Natural disasters 'on the rise'

More and more people are being caught up in a growing number of natural disasters, a UN agency said this week. It said 254 million people were affected by natural hazards last year - nearly three times as many as in 1990. Events including earthquakes and volcanoes, floods and droughts, storms, fires and landslides killed about 83,000 people in 2003, up from about 53,000 deaths 13 years earlier.