Withering heat was descending on a region of eastern Kentucky already reeling from massive flooding, forcing residents laboring to clean up after the deluge to cope with an oppressive new threat.

The grim task of cleaning up from the flooding continued, but rising heat and humidity prompted officials to open cooling centers Tuesday as forecasters warned of the risk of heat-related illnesses and some residents remained without power.

In Knott County, Kirsten Gomez said her flood-ravaged doublewide trailer was being gutted by her husband and cousin. They were stripping drywall, flooring and cabinets ruined by floodwaters from nearby Troublesome Creek that engulfed their home early last Thursday.

“It is so miserable. The humidity is so high, it takes your breath,” Gomez said Tuesday. “Your clothes stick to you. Your hair sticks to you. This mud is caked on you.

“But I’m just blessed that we don’t have rain anymore.”

The blast of heat and humidity comes as some residents try to salvage what they can, and as search-and-rescue crews continued looking for people unaccounted for days since the floods hit.

“Extreme heat, extreme humidity, that’s stressful in itself,” said Jerry Stacy, the emergency management director in hard-hit Perry County, Kentucky. “We’re just fighting through this and hoping that this weather don’t make it too stressful. It don’t get a lot worse than what it is.”

A farm is set to be transformed into a nature reserve.

Frampton End farm, near Frampton Cotterell, near Bristol, will become a river and nature reserve after 2028.

Locals had expressed concerns that the land would be used for housing.

A local resident and parish councillors said: “Conservation is at the heart of what we want to achieve for our rural villages, and we strongly believe that this nature reserve would have ecological and environmental benefits.”

Turning the farm into a nature reserve could cost about £1m, funded by the West of England combined authority (WECA).

According to council chiefs, a new nature reserve would boost the local area in health, education and biodiversity.

The 102-hectare farm is owned by South Gloucestershire Council and has been let to the same tenant since 1993. It was originally used as a dairy and livestock farm.

A Roman villa unearthed on a building site and described as a potentially “the first of its kind” ever found has been reburied.

The remains of the large “stately home” and bath house were found in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, in 2021.

Developer Keepmoat Homes said the site had been reburied on the recommendation of Historic England.

It said it planned to create an “interpretive depiction” of the ruins to inform future visitors.

The site has been reburied on the recommendation of Historic England

The excavations revealed a large complex of buildings, including a circular central room with a number of rooms leading off it and a bath house.

Speaking in April 2021 Keith Emerick, Historic England’s inspector of ancient monuments, said it was not clear what the building was used for but described it as a Roman version of a stately home, possibly owned by somebody of wealth and status.

He said the type of layout had “never been seen in Britain” and may be the first example “within the whole former Roman Empire”.

Following the discovery Keepmoat changed its plan to build homes on the site and instead preserve the villa beneath a public open space.

A Keepmoat spokesperson said: “To inform visitors of the significance of the findings, we have submitted a landscaping design to the Local Planning Authority which will incorporate an interpretive depiction of the remains.”

Mr Emerick added: “We are grateful to Keepmoat Homes for their sensitive and professional approach to helping ensure the future conservation of this important historical site.”

At least 87 women have been hospitalised after a gas leak at an apparel manufacturing plant in India, local media reports said Wednesday.

The workers complained of nausea and vomiting at a plant in the Atchyutapuram district of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday night.

No deaths had been reported and the situation was under control on Wednesday, broadcaster India Today said.

The hospitalisations follow a similar accident in June when around 200 women fell unconscious after a gas leak in the same area.

Experts in Chile investigated the appearance of an enormous sinkhole, bigger than a tennis court, that has appeared near a copper mine in the Atacama desert.

Experts were dispatched to examine the hole, some 32 meters (104 feet) across and twice as deep, which appeared in an area about 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles) north of Santiago over the weekend, the National Geology and Mining Service (Sernageomin) said in a statement.

A 100-meter security perimeter has been erected around the hole in the Tierra Amarilla municipality, near the Alcaparrosa mine operated by Canadian firm Lundin Mining.

The company said in a statement there had been “no impact to personnel, equipment or infrastructure,” and the sinkhole has remained stable since its detection.

As a preventive measure, “development work in an area of the Alcaparrosa underground mine has been temporarily suspended,” the company said.

Sernageomin director David Montenegro said experts would seek to determine the cause of the collapse and “ensure that all safety measures are taken to safeguard the lives of workers and communities close to the site.”

Cristian Zuniga, mayor of the Tierra Amarilla municipality of some 13,000 inhabitants, told journalists the sinkhole was unprecedented.

“We ask that the cause be clarified: whether the collapse is the product of mining activity or something else,” he said.

Chile is the world’s largest copper producer, responsible for a quarter of global supply.