Britain's Guardian newspaper will launch a new online edition in Australia, where the print media is struggling with the rapidly changing digital landscape, hoping also to expand its reach in Asia.

The Guardian announced the expansion of its global reach on Tuesday, saying deputy editor Katharine Viner would be relocating Down Under to launch the Australian operation some time this year.

Australia's extreme summer heatwave, which caused devastating bushfires and saw temperature forecasts go off the scale, is part of a global warming trend, the U.N.'s climate panel chief said Tuesday.

As the 250 lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s next major report meet in the southern Australian city of Hobart, the body's chairman Rajendra Pachauri said the link was clear.

Ancient Indians migrated to Australia and mixed with Aborigines 4,000 years ago, bringing the dingo's ancestor with them, according to new research that re-evaluates the continent's long isolation before European settlement.

The vast southern continent was thought to have been cut off from other populations until Europeans landed at the end of the 1700s, but the latest genetic and archaeological evidence throws that theory out.

Firefighters were battling scores of wildfires raging in Australia Saturday, as a government commission warned that climate change had raised the risk of scorching heatwaves becoming more frequent.

In the eastern state of New South Wales, some 1,000 firefighters were attempting to douse about 94 wildfires, about dozen uncontained, while fires were also burning in neighboring Victoria and Queensland states.

It was not quite a "Snakes on a Plane" scenario, but passengers on a Qantas jet watched in amazement as a three-meter (nine feet) python clung to the outside of their aircraft during a flight.

The Australian carrier said the flight from the Queensland city of Cairns to Port Moresby, capital of the Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea, took off early Thursday morning with the unintended passenger tucked into its wing.

Australian firefighters were racing against the clock to bring a series of blazes under control Thursday before a forecast spike in temperatures brings the risk of more infernos.

Fires have been raging across Australia for nearly a week and while many have been contained, 126 are still burning and at least 15 remain out of control in the country's most populous state, New South Wales.

Record temperatures across southern Australia cooled Wednesday, reducing the danger from scores of raging wildfires but likely bringing only a brief reprieve from the summer's extreme heat and fire risk.

Australia had its hottest day on record Monday with a nationwide average of 40.33 degrees Celsius (104.59 degrees Fahrenheit), narrowly breaking a 1972 record of 40.17 C (104.31 F). Tuesday was the third hottest day at 40.11 C (104.20 F). Four of Australia's hottest 10 days on record have been in 2013.

Reducing the use of wood-burning stoves in an Australian city led to a sharp fall in deaths from respiratory diseases and heart failure, a study published on Tuesday said.

The paper, published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), highlights the pollution risks from inefficient biomass burning, used by billions of people for heating and cooking.

Bushfires raged out of control across Australia's most populous state on Tuesday, fanned by intense heat and high winds in "catastrophic" conditions that threatened homes and triggered evacuations.

More than 130 fires were burning across New South Wales state, 40 of them uncontained, state Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told reporters in Sydney.

Extreme heat in Australia forced the government's weather bureau to upgrade its temperature scale Tuesday, with new colors on the climate map to reflect new highs forecast next week.

Central Australia was shown with a purple area on the latest Bureau of Meteorology forecast map issued for next Monday, a new color code suggesting temperatures will soar above 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit).