"Hundreds of homes have been evacuated and thousands left without power in Scotland and Northern Ireland as Storm Frank brings torrential rain and gales."

"Rain-swollen rivers across Missouri were still rising on Wednesday, with widespread flooding forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people, closing part of a major interstate highway and threatening to wash out scores of structures."

"Alaska Inuit hunter John Goodwin for decades has hunted oogruk, the bearded seal, a marine mammal prized for its meat, oil and hide.

The largest of Alaska's ice seals uses sea ice to rest and birth pups, and after the long winter, when ice breaks into floes, there's a window of opportunity for Goodwin to leave his home in Kotzebue and motor his boat between ice panels, shoot seals and butcher them before they migrate north through the Bering Strait.

"Snow, sleet and hail snarled transportation across swaths of the United States on Monday during one of the busiest travel weeks, after dozens died in U.S. storms that were part of a wild worldwide weather system seen over the Christmas holiday period."

"When Republican House leaders appointed Texas Republican Lamar S. Smith to lead the House science committee after a headline-grabbing run as chairman of the Judiciary panel, it looked like the veteran lawmaker could head into obscurity."

"The Indonesian government announced Monday it had acted against 23 companies that, officials said, were involved in burning forest and peatland in the country."

"Some of the world’s biggest temperature jumps are happening in lakes — suggesting that problems such as algae blooms and low-oxygen zones hazardous to fish will get worse, a new report says."

"The American Petroleum Institute together with the nation's largest oil companies ran a task force to monitor and share climate research between 1979 and 1983, indicating that the oil industry, not just Exxon alone, was aware of its possible impact on the world's climate far earlier than previously known."

"The National League of Cities, which represents over 19,000 U.S. cities, filed a motion in a federal court Tuesday to support the Obama administration's push to curb carbon emissions against legal challenges."

"A majority of U.S. Republicans who had heard of the international climate deal in Paris said they support working with other countries to curb global warming and were willing to take steps to do so, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Tuesday."