Heavy winds have kicked up a towering wall of flames outside a northern Arizona tourist town, ripping through two-dozen structures and sending residents of more than 700 homes scrambling to flee.

Flames as high as 100 feet (30 meters) raced through an area of scattered homes, dry grass and Ponderosa pine trees on the outskirts of Flagstaff as wind gusts of up to 50 mph (80 kph) pushed the blaze over a major highway.

Devastating floods in South Africa this week, as well as other extreme weather events across the continent linked to human-caused climate change, are putting marine and terrestrial wildlife species at risk, according to biodiversity experts.

Africa has already faced several climate-related woes in the past year: the ongoing fatal floods follow unrelenting cyclones in the south, extreme temperatures in western and northern regions, and a debilitating drought which is currently afflicting eastern, central and the Horn of Africa.

An Italian naval vessel specialized in marine pollution clean-up arrived Tuesday in waters off Tunisia where a tanker laden with diesel fuel capsized at the weekend.

The death toll from devastating floods in and around the South African port city of Durban has risen to 306, the government said, after roads and hillsides were washed away as homes collapsed.

Honda is investing 5 trillion yen ($40 billion) over the next decade in research, especially to realize a major shift to ecological electric vehicles, the Japanese automaker said Tuesday.

The products and services in the works will account for more than half of its 8 trillion yen ($64 billion) research and development budget in that time and will be tailored for each major market, the U.S., China and Japan.

Rescuers hampered by mud and rain on Tuesday used their bare hands and shovels to search for survivors of landslides that smashed into villages in the central Philippines, as the death toll from tropical storm Megi rose to 42. 

More than 17,000 people fled their homes as the storm pummeled the disaster-prone region in recent days, flooding houses, severing roads and knocking out power.

Spain's Civil Guard says it is investigating a businessman in the eastern Valencia region who owned a private taxidermy collection with more than 1,000 stuffed animals, including just over 400 from protected species and at least one specimen of a North African oryx, already extinct.

The collection would fetch 29 million euros ($31.5 million) on the black market, the Civil Guard said Sunday in a statement, adding that its owner could be charged with trafficking and other crimes against the environment.

A German Cabinet minister has apologized for taking a long vacation shortly after devastating floods last year in the state where she was then a senior official, but it isn't clear whether the move will help relieve pressure on her.

Anne Spiegel became the minister for families and women in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Cabinet in December. Before that, she was the environment minister and deputy governor of Rhineland-Palatinate state — the region worst hit by floods in July that killed more than 180 people in Germany.

An unusually early heat wave brought more extreme temperatures Monday to a large swath of India's northwest, raising concerns that such weather conditions could become typical.

The India Meteorological Department forecast that the temperature in New Delhi would reach 41.8 degrees Celsius (107.2 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday, nearly eight degrees above normal.

U.S. Ambassador Dorothy Shea has participated in the inauguration of the Hinterland Archaeological Heritage Project in Jabal Moussa, funded by the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, the U.S. Embassy said on Monday.