Beijing has recorded its hottest June day in more than 60 years with the mercury touching 41.1C (105.9F), Chinese weather authorities say.

The city is experiencing a prolonged heatwave with extreme temperatures to persist until the end of June.

On Thursday, officials said it was the hottest June day since record keeping began in 1961.

Several monthly heat records have been broken around China this year, prompting fears of an energy crunch.

Last month, the country’s largest city Shanghai, with 25 million people living on the east coast, recorded its hottest May day in a century.

More than 21 million people live in Beijing, the nation’s capital in the north.

On Thursday, a weather station in the city’s north recorded a high of 41.8C.

Authorities earlier issued an orange alert, the second-most severe weather warning, saying that temperatures could reach 39C in the days to Saturday.

The national weather bureau also issued a heat stroke alert last week – a fortnight earlier than in previous years.

Local authorities in Beijing, Tianjin, and other cities in northern and eastern China, advised people to suspend outdoor work during the hottest parts of the day and to get medical help if they show symptoms of a heat stroke.

A powerful storm struck the northern Texas town of Matador on Wednesday night, killing at least four people, damaging about a dozen buildings and prompting a search for residents who might have been injured or trapped by debris, the authorities said. At least nine people were hurt.

The storm swept through the small town of about 600 residents as thousands of people across the region were sweltering in a triple-digit heat wave that may not ease until the Fourth of July, and as other storms earlier in the week spawned deadly tornadoes and punishing hail across the South.

A tornado warning was issued for Matador, roughly 300 miles northwest of Dallas, as the storm barreled through around 8 p.m., said William Iwasko, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

He said the damage suggested there was “most likely” a tornado, but that had not been confirmed as of early Thursday morning.

Astronomers have detected a huge plume of water vapour spurting out into space from Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn.

The 504km-wide (313 miles) moon is well known for its geysers, but this is a particularly big one.

The water stream spans some 9,600km – a distance equivalent to that of flying from the UK to Japan.

Scientists are fascinated by Enceladus because its sub-surface salty ocean – the source of the water – could hold the basic conditions to support life.

Nasa’s Cassini mission (2004-2017) gathered tantalising evidence of the necessary chemistry by regularly flying through the geysers and sampling the water with its instruments – although it made no direct detection of biology.

The new super-plume was spied by the James Webb Space Telescope. Previous observations had tracked vapour emissions extending for hundreds of kilometres, but this geyser is on a different scale.

The European Space Agency (Esa) calculated the rate at which the water was gushing out at about 300 litres per second. This would be sufficient to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in just a few hours, Esa said.

Webb was able to map the plume’s properties using its extremely sensitive Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument.

The instrument showed how much of the ejected vapour (about 30%) feeds a fuzzy torus of water co-located with one of Saturn’s famous rings – its so-called E-ring.

A debris field has been found on the seabed near the Titanic wreck and experts are evaluating the area, the US Coast Guard has announced.

The US Coast Guard will hold a press conference at 15:00 local time (20:00bst) with more information about the debris.

Deep underwater drone subs have been searching the sea floor for the missing Titan sub.

The area being scoured by aircraft, ships, and other equipment has been expanded to cover about 10,000 sq miles of ocean.

Contact with the sub – which has five people on board – was lost on Sunday as it made a descent to the Titanic wreck

Karakoram Highway, often abbreviated as KKH, is the highest paved international road in the world that connects Giglit-Baltistan in Islamic Republic of Pakistan and he Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of People’s Republic of China.

The highest point of the highway at an elevation of 4,693 meters (15,397 feet), the highway was built by the governments of Pakistan and China. Construction began in 1959, and opened for public use in 1979, it is around 1,300 kilometers (810 miles) long.

The highway’s name is derived from the Mongolian for Black Range, when the Mongolians had their great empire, and was adopted later by their successor dynasty, the Mughals, who ruled India for many centuries.

It is a real challenging road and a true test of your vehicle and your stamina because the road abounds in twists and turns with wheels sometimes hanging above the precipice.

The road is extremely treacherous and requires a vehicle that can hold its own against some of the most unforgiving terrain in the world.

Sometimes the highway can be blocked from the avalanches, heavy snowfalls and landslides, which can occur frequently in the area, but the incredible views it offers of K2, it makes it more like a nightmare for people who have altitude sickness.

On one side of the highway, there is no barrier, but on the other is the sheer rock wall, and one small mistake can cost the lives of everyone in the vehicle.

The border crossing between China and Pakistan at Khunjerab Pass is only open between May and December, but the highway can be closed if it is not cleared of snow. Traveling here isn’t for the fainthearted, although transportation has improved significantly in the past decades.