees were sent crashing by 60mph gusts at Valhalla yesterday on the eve of the European and American teams’ arrival for the Ryder Cup starting on Friday.

A 25-year-old press operator shot and killed five co-workers and himself at a plastics plant in rural western Kentucky just hours after arguing with his supervisor about not wearing safety goggles and using his mobile phone while on the assembly line, police said.

Floods in central America have killed at least 13 people, with more still missing.

Authorities in the US were today searching for victims of tornadoes that killed at least 26 people across four states.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has accused President George Bush of mismanaging the Iraq war and claimed his domestic agenda has taken the US off course.

A tornado with winds of more than 158mph has torn a path of devastation through western Kentucky and southern Indiana as people slept, killing at least 22, smashing dozens of mobile homes and reducing entire blocks of buildings to rubble.

Storms battered the Tennessee and Ohio valleys with tornadoes, high wind and hail before the system swept east.