Thousands of Hawaii residents raced to escape homes on Maui as blazes swept across the island, destroying parts of a centuries-old town and killing at least 36 people in one of the deadliest U.S. wildfires in recent years.

The fire took the island by surprise, leaving behind burned-out cars on once busy streets and smoking piles of rubble where historic buildings had stood in Lahaina Town, which dates to the 1700s and has long been a favorite destination of tourists. Crews battled blazes in several places on the island Wednesday, and the flames forced some adults and children to flee into the ocean.

The United Nations' human rights chief on Wednesday warned that Iraq's water crisis could affect other countries in the region.

Severe water shortages in Iraq because of climate change and government mismanagement have destroyed wheat and fruit harvests, and killed off fish and livestock. Humanitarian organizations have warned for years that drought and mismanagement could deprive millions of people of water from the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, which also run through neighboring war-torn Syria.

More than 1,000 firefighters are battling a series of wildfires in Portugal as it and neighboring Spain experience several days of extreme summer heat, with temperatures in many areas rising above 40 degrees Celsius (104 F).

Three major fires raged in Portugal on Tuesday, with the biggest in the southwest near the town of Odemira, where on Monday about 1,400 people were evacuated from villages and a camp site as a precaution. They were gradually returning home on Tuesday.

Wildfires in Hawaii fanned by strong winds burned multiple structures, forced evacuations and caused power outages in several communities late Tuesday as firefighters struggled to reach some areas that were cut off by downed trees and power lines.

The National Weather Service said Hurricane Dora, which was passing to the south of the island chain at a safe distance of 500 miles (805 kilometers), was partly to blame for gusts above 60 mph (97 kph) that knocked out power as night fell, rattled homes and grounded firefighting helicopters.

The Southwestern U.S. is bracing for another week of blistering temperatures, with forecasters on Monday extending an excessive heat warning through the weekend for Arizona's most populated area, and alerting residents in parts of Nevada and New Mexico to stay indoors.

The metro Phoenix area is on track to tie or to break a record set in the summer of 1974 for the most consecutive days with the high temperature at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius). Even the morning low temperatures are tying historic records.

Rains and winds were growing in southern South Korea Wednesday as a tropical storm drew closer to the Korean Peninsula, where it was forecast to slam into major urban areas.

Dozens of flights and ferry services were grounded and tens of thousands of fishing vessels evacuated to ports as government officials raised concern about potentially huge damages from flooding, landslides and tidal waves triggered by the typhoon-strength winds.

Eight Amazon nations called on industrialized countries to do more to help preserve the world's largest rainforest as they met at a major summit in Brazil to chart a common course on how to combat climate change.

The leaders of South American nations that are home to the Amazon, meeting at a two-day summit in the city of Belem that ends Wednesday, said the task of stopping the destruction of the rainforest can't fall to just a few when the crisis has been caused by so many.

Scientists are wondering if global warming and El Nino have an accomplice in fueling this summer's record-shattering heat.

The European climate agency Copernicus reported that July was one-third of a degree Celsius (six-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) hotter than the old record. That's a bump in heat that is so recent and so big, especially in the oceans and even more so in the North Atlantic, that scientists are split on whether something else could be at work.

The death toll from recent flooding in China's capital rose to 33, including five rescuers, and another 18 people are missing, officials said Wednesday, as much of the country's north remains threatened by unusually heavy rainfall.

Days of heavy rain hit areas in the city's mountainous western outskirts especially hard, causing the collapse of 59,000 homes, damage to almost 150,000 others and flooding of more than 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of cropland, according to the city government.

For the first time in 14 years, presidents of the South American nations home to the Amazon rainforest are converging to chart a common course for protection of the bioregion and address organized crime. The summit Tuesday and Wednesday in the Brazilian city of Belem is a meeting of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, a toothless, 45-year-old alliance that has met only three times before.

The Amazon stretches across an area twice the size of India, and two-thirds of it lies in Brazil. Seven other countries and one territory share the remaining third — Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, Ecuador and French Guiana. Presidents from all but Ecuador, Suriname and Venezuela are attending.