A ferocious wildfire approached Lake Tahoe just hours after roads were clogged with fleeing cars when the entire California resort city of South Lake Tahoe was ordered to evacuate and communities just across the state line in Nevada were warned to get ready to leave.

The popular vacation haven normally filled with tens of thousands of summer tourists was emptied out Monday as the massive Caldor Fire expanded to the north and south. Vehicles loaded with bikes and camping gear and hauling boats were in gridlock traffic, stalled in hazy, brown air that smelled like a campfire. Police and other emergency vehicles whizzed by.

Louisiana communities battered by Hurricane Ida faced a new danger as they began the massive task of clearing debris and repairing damage from the storm: the possibility of weeks without power in the stifling, late-summer heat.

Ida ravaged the region's power grid, leaving the entire city of New Orleans and hundreds of thousands of other Louisiana residents in the dark with no clear timeline on when power would return. Some areas outside New Orleans also suffered major flooding and structure damage.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry met in Tokyo on Tuesday with Japan's top diplomat to push efforts to fight climate change ahead of a United Nations conference in November.

Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi highlighted what he said was the importance of getting other major carbon emitters, especially China, to cooperate.

An oil slick believed to have originated from a power plant inside one of Syria's oil refineries could reach Cyprus' northeastern tip in the next 24 hours, the Mediterranean island nation's Fisheries and Marine Research Department said Monday.

The Department said the most recent computer model indicates the oil spill could affect Apostolos Andreas Cape in the breakaway north of ethnically divided Cyprus by late Tuesday.

In the freshwater swamp forest of Hlanzoun in southern Benin, majestic trees hum with chirping birds and playful monkeys.

Home to once bustling flora and fauna, experts now warn that the fragile environment, one of the last of its kind in the West African country and accessible only by canoe, is at risk of disappearing.

Syria's longest river used to flow by his olive grove, but today Khaled al-Khamees says it has receded into the distance, parching his trees and leaving his family with hardly a drop to drink.

"It's as if we were in the desert," said the 50-year-old farmer, standing on what last year was the Euphrates riverbed.

No more zipping past the Eiffel Tower or through the Latin Quarter without slowing down to soak in the sights: Starting Monday, the speed limit on nearly all streets of Paris is just 30 kph (less than 19 mph).

It's the latest initiative by a city trying to burnish its climate credentials and transform people's relationship to their vehicles. City officials say it's also aimed at reducing accidents and making Paris more pedestrian-friendly.

Fire officials ordered more evacuations around the Tahoe Basin as a two-week old blaze encroached on the threatened mountain towns surrounding glimmering Lake Tahoe.

By nightfall, all residents on the California side of the Lake Tahoe Basin were warned to evacuate the region, after fire officials had stressed for days that protecting the area was their top firefighting priority.

Hurricane Ida knocked out power to all of New Orleans and inundated coastal Louisiana communities on a deadly path through the Gulf Coast that was still unfolding and promised more destruction.

Forecasters warned of damaging winds, heavy rainfall that could cause flash floods and life-threatening storm surge as Ida continued its rampage Monday through southeastern Louisiana and then moved into Mississippi. It made landfall on the same day 16 years earlier that Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi, and its 150-mph (230 kph) winds tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever hit the mainland.

Officials in the Superior National Forest said Thursday that the ongoing drought has created "tinderbox conditions" in northeastern Minnesota as firefighters continue to battle an uncontained wildfire, while rain that's expected to fall in coming days is unlikely to provide much help to crews who are growing tired.

Crews have been working on fighting and suppressing wildfires since the spring, and Minnesota's wildfire season is not likely to end until snowfall.