Hurricane Earl prepared to take a swipe at the Eastern Seaboard on Thursday as residents scrambled to ready themselves ahead of its arrival. Hurricane warnings and watches stretched from North Carolina to Delaware and covered parts of Massachusetts.

It's increasingly stormy in the Atlantic as Hurricane Earl, Tropical Storm Danielle and now Tropical Storm Fiona all occupied different areas of the ocean Monday. Earl was upgraded to a Category 4 hurricane as it strengthened and lumbered across the Atlantic. Its sustained winds rose to 135 mph (215 kph), the National Hurricane Center said, and as of 5 p.m. ET, the storm was moving away from the Virgin Islands.

In the five years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, some areas have rebuilt while others remain unchanged. CNN photographers and iReporters collaborated in a powerful past-meets-present photography project to show what the region looks like today

More than 127,000 people were evacuated in northeastern China over the weekend after torrential rains battered the area and led to severe flooding along the border with North Korea, according to the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs.

A piece of ice four times the size of Manhattan island has broken away from an ice shelf in Greenland, according to scientists in the U.S. The 260 square-kilometer (100 square miles) ice island separated from the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland early on Thursday, researchers based at the University of Delaware said.

Meteorologist and former NASA scientist Roy Spencer believes global warming alarmists may be asking the wrong question.

The question is no longer, "Do you believe in global warming?" but, "What do you believe about the Gulf oil spill?" The BP spill has brought creation care closer to home. Whether global warming is a dire threat or not, human-made or not, we are all now more aware of our relationship to other parts of God's creation.

Wednesday marks the 100th day of the worst oil disaster in U.S. history. Since April 20, the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon explosion has allowed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, devastating many communities of the Gulf Coast and its ecosystem. CNN iReport quickly realized that we had a unique opportunity to profile and share the stories of concerned Gulf residents. As the oil disaster continued to worsen, we received dozens of heartbreaking stories with photos and videos of oil-covered beaches and wildlife.

A dam on an eastern Iowa lake suffered a "catastrophic" failure Saturday, sending a massive amount of water into nearby communities and forcing residents to flee, officials said. The Lake Delhi dam, about 45 miles north of Cedar Rapids, failed as a result of "massive rain -- a very unusually high amount this season," according to Jim Flansburg, communications director for Gov. Chet Culver.

Forecasters will likely drop a tropical storm warning for the Gulf Coast region as tropical depression Bonnie continues to weaken, the National Hurricane Center said Saturday. According to an 8 a.m. ET advisory, Bonnie "could degenerate into an area of low pressure" and a tropical storm warning in effect for Destin, Florida, to Morgan City, Louisiana, including the Lake Pontchartrain region, "will likely be discontinued later this morning."