Bollywood stars and political leaders have urged Indians to wash their hands to protect against coronavirus but that's a pipe dream for slum-dwellers like Bala Devi, now sweltering through a summer heatwave.

India is wilting under a heatwave, with temperatures in places reaching 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) and the capital enduring its hottest May day in nearly two decades.

A Florida craftsman has come up with a novel way of tackling both the coronavirus pandemic and the problem of invasive pythons and iguanas that damage the state's fragile ecosystem.

U.S. forecasters have predicted an "above normal" Atlantic hurricane season and emergency officials said they were factoring the coronavirus pandemic into potential relief efforts.

Neil Jacobs, acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said there was a 60 percent chance the season would be "above normal," with the possibility of three to six major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.

Parts of the Antarctic Peninsula will change color as "green snow" caused by blooming algae is expected to spread with increases in global temperatures, research has showed.

Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are set to drop by up to seven percent in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, but even this dramatic decline -- the sharpest since WWII -- would barely dent longterm global warming, researchers reported Tuesday.

Millions of people were being moved to safety as one of the fiercest cyclones in years barrelled towards India and Bangladesh on Tuesday, but with evacuation plans complicated by coronavirus precautions.

"Amphan" is expected to pack winds gusting up to 185 kilometres (115 miles) per hour when it hits eastern India and Bangladesh on Wednesday afternoon or evening, and with a storm surge of several metres, forecasters said.

Green, spiky and with a strong, sweet smell, the bulky jackfruit has morphed from a backyard nuisance in India's south coast into the meat-substitute darling of vegans and vegetarians in the West.

Antarctica's king penguins emit such copious amounts of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, via their feces that researchers went a little "cuckoo" studying them,  according to a Danish scientific study.

"Penguin guano produces significantly high levels of nitrous oxide around their colonies," said the head of the study, Professor Bo Elberling, of the University of Copenhagen's Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management.

A powerful typhoon hit the central Philippines Thursday, forcing a complicated and risky evacuation for tens of thousands of people, many of them heading to cramped shelters without proper safety gear to guard against the coronavirus.