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Officials say the heaviest rains to hit the Atlantic region in 50 years have triggered floods that have left thousands of homes without electricity.

Three months of rain fell in just 24 hours in some areas.

Residents have been urged not to join in searches for the missing due to the dangerous conditions.

The two missing children were in a car that was submerged by flood waters, police reported. The three other people in the car managed to escape.

A man and a young person are also missing after the vehicle they were in was also submerged. Two people were rescued from the vehicle.

Roads have been washed away and bridges have been weakened in Nova Scotia, where a state of emergency has been announced in some areas.

“We have a scary, significant situation,” said Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston, adding that at least seven bridges would have to be replaced or rebuilt.

“The property damage to homes … is pretty unimaginable,” he told a news conference.

He estimated that is could take several days for the waters to recede.

More than 80,000 people were left without power at one point.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was very concerned about the floods and promised that the government “will be there” for the province.

Environment Canada says torrential rain in the eastern area of the province could continue into Sunday.

“People should not assume that everything is over. This is a very dynamic situation,” Halifax Mayor Mike Savage told a press conference.

He added that the city had been hit by “biblical proportions of rain”.

The flooding is the latest extreme weather event to hit northeast Canada – recent wildfires have burnt a record area, sending clouds of smoke south into the US.

There has also been extreme flooding in the US this month. The body of a two-year-old girl found along a river in Pennsylvania is believed to be one of two missing children swept away by flash floods last weekend. Her nine-month-old brother is still missing.

Scientists cannot say for certain that such extreme rainfall is caused by climate change, but the floods are consistent with the changes they expect in a warming world.

This is because the warmer the earth becomes the more moisture the atmosphere can hold. This results in more droplets and heavier rainfall, sometimes in a shorter space of time and over a smaller area.

People turning up to the polls in Phnom Penh told the BBC they expected the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) to sweep all 125 seats in parliament again.

Hun Sen, who has been in power for 38 years, faces no real challenge after the only credible opposition party was disqualified in May.

Critics have called the vote a sham.

“It’s a rigged election because there are no real strong opposition parties,” one voter, an aid worker in Phnom Penh, told the BBC earlier this week.

Western nations, including the US, have also expressed concerns about the integrity of the vote. To ensure the highest possible turnout when people are being offered no real choice, the government has criminalised any attempt to boycott the election or spoil the ballot papers.

Opposition lawmakers this year have reported violent attacks, with Human Rights Watch reporting the government stepped up intimidation and arbitrary arrests of political opposition in the run-up to the poll.

In May, the government barred the country’s main opposition party, the Candlelight Party, on a technicality. The National Election Commission said the party was missing paperwork, which it had not needed for the local elections last year.

Candlelight had won 22% of the vote in local elections last year – and analysts say Hun Sen saw them as a potential threat to his rule.

But the poll comes as Hun Sen, who cast his vote in the capital early on Sunday morning, shows the clearest signals yet that he’s planning to hand power to his eldest son, Hun Manet – possibly within weeks. The military chief has led the CPP’s campaign alongside his father.

Hun Sen has become increasingly authoritarian in his rule, political analysts say.

Earlier this year, leading opposition figure Kem Sokha was sentenced to 27 years prison on alleged treason charges, and key news outlet Voice of Democracy shut down.

It is the second election in a row where Hun Sen has targeted democratic institutions and crippled the opposition before voting day, analysts say.

In 2018, his Cambodian People’s Party won every single seat in the 125-seat National Assembly after the main opposition alliance was dissolved by the politically controlled courts.

Seventeen other parties are participating in this year’s election, but almost all are too small, new or are aligned with the ruling party to be considered credible challengers.

The vote comes at an uncertain time for Cambodia’s economy – with locals reporting struggles with rising fuel prices, stagnant wages and growing debts.

While Hun Sen is campaigning for re-election, he has flagged that this may be his last term. In 2021, he said would hand over control to his eldest son who currently commands the Royal Cambodian Army.

Han Manet is a first-time candidate for a parliament seat this election and led the final day of party rallies in Phnom Penh on Friday.

No timeframe had been given for the transition of power until Thursday, when Hun Sen signalled his son “could be” prime minister in three or four weeks.

Hun Sen’s party has won all six of the national elections held every five years since the 1990s, when the UN helped the Southeast Asian nation of 16 million people become a functioning democracy post decades of civil war and the murderous Khmer Rouge regime.

Over four decades, he has consolidated power through control of the military, police and moneyed interests. Observers say he has dispatched opponents through co-opting, jailing or exiling them.

Socialist Pedro Sánchez has been prime minister since 2018.

He hopes his government’s social reforms, crisis management and handling of a strongly performing economy will persuade voters to keep him in office.

But his party has been lagging in polls behind the conservative People’s Party (PP) led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who may end up needing far-right support.

This is the first Spanish general election of modern times held in the searing heat of mid-summer, when many Spaniards are on holiday.

Mr Feijóo, 61, caused controversy during the campaign by appearing to cast doubt on the management of postal votes, which has surged to almost 2.5 million.

Polling for the rest of Spain’s 37 million voters will continue on Sunday until 20:00 (18:00 GMT).

The conservative leader wants to roll back many of the Socialists’ reforms, but to form a majority in Spain’s 350-seat parliament he may turn to far-right Vox.

Vox leader Santiago Abascal is a Spanish nationalist whose popularity has been driven as much by a fierce opposition to Catalan separatism and feminism as by anti-immigration policies.

“This will be a victory of progress over backwardness, the future over the past, truth over lies,” Mr Sánchez has said. “The right is focusing on telling lies, we are focusing on making a comeback.”

Since 2020, Mr Sánchez, 51, has led the first coalition government of Spain’s modern era together with Unidas Podemos, to his left.

His administration has navigated the pandemic, a volcanic eruption on the Canary island of La Palma and the impact of the war in Ukraine, while overseeing a steady drop in the jobless rate and one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe.

However, these issues have featured much less during the campaign than Mr Sánchez would have liked. Instead, he has faced fierce criticism of his government’s reliance on the parliamentary support of Basque and Catalan separatists.

The right has cast Mr Sánchez as a cynical power-grabber, willing to engage with the enemies of Spain’s constitutional democracy in order to remain in office.

Mr Feijóo has said that if elected he plans to reverse a series of reforms introduced by the left-wing government, including laws tackling the legacy of the Franco nationalist dictatorship and making gender transition easier. He also wants to review new euthanasia and abortion legislation.

He has appealed to Spaniards to give him enough votes to “end the impasses” in the country’s politics. “A strong majority that doesn’t need to rely on radicals is crucial in order for us to move forwards,” he said.

He has come under pressure in the latter stages of the campaign over his friendship with a notorious Galician drug trafficker, Marcial Dorado, during the 1990s. Mr Feijóo has said he was unaware of Dorado’s criminal activities at the time.

In regional and municipal elections in May, the PP gained ground as the Socialists and other parties on the left suffered losses.

However, a new left-wing platform, Sumar, has been formed for the general election, gathering 15 parties under the same banner, including Unidas Podemos. Led by charismatic labour minister Yolanda Díaz, Sumar is aiming to secure third place ahead of Vox, and thus give Mr Sánchez a chance of forming a new coalition government.

The PP and Vox have already formed dozens of coalitions and governing partnerships on a local level.

The parties on the left warn that victory on Sunday for Mr Feijóo would open the door to the far right entering the national government, bringing with it a rolling back of rights for immigrants, women and the LGBTQ+ community.

The Labour leader had blamed the loss on London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s plans to expand the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) – a tax on polluting vehicles.

Conservative Steve Tuckwell won the seat after campaigning against the tax.

Addressing Labour’s national forum, Sir Keir said there was “something very wrong” when a Labour policy was on “each and every Tory leaflet”.

In a bruising week for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Labour and the Lib Dems took two safe Tory seats. Labour’s Keir Mather, 25, won in Selby and Ainsty, North Yorkshire, overturning a 20,137 majority to become the youngest sitting MP.

The Conservatives clung on narrowly in the third by-election, in Uxbridge, Boris Johnson’s former seat, despite a big swing to Labour.

Sir Keir said that while the by-election win in North Yorkshire should give Labour “every reason to be confident”, the loss in Uxbridge showed there was “still a long way to go”.

The Conservative win in Uxbridge sparked debates about both parties’ green policies.

Speaking during a visit to Shefford in Nadine Dorries’ constituency of Mid Bedfordshire, the Labour leader told journalists: “I don’t think there is any doubt that Ulez was the reason that we lost the election in Uxbridge.”

Sir Keir said he had spoken to the London mayor, adding: “But we’re not sitting back, we’re not looking over our shoulder. We’re pressing forward.”

Sources close to Mr Khan told the BBC he was in “constructive listening mode” but added that he had no plans to delay the scheme’s expansion at the end of August.

Asked whether Labour needs to rethink its climate polices, Sir Keir said: “When it comes to green commitments, it’s not a question of whether they should be done, of course it needs to be done – it’s how they’re done.

“So there’s a discussion to be had about that.”

Mr Tuckwell, the winning candidate in Uxbridge, said the “damaging and costly Ulez policy” had cost Labour the chance of winning the seat.

The Ulez is a £12.50 daily charge for driving in London, applicable if the vehicle does not meet certain emission standards. It initially covered the same central area as the congestion charge before widening to the North and South Circular roads in 2021.

A further expansion to cover all London boroughs is due to start on 29 August.

On Friday, Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said the Uxbridge result showed that “when you don’t listen to voters, you don’t win elections”.

Cities need clean air, she said, but she warned that people who needed new vehicles must get “proper compensation and support” so that the policy does not come “at the cost of working families”.

Some on the right of the Conservative party say that pulling back from some green policies would prove popular with voters, at a time when families are feeling cost-of-living pressures.

Tory MP Craig Mackinlay, chairman of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, has suggested delaying the ban on new diesel and petrol cars, pushing it back “at least” five years to 2035.

Downing Street sources say there are no plans to change climate targets – but that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will try to set his party apart from Labour in the coming months.

As the major parties digest the by-election results, ex-climate minister Lord Ian Duncan, a Conservative, warned that if Sir Keir and Rishi Sunak do not put politics aside and agree a common approach to climate change, people will face “serious challenges”.

Lord Duncan, who was the parliamentary under secretary for climate change from July 2019 to February 2020, said a “bipartisan approach” was needed from both parties to “get behind” common climate policies.

The UK government’s net zero tsar, Chris Skidmore, said it would be an “abdication” of responsibility if ministers “play politics” with environmental policies.

Mr Skidmore, the Conservative MP for Kingswood, said: “The net zero review I chaired demonstrated that net zero isn’t just an environmental policy, but a key economic driver of future growth and investment that can transform Britain for the better, but this requires all political parties not to play politics with safeguarding our futures.”

He urged politicians to prioritise “the lives and health of the public and the opportunity for economic growth” ahead of “gamesmanship”.

“It is also really bad politics, given that the environment and taking action on climate change consistently polls third in the issues that voters care about,” he added.