Almost 970 million Indians are voting in general elections amid sweltering heat and unpredictable weather extremes exacerbated by human-caused climate change, leading to loss of livelihood, forced migration and increasingly difficult living conditions for millions across the country.

Voters are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. In their election manifestos, India's top political parties, including the governing Bharatiya Janata Party and the main opposition, the Congress party, have made multiple promises to act on climate damage and reduce emissions of planet-heating gases.

Fast-moving storms with strong winds, large hail and apparent tornadoes swept Oklahoma and Kansas, blowing roofs off homes and blocking roads with toppled trees and downed power lines. Meanwhile, Houston made progress in recovering from last week's deadly storms.

Nearly 20 homes were damaged in western Oklahoma's Custer County, with two people injured in Butler, state emergency officials said late Sunday. Damage to a nursing home was reported in the town of Hydro.

Fast-moving thunderstorms pummeled southeastern Texas for the second time this month, killing at least four people, blowing out windows in high-rise buildings, downing trees and knocking out power to more than 900,000 homes and businesses in the Houston area.

Officials urged residents to keep off roads following Thursday's storms, as many were impassable and traffic lights were out. The storm system moved through swiftly, but flood watches and warnings remained Friday for Houston and areas to the east.

The threat from a wildfire near Canada's oil sands hub of Fort McMurray, Alberta, appeared to be easing, a day after it forced thousands of residents to evacuate and stirred memories of a damaging blaze nearly a decade earlier.

Favorable winds were expected to push the fire away from the city of about 68,000 in northwest Canada, where many residents earn a paycheck from the nearby oil industry. The Fort McMurray fire comes as Canada is just entering a new fire season after last year's record number of wildfires sent choking smoke across parts of the U.S. and forced more than 235,000 Canadians to evacuate their communities.

While flooding that has devastated Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state has yet to subside, another scourge has spread across the region: disinformation on social media that has hampered desperate efforts to get aid to hundreds of thousands in need.

Among fake postings that have stirred outrage: That official agencies aren't conducting rescues in Brazil's southernmost state. That bureaucracy is holding up donations of food, water and clothing. One persistent rumor contends that authorities are concealing hundreds of corpses, said Jairo Jorge, mayor of the hard-hit city of Canoas.

A University of Hawaii study examining the health effects of last year's deadly wildfires on Maui found that up to 74% of participants may have difficulty breathing and otherwise have poor respiratory health, and almost half showed signs of compromised lung function.

The data, gathered from 679 people in January and February, comes from what researchers hope will be a long-term study of wildfire survivors lasting at least a decade. Researchers released early results from that research on Wednesday. They eventually hope to enroll 2,000 people in their study to generate what they call a snapshot of the estimated 10,000 people affected by the fires.

The broiling summer of 2023 was the hottest in the Northern Hemisphere in more than 2,000 years, a new study found.

When the temperatures spiked last year, numerous weather agencies said it was the hottest month, summer and year on record. But those records only go back to 1850 at best because it's based on thermometers. Now scientists can go back to the modern western calendar's year 1, when the Bible says Jesus of Nazareth walked the Earth, but have found no hotter northern summer than last year's.

New Mexico is standing in for California in a new film as Jamie Lee Curtis' production company and others tell the story of a bus driver and a school teacher who rescued students during the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California's history.

The 2018 blaze killed 85 people and nearly erased the community of Paradise in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Some residents have returned to help make something new, while others are still haunted by their memories.

An intense wildfire could reach a town in western Canada this week, fire experts and officials warned, based on forecasts of winds that have fueled the out-of-control blaze, which has forced the evacuation of thousands of people.

The British Columbia Wildfire Service said the wildfire was burning 2½ kilometers (around 1½ miles) northwest of Fort Nelson. More than 4,700 people have evacuated after an order was issued on Friday.

Rescuers on Tuesday searched in rivers and the rubble of devastated villages for bodies, and whenever possible, survivors of flash floods that hit Indonesia's Sumatra Island over the weekend.

Monsoon rains and a landslide of mud and cold lava from Mount Marapi caused rivers to breach their banks. The deluge tore through mountainside villages in four districts in West Sumatra province just before midnight Saturday.