Flooding leaves thousands in China's west stranded

Thousands of train passengers were stranded in southwestern China, after landslides caused by two weeks of flooding buried parts of a railway line, the Wall Street Journal reported. The landslides covered sections of a track that runs between the provincial capitals of Sichuan and Yunnan province, stranding 5,000 people on four trains overnight. The floods have left more than 170 people dead or missing over the past two weeks, and forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. In China’s eastern Zhejiang province, the Qiantang River has reached its highest level since 1955, and is currently 7.9 feet above safety levels. Elsewhere in the province, a breached dike flooded 18 villages, and landslides toppled about 2,500 houses and flooded 350 roads, state media said.