Torrential rain pounded Hawaii on Friday as Hurricane Lane, now downgraded to a tropical storm, crawled toward the island state, triggering landslides and "catastrophic" flooding, and forcing thousands to seek emergency shelter.

A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck along Peru's border with Brazil on Friday, the US Geological Survey said.

A strong typhoon barrelled toward Japan's northern island Friday after churning over parts of western Japan already hit by deadly flooding last month, but while transport links were disrupted, injuries and damages were limited.

A new satellite that will use advanced laser technology to track global winds and improve weather forecasts has been successfully put into orbit, launch company Arianespace said.

Garbage has never smelled so sweet for a small village in southern Benin since it opened a pilot waste treatment centre to turn household rubbish into gas -- and cash. 

Hurricane Lane has grown to a category 5 storm as it approaches Hawaii with potential for torrential rain, flash flooding and landslides, forecasters said.

As per the latest models, the center of Lane will move very close to or over the main Hawaiian Islands from Thursday through Saturday, the National Weather Service's Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu said.

As temperatures rise in the U.S. West, so do the flames.

Indonesia is about to open the Asian Games but its traffic-clogged capital Jakarta remains shrouded in a haze of air pollution that threatens to mar the world's second-biggest multi-sport event.

Manmade global warming and a natural surge in Earth's surface temperature will join forces to make the next five years exceptionally hot, according to a study published Tuesday.

The double whammy of climate change and so-called natural variability more than doubles the likelihood of "extreme warm events" in ocean surface waters, creating a dangerous breeding ground for hurricanes and typhoons, they reported in Nature Communications.

One of the fires scorching California Sunday moved in on a retirement community, prompting evacuation orders for thousands of people.