Hurricane Melissa was grinding across Cuba on Wednesday as a Category 2 storm after pummeling Jamaica as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Climate change is ravaging the health of people around the world and policy failures are leading to "millions" of avoidable deaths each year, an international team of experts said Wednesday.

Opportunities for a "just" climate transition were still on the table but remained "largely untapped", according to the Lancet's Countdown, a major annual study tracking the health impacts of climate change.

Indian authorities have shut schools and evacuated tens of thousands of people from low-lying coastal areas as the country's eastern seaboard braces for the impact of Cyclone Montha later Tuesday.

Heavy rains have caused major flooding in central Vietnam, with rivers swelling and submerging homes, farmland and tourist destinations including the historic cities of Hue and Hoi An.

Bill Gates thinks climate change is a serious problem but it won't be the end of civilization. He thinks scientific innovation will curb it, and it's instead time for a "strategic pivot" in the global climate fight: from focusing on limiting rising temperatures to fighting poverty and preventing disease.

A doomsday outlook has led the climate community to focus too much on near-term goals to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause warming, diverting resources from the most effective things that can be done to improve life in a warming world, Gates said. In a memo released Tuesday, Gates said the world's primary goal should instead be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions in the world's poorest countries.

Hurricane Melissa strengthened further Tuesday as it crawled toward Jamaica as a catastrophic Category 5 storm, the strongest to lash the island since recordkeeping began 174 years ago.

Hours before the storm, the Jamaican government said it had done all it could to prepare as it warned of catastrophic damage. The streets in the capital, Kingston, remained largely empty except for the lone stray dog crossing puddles and a handful of people walking briskly under tree branches waving in a stiff wind.

From the depths of Brazil's Amazon to Indonesia's rainforests, some of the world's most isolated peoples are being squeezed by roads, miners and drug traffickers — a crisis unfolding far from public view or effective state protection.

Hurricane Melissa intensified to Category 5 strength Monday as it neared Jamaica, where forecasters said it would unleash catastrophic flooding, multiple landslides and extensive infrastructure damage.

Melissa is forecast to make landfall on the island Tuesday and cross Cuba and the Bahamas through Wednesday.

Tropical Storm Melissa was stationary in the central Caribbean early Friday, with forecasters warning it could soon strengthen and brush past Jamaica as a powerful hurricane while unleashing potentially "catastrophic" flash flooding and landslides in southern Haiti.

The erratic storm was expected to drop copious rain on Jamaica and the southern regions of Haiti and the Dominican Republic through the weekend.

Conservationists and students cheered as three rescued sea turtles, endangered in this part of the world, made their way back into the ocean at a private beach in Nigeria's economic hub of Lagos.