Russia's central regions on Wednesday battled "extreme" wildfires fueled by an unusual heatwave that comes after forest fires linked to climate change ravaged Siberia for most of the summer. 

Authorities were fighting 15 wildfires in the Urals region of Sverdlovsk, the emergencies ministry said. 

Operators of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant unveiled plans Wednesday to construct an undersea tunnel to release more than a million tons of treated water from the site into the ocean.

A massive oil spill caused by leakage from a power plant inside one of Syria's oil refineries is spreading along the coast of the Mediterranean country, Syria's state news agency said and satellite photos showed Wednesday.

SANA said the spill reached the coastal town of Jableh, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the refinery in the town of Baniyas, adding that Syria's environment department and the municipality of the coastal province of Latakia have placed all concerned departments on alert. It said work is underway to clean the coast in the rocky areas.

A California fire that gutted hundreds of homes advanced toward Lake Tahoe on Wednesday as thousands of firefighters tried to box in the flames and tourists who hoped to boat or swim found themselves looking at thick yellow haze instead of alpine scenery.

The Caldor Fire was less than 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of the lake that straddles the California-Nevada state line. The fire was eating its way through rugged timberlands and was "knocking on the door" of the Lake Tahoe basin, California's state fire chief Thom Porter warned this week.

U.S. President Joe Biden has declared a major disaster in the southern U.S. state of Tennessee and approved federal funding after devastating floods over the weekend left at least 21 dead, the White House said in a statement said Tuesday.

Danish shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk said Tuesday it was speeding up plans for an environment-friendly fleet with the order of eight carbon-neutral container vessels, a pioneering project in the highly-polluting industry.

Senegal's Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome is up to his knees in water, in a suburb of the West African country's capital, surveying flood damage.  

He's inspecting a home in the eastern Keur Massar district: The first floor and courtyard have been submerged in brown water for three days. 

Anna Mays woke up in a panic attack Monday, thinking she was back in the rising floodwater.

Two days ago, she had been clinging for her life to the front door of her duplex in rural Tennessee as the water inched up to her neck. Her brother was hanging onto a tree.

Scientists say that global warming makes the kind of extreme rainfall that caused deadly flash flooding in western Europe last month more likely, though it remains unclear exactly how much.

At least 220 people died in Germany and Belgium on July 14-15 when swollen streams turned into raging rivers, sweeping away houses, roads and bridges, and causing billions of euros (dollars) in damage.

India's capital New Delhi opened its first "smog tower" on Monday aimed at reducing the air pollution blamed for thousands of premature deaths every year, but experts were skeptical.

Concentrations of tiny deadly particles in Delhi's air regularly exceed safe limits by up to 20 times, particularly in winter when its 20 million people are enveloped in a noxious grey blanket of smog.