World Briefing: Seven things you need to know this morning

Indian residents and motorists gather on a flyover as others wade through floodwaters in Chennai. Photo / Getty Images

Your wrap of the world stories that broke overnight.

• Weeks of torrential rains have forced an airport in southern India to close and have cut off several roads and highways, leaving tens of thousands of people stranded in their homes.

The annual winter monsoon rains in Tamil Nadu state have been the heaviest the region has seen in decades. Army and naval rescue teams have joined several teams from the National Disaster Response Force to help evacuate residents stranded in low-lying areas.

Minimal coverage of what's going on in Chennai in International media. This will give you an idea of scale of floods pic.twitter.com/J1nHYP6G8G

— Karun Chandhok (@karunchandhok) December 3, 2015

The airport in the state capital of Chennai was closed, and television channels reported that most main roads in the city were blocked by several feet of water and that power supplies had been cut.

People could be seen wading in waist-deep water in several parts of Chennai. In several of the city's taller buildings, all the ground-floor apartments have been flooded, forcing people to seek shelter with their neighbours.

• The Pentagon has opened all combat roles in the US military to women. The Armed Services have until April 1 to put the change in place.

• UK Trading Standards Officers have seized 15,000 unsafe hoverboards, the BBC reports. The boards are considered in danger of overheating, exploding or catching fire. The London fire brigade said at least three house fires in October were caused by them.

• If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, candidates should adopt many of his tactics and approaches, says the official overseeing the Republicans' Senate campaigns. The approach is outlined in a confidential memo by Ward Baker. In other Trump news, he was photographed by AP signing a woman's chest at a rally in Virginia.

• The Washington Post reports that the world's oldest peach has been found in China, but notes that it is "presumably no longer delicious". Researchers have found a set of fossilised peach pits dating to more than 2.5 million years ago.

• London Zoo is offering the chance to sleep with lions in a safari lodge that is being built, dubbed a "room with a zoo". An overnight stay, complete with food and drink, will cost between 378-558 pounds ($856-$1264) for two but couples will be within "roaring distance" in their enclosure, AFP reports.

• A runaway Austrian chihuahua has been reunited with his owners five years after going missing. Charlie disappeared in 2010 during a holiday in Germany. He was found in the same area of Aschbach where he went missing.