There has been a dramatic increase in extreme weather events in the past 20 years, which are taking a heavy human and economic toll worldwide and are on track to expand further, and Asia has been hardest-hit, the United Nations said yesterday. China (577) and the United States (467) recorded the highest number of disaster events from 2000 to 2019, followed by India (321), the Philippines (304) and Indonesia (278), the U.N. said in a report issued the day before the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.Eight of the top 10 countries are in Asia.  Some 7,348 major disaster events were recorded globally, claiming 1.23 million lives, affecting 4.2 billion people and causing $2.97 billion in economic losses during the two-decade period.