Cyprus search crews discovered the bodies of four people outside a fire-swept mountain village on Sunday in what a government minister called the "most destructive" blaze in the east Mediterranean island nation's history.

Nicos Nouris said that Civil Defense volunteers discovered the remains just outside the village of Odou on the southern edge of the Troodos mountain range.

Two bodies were found after a huge landslide at a resort town in central Japan swept away homes on Saturday following days of heavy rain, with around 20 people still missing, officials said.

Canada's government has warned of a "long and challenging summer" ahead as it prepared military aircraft to help evacuate towns and fight more than 100 wildfires fueled by a record-smashing heat wave.

Dozens of fires raged across western Canada and California on Friday with little relief expected from a deadly heat wave that has seen temperatures hit record highs.

Around 1,000 people were evacuated in Canada's British Columbia province Thursday when a wildfire burnt down 90 percent of a small town that had set a national high-temperature record for three days running. 

Hundreds of people were evacuated in western Canada as fires added to the unprecedented heat wave in the region, which for days has been baking in record-breaking temperatures.

Millions of people in western Canada and the northwestern United States were under heat alerts Wednesday as the region baked in record-breaking temperatures and police reported scores of deaths likely linked to the scorching conditions.

The heat wave has stretched emergency services, with at least 134 people dying suddenly since Friday in the Vancouver area and hundreds more across British Columbia, according to Canadian police and the local coroner.

Scores of deaths in Canada's Vancouver area are likely linked to a grueling heat wave, authorities said Tuesday, as the country recorded its highest ever temperature amid scorching conditions that extended to the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

Britain's automotive sector must build huge electric car battery "gigafactories" to secure both its future and the transition to greener energy, industry body SMMT declared Tuesday.

France's top administrative court said Monday that glue hunting of birds would be prohibited, revoking exemptions granted by French authorities for a traditional practice that has long been denounced by animal rights campaigners.

A dozen of the world's smallest pigs have been released into the wild in northeastern India as part of a conservation program to boost the population of a species once thought to have become extinct.