Climate & Environment

Large forest fires burned out of control in southwestern France and central Spain on Friday, prompting authorities to evacuate an estimated 80,000 people from their homes. Some even fled by boat when flames swept through the touristic Cap Ferret peninsula on France’s Atlantic coast.

Hurricane Fausto has strengthened into a Category 2 storm in the Pacific Ocean and is expected to approach the Hawaiian Islands next week, forecasters said.

A red-coloured sunrise on Friday marked the start of another smoky day in Calgary.

Punch, a plush-clutching Japanese baby monkey that has become a global online sensation, will celebrate his first birthday on Sunday as his zoo is flooded with fan letters from around the world.

Flooding in India’s northeastern Assam state has killed at least 50 people and displaced 700,000 after days of heavy monsoon rain that overflowed the Brahmaputra River, officials said Friday.

Teams searching the rubble of last week’s landslide in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing found three additional bodies in recent days, bringing the death toll to 11 with 50 people still missing, Chinese authorities said Thursday.

Tropical Storm Bertha brought heavy surf and some flooding to southern Louisiana and Texas as it came ashore on the Gulf Coast for a second time Thursday, hours before weakening to a tropical depression.

The heat wave that has scorched southern British Columbia this week has seen temperatures pass 40 degrees for a second consecutive day in the Fraser Canyon, marking the two hottest temperatures recorded in Canada this year.

In addition, more than 1,000 residents living in residential areas along the forest edge have also been evacuated.

The disaster, the country’s deadliest earthquake since 1812, came at a time when socioeconomic conditions were already precarious, with a poverty rate of over 76 per cent, the World Bank said. Some 7.9 million people have fled the country since 2015.

How hard do you have to ram a fish to make it explode? Ask an orca.

The combined water level in two of the United States’ biggest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, has fallen to a historic low, in what experts are calling a significant moment in the Colorado River crisis — threatening a water system that supplies tens of millions.

Heat returns to Toronto after a brush with below-seasonable weather on Wednesday.

Climate change is exacerbating drought this year in Europe as extreme heat evaporates water supplies, scientists said in an analysis published on Thursday.

Tropical Storm Bertha crawled onto the southern tip of Louisiana on Wednesday, making landfall and packing strong winds far from its centre after closing beaches from the Florida Panhandle to Mississippi.