A police officer in eastern DR Congo has been detained for alleged poaching after locals heard the screams of a baby monkey coming from his bag, officials said Monday.

Heavy rainfall has flooded several villages in Yakutia, in Russia's Far East region, authorities said on Tuesday.

Firefighters battled wildfires in Spain and Portugal Tuesday as Western Europe faced its second heatwave in less than a month which threatened glaciers in the Alps and worsened drought conditions.

Countries have approved the first comprehensive guidelines for judging the value of nature following four years of intense debate, officials said Monday.

The report was endorsed by 139 countries that are members of the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES.

Civil Defense firefighters backed by the Lebanese Army battled Monday a large fire that had ripped through the forests of Roumieh, a village north-east of Beirut surrounded by pine-forested hills.

The Army sent water-dropping helicopters to help the Civil Defense extinguish the fire, as the wind speed, the rugged area where the fire erupted and difficulty to secure water for the fire engines complicated efforts to contain the blaze.

Every day billions of people depend on wild flora and fauna to obtain food, medicine and energy. But a new United Nations-backed report says that overexploitation, climate change, pollution and deforestation are pushing one million species towards extinction.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services - or IPBES - report has said that unless humankind improves the sustainable use of nature, the Earth is on its way to losing 12% of its wild tree species, over a thousand wild mammal species and almost 450 species of sharks and rays, among other irreparable harm.

Europe's banks aren't sufficiently considering risks from climate change and must "urgently step up efforts" to make sure they understand the possible impact of floods, wildfires and losses on investments.

That was a key conclusion from a climate stress test on 104 banks run by the European Central Bank and released Friday.

Over a dozen endangered sea turtles that were rescued after suffering major injuries in the Mediterranean scuttled their way over a beach in Israel on Friday after months of medical care.

The 15 loggerhead sea turtles and two green sea turtles were released back into the wild after months of rehabilitation at the Sea Turtle Rescue Center in central Israel. Each had been brought to the facility run by Israel's Nature and Parks Authority over the winter suffering from various kinds of physical trauma, likely caused by underwater explosives.

Around 700 firefighters backed by aircraft were on Friday battling a massive blaze in France's southern Gard region that had already burned 600 hectares (1,500 acres) overnight.

The operation "is continuing, but the fire is advancing more slowly and fortunately is no longer threatening any homes," a spokesman for the local fire service told AFP early Friday, adding that several fire fronts remained "inaccessible".

Portugal is bracing for a heat wave, with temperatures in some areas forecast to climb as high as 43 C (109 F) this weekend just as a severe drought grips the country.

The Civil Protection Agency, a Portuguese government body that coordinates official responses to emergencies, said Thursday it is placing crews on high alert because of the risk of wildfires. About a third of the country faces an extreme risk of forest fires, authorities say.