Thousands of residents are rushing to leave the Thai capital Bangkok, which is braced for potentially severe flooding over the weekend.

The city's bus and train stations and many roads are jammed by crowds of people attempting to flee.
People in several northern districts of the capital - some of which are now 90% submerged by rising water - have been told they should evacuate immediately.
More than 360 people have died in Thailand's worst flooding in decades.
The crisis is an early test for Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who took office in August and has previously been criticised for failing to take the flood threat seriously enough.
"It's a crisis, because if we try to resist this massive amount of floodwater, a force of nature, we won't win," Ms Yingluck said.
"But if we allow it to flow freely then people in many areas are prepared."
Any lingering sense of complacency has long gone, says the BBC's Rachel Harvey in Bangkok.

Food rationing..
Over the weekend the influx of run-off water from Thailand's inundated central plains is expected to combine with seasonal high tides to flood more parts of the capital.
Thai authorities have declared a five-day holiday, to run from Thursday through to Monday, in Bangkok and in 20 provinces affected by the flooding to allow residents to relocate.

Bangkok's Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra issued an evacuation alert for residents of Don Muang, Bang Phlad and Thawi Wattana districts in the north of the capital.

"This is the first time I am using the term 'evacuation', the first time I'm really asking you to leave," Mr Sukhumbhand said.
The city's Mo Chit bus terminal has already seen huge crowds of people, some of whom had to wait for hours to get a bus to leave the city.
Many residents were reportedly heading for southern and eastern coastal resorts that have escaped the flooding.
Flights out of the international airport, Suvarnabhumi, were operating as normal but were said to be packed.
At Bangkok's domestic airport, Don Muang, people living in an evacuation shelter are now being moved again. The airport itself is closed because the runway is flooded.






But the government's flood relief operation centre, which is based on the second floor of the airport, insists it will not relocate.
In the city of nine million, there were reports that some shops were rationing stocks of staples including rice and eggs amid stockpiling by anxious residents.
Supplies of bottled water were said to be running low in many areas.
Residents were protecting their homes and businesses with sandbags - with some even erecting sealed cement barriers across shop fronts, reported the Associated Press news agency.
Britain's Foreign Office on Wednesday warned against all but essential travel to Bangkok.
Ms Yingluck has warned that flood waters could linger in the capital for between two weeks and a month.
The flooding has been triggered by unusually heavy seasonal rains across the country since July. About one third of all provinces remain affected by flooding.

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RIM faces compensation lawsuits over Blackberry outage..

Blackberry customers in the US and Canada are suing Research in Motion over the recent global outage which left millions without email, instant messaging and net access.

A Canadian lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, 

was brought on behalf of all Blackberry owners in the country, and accuses RIM of breach of contract. A similar complaint has been filed in the US.
When contacted by the BBC, RIM had no comment on the news.
The lawsuit claims that RIM "is responsible for Blackberry users' loss of email, BB, and/or internet service for approximately one and a half days".
"It has not compensated consumers on a prorated basis for such loss of use, while knowing full well that Blackberry users pay a monthly fee to their wireless service providers for data services and that they were deprived thereof."
The outage, caused by a system failure and compounded by the failure of its back-up system, began on October 10 and lasted four days.

A snowball effect 
RIM co-founder Mike Lazaridis apologised for the outage and offered all customers a package of free software.
The apps, which RIM claims are worth more than $100 (£63), are available until the end of December.
Malik Saadi, principal analyst with Informa Telecom & Media thinks action suits like these could be just the beginning.
"If the consumer forums get involved they could mobilise individuals into seeking compensation and there will be a snowball effect," he said.
Informa has estimated that RIM could find itself faced with a $25m (£16m) compensation bill.
"That is not big money compared to revenues. The biggest damage is to its brand and that could take years to cure. If I was RIM I would just compensate users quickly," said Mr Saadi.
So far no operators have pursued compensation from RIM and Mr Saadi thinks it is "unlikely" any will. However, some have suggested they will offer their own packages to customers.
"In the Middle East, two operators are talking about compensating customers although there are no details about how it will work," he said.

Communication..
The four day crash could not have come at a worse time for Blackberry, which has seen profits fall in recent months.
Sales of its flagship tablet, the PlayBook, are not going as well as expected and earlier this week the firm announced that it was delaying a software update to the device.
RIM was criticised for not responding quickly enough to customers when the crash occurred.
Thousands of people turned to Twitter and other social media networks to voice frustration with the company and its efforts to fix the problems.
The firm noticeably stepped up its communication activities as the outage dragged on.

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