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At least 13 people have died and dozens are missing after a landslide caused rocks and heavy boulders to crash onto a highway in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh yesterday.

The landslide hit in the morning local time, leaving a bus and several other vehicles trapped on the mountainside highway.

Photos from the scene showed rescue workers navigating crushed vehicle parts, flipped cars and scattered debris, with portions of the highway blocked completely by loose earth fallen from the mountain above.

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Search and rescue teams from India's National Disaster Response Force and other emergency agencies were immediately deployed to the site, with operations continuing overnight.

More than 200 personnel continued to work along the stretch of National Highway 5, which connects northern India to the border with China, according to Reuters.

So far 13 people have been rescued, but more than 20 others are still missing, a spokesperson from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police said today.

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"The debris fell from quite high up," local police chief Saju Ram Rana told Reuters, adding that heavy machinery was being brought in to clear the area.

"The landslide tragedy at Kinnaur is very saddening," tweeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday evening.

"In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives. May the injured recover at the earliest."

Modi's office also tweeted the government would provide 200,000 rupees ($3657 AUD) to the families of those who died in the landslide, and 50,000 rupees ($914 AUD) to those injured.

In the past month, India has recorded dozen of deaths due to landslides triggered by heavy rainfall. In July, at least 31 people died in two landslides in Mumbai.

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Italy recorded what may be a new European temperature record on Wednesday (local time), though weather experts cautioned that the measurement still must be confirmed.

The Sicily region's agriculture-meteorological information service, SIAS, reported that a temperature of 48.8 degrees Celsius was reached at the island's Syracuse station.

The agency said on its Facebook page it is the highest temperature registered in the entire network since its installation in 2002.

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The highest temperature ever recorded on the European continent is 48 degrees in 1977 in Athens.

The Sicily temperature could not be independently confirmed, however, and Italy's air force meteorological service said it had not recorded temperatures approaching that high on Wednesday but that its stations are in other locations so variations are to be expected.

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The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said it would examine the reading but Randy Cerveny, the agency's rapporteur for weather records, called it "suspicious, so we're not going to make any immediate determination."

"It doesn't sound terribly plausible," Mr Cerveny said.

"But we're not going to dismiss it."

WMO spokeswoman Sylvie Castonguay advised caution.

"Extreme weather and climate events are often sensationalised and mischaracterised as 'records' before they have been thoroughly investigated and properly validated," Ms Castonguay said.

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However, the high-pressure system of near-record strength currently centred over the Mediterranean is the type that can produce unprecedented heat somewhere, meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections said.

House Democrats who have spent years investigating Donald Trump are entitled to some of the former president's financial records, a US federal judge has ruled.

The ruling from US District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington empowering Congress to have the records is the latest development in years-long legal and political skirmishes over access to Mr Trump's closely-held finances.

But it's unlikely to be the last say on the matter given expected appeals. The US Supreme Court has already weighed in once.

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At issue is a demand from Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which in 2019 and again last February subpoenaed Mr Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, for the records.

In his order, Judge Mehta wrote that though he had previously turned aside Mr Trump's challenge to the subpoena and permitted the committee's demand for records to “proceed without qualification,” a Supreme Court opinion from 2020 required a new analysis in favour of more limited access to the records than what lawmakers initially wanted.

That opinion cited separation of power concerns in saying that while Congress has significant power to demand the president’s personal information, it is not limitless.

https://twitter.com/GerryConnolly/status/1425528210494791686

Applying factors that the high court set out, Judge Mehta wrote that the House was entitled to some financial records from 2017 and 2018 — when Mr Trump was president.

Separately, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel said in an opinion last month that the Treasury Department must provide the House Ways and Means Committee with Mr Trump’s tax returns.

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That opinion said the committee chairman “has invoked sufficient reasons for requesting the former President’s tax information” and that under federal law, “Treasury must furnish the information to the Committee”.

The committee's hunt for records overlaps with other records that have already been released to investigators.

In 2020, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of New York District Attorney Cy Vance in his demand for Mr Trump's tax records, though the ruling kept the documents out of the public eye.

Mr Vance's office took possession of those records in February.

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The New Zealand government has announced a sweeping reset of its COVID-19 approach, with a sped-up vaccine program and border opening trials this year.

Everyone aged 16 or over will be eligible for their first vaccine dose from September 1 but will wait twice as long between doses, as the government doubles the time between doses from three to six weeks.

And vaccinated workers will be able to participate in a pilot scheme from October where they can travel overseas and then self-isolate at home, rather than going into managed isolation.

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READ MORE: Experts say New Zealand should keep virus elimination plan

The Ardern government will then look to broaden out quarantine-free travel for vaccinated Kiwis from the first quarter of 2022, with different "risk pathways" based on how dangerous a country is.

Those travelling from countries deemed low risk would be able to skip any type of isolation, as New Zealanders can currently do with the Cook Islands and could previously do with Australia.

Those travelling from countries deemed "medium risk" would have to undergo some kind of self-isolation, a shorter stay in a managed isolation hotel, or a mixture of both. The trial this year would inform how this scheme would run.

Travellers from high-risk countries – or those not vaccinated – would still have to stay in managed isolation for 14 days.

The countries involved would be the ones the traveller had been in the last 14 days.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said this phased reopening could be achieved while maintaining the "elimination" approach which has kept COVID-19 from New Zealand's shores.

"The first step in our plan is speeding up the vaccination process to ensure everyone is at least partially vaccinated as soon as possible to reduce the risk of and impact of Delta entering the country," Ms Ardern said.

"All going to plan that should mean our entire population has had the opportunity to book a vaccination by September and their second one by December."

Vaccine speed-up

The government has moved forward the schedule for vaccine eligibility by a month or more as earlier supply problems have faded away.

Those aged 40 or over will be eligible from August 18, 30 and over from August 25, and from September 1 for all aged 16 or over.

There is still no word about when those aged 12-16 will be eligible, despite Medsafe deeming the vaccine for this age group as safe.

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The government is prioritising first doses, doubling the time between first and second doses from three weeks to six weeks. Some research has also indicated that this actually increases protection.

Those who need to be fully vaccinated faster can still have both doses in three weeks if needed.

New Zealand had its highest day of vaccines administered on Tuesday – if it maintained that pace it would vaccinate all Kiwis aged 16 and older by December 20.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said this longer gap created no safety concerns.

"Moving to a longer gap allows us to give a first dose to a large number of people faster, which means providing more people with partial protection sooner. This is an important part of our being protected for a possible outbreak of the more infectious Delta variant of the virus," Dr Bloomfield said.

The government has not provided any kind of hard vaccine target, saying it wants to get the vaccine offered to all adults before opening the border.

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The advice to the government released yesterday said no number would realistically provide "herd immunity".

Ms Ardern did provide some "markers" for what the Government would be looking at as evidence the vaccine was rolled out: good regional spread of the vaccine, high vaccination rates in high-risk populations, and good uptake for younger Kiwis who move around more.

Border reopening

The government will pilot a scheme for vaccinated travellers to travel overseas and self-isolate at home from October through December.

This scheme basically matches a suggestion made in the advice from Sir David Skegg released on Wednesday.

Ms Ardern invited businesses and other organisations needing to send employees overseas to contact the government to be a part of the pilot.

This pilot will serve to inform the "medium risk" pathway for international travel the government is looking to set up in the first quarter of 2022, where vaccinated Kiwis could either stay in managed isolation for a shorter period or self-isolate at home.

Vaccinated travellers from countries deemed "low risk" would be able to skip isolation altogether but would have to get various tests.

Ms Ardern said the government was investigating rapid testing on arrival in airports, more reliable pre-departure testing, and how self-isolation could work.

The government attempted to use self-isolation for returning travellers early in the pandemic but it was soon found to be unworkable, with little enforcement of rules and mixing between people within households.

The ultimate goal was to move to quarantine-free travel for all vaccinated travellers.

Elimination approach kept

Ms Ardern made clear the government was maintaining the "elimination" or "stamp it out" approach to COVID-19.

She said the aim was to maintain this approach while eventually removing the risk of lockdowns however.

"If everyone heeds the call to be vaccinated by the end of 2021, it is our goal to reduce and then eventually remove the need for lockdowns," Ms Ardern said.

She said COVID-19 could then be treated like measles has been for years.

"Measles is both incredibly infectious but also potentially deadly for a young unvaccinated child. When we have outbreaks in New Zealand, we contact trace and we isolate. These are the public health tools that, in the absence of lockdowns, we will continue to use," Ms Ardern said.

She said the biggest risk to New Zealand was the border but the borders could not be kept shut indefinitely.

"We cannot keep border restrictions on forever and, to be absolutely clear, we do not want to either," she said.

This story originally appeared on Stuff and is republished here with permission.