India records its hottest temperature ever amid heat wave

A city in western India has suffered through the country's highest recorded temperature — a scorching 51 degrees Celsius (123.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

The record was set Thursday in the city of Phalodi, in the western state of Rajasthan. India's meteorological department said the previous high was 50.6 C (123 F), reached in 1956 in the city of Alwar, also in Rajasthan.

UN alarmed by 12th straight global monthly heat record

The United Nations has expressed alarm after scientists recorded the 12th straight global monthly heat record in a row.

The data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released Thursday confirmed earlier readings taken by NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency. They showed that Earth's average temperature in April was 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the 20th-century average.

India records its hottest temperature ever amid heat wave

A city in western India has set a new heat record for the country — a scorching 51 degrees Celsius (123.8 Fahrenheit).

The record set Thursday in the city of Phalodi, in the western state of Rajasthan, comes amid a heat wave in India.

India's meteorological department said the previous high was 50.6 Celsius (123 F), reached in 1956 in the city of Alwar, also in Rajasthan.

Parts of India ban daytime cooking as hundreds die of heat

With sizzling temperatures claiming more than 300 lives this month in India, officials said they were banning daytime cooking in some parts of the drought-stricken country in a bid to prevent accidental fires that have killed nearly 80 more people.

The eastern state of Bihar this week took the unprecedented step of forbidding any cooking between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., after accidental fires exacerbated by dry, hot and windy weather swept through shantytowns and thatched-roof houses in villages and killed 79 people. They included 10 children and five adults killed in a fire sparked during a Hindu prayer ceremony in Bihar's Aurangabad district last week.

Heat wave subsides in Pakistan as death toll reaches 860

The devastating heat wave that struck southern Pakistan last weekend is slowly subsiding but the toll was still climbing Thursday, to a total of 860 confirmed deaths, a senior health official said.

Finding summer solace in New Delhi park

Along Mansingh Road, dozens of ice cream carts glow brightly in the night, their battery-powered fluorescent lights calling out for customers.

Do you want a Smacko chocolate cone? A Strawberry Jiggly Jelly? An Orange Mahabar? A Delighto?