The sight can be jarring during extreme drought: snowmaking guns lined up on a mountainside, blasting precious crystal flakes on a ski run while the rest of the land goes thirsty.

Snowpack in the U.S. West has decreased by about 20% in the last century, making man-made snow more vital each year to opening ski resorts and fueling ski town economies as they head into an uncertain future.

Rescue crews in Istanbul and Athens scrambled on Tuesday to clear roads that came to a standstill after a massive cold front and snowstorms hit much of Turkey and Greece, leaving countless people and vehicles in both cities stranded overnight in freezing conditions.

Highways and roads in and around Istanbul became clogged on Monday after the storm pounded the city of about 16 million people that straddles the European and Asian continents — accumulating more than 80 centimeters (31 inches) of snow in some areas.

Heavy snow and freezing rain have seriously affected about 250,000 displaced Syrians living in camps in the last major opposition stronghold in northwestern Syria, with tents collapsing and children having to walk in the snow in sandals, a senior U.N. humanitarian official said.

"It's a real disaster zone," said Mark Cutts, the U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis who is in charge of cross-border aid operations from Turkey to the northwest.

A Lima zoo is racing to save dozens of seabirds, including protected penguins, after 6,000 barrels of crude oil spilled off Peru's coast due to waves from a volcanic eruption in the South Pacific.

Beijing warned Monday that heavy air pollution is likely during the Winter Olympics, but said emergency plans were in place to ensure the Games are not disrupted by smog.

German car giant Volkswagen said Monday it beat the European Union's target for cutting carbon emissions on its new vehicles in 2021, having missed the mark last year.

Deliberate poisoning is likely to blame for the death of dozens of turtles at a lake near Mumbai, Indian wildlife experts told AFP Sunday.

Conservation workers were alerted to the incident after a local politician asked them to investigate a foul smell around the body of water in Kalyan, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of India's entertainment capital. 

Aid flights from Australia, Japan and New Zealand carrying food, water, medical supplies and telecommunications equipment landed in Tonga over the weekend, as the Pacific nation grapples with the aftermath of an underwater volcanic eruption and tsunami.

The main airport runway has been cleared of ash spewed when the nearby Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted a week ago. The explosion also set off a Pacific-wide tsunami that smashed boats in New Zealand and caused an oil spill as far as Peru.

Several schools have canceled classes in coastal areas of the Carolinas and Virginia and authorities are urging drivers to stay off potentially icy roads amid forecasts of snow, sleet and freezing rain.

The governors of North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia declared states of emergency ahead of the latest winter storm system sweeping into the region Thursday and a round snow expected to follow Friday night into Saturday. The winter blast could ice over a large swath of eastern North Carolina and the northeastern corner of South Carolina, while dumping snow around Norfolk, Virginia, the National Weather Service said.

Tonga's volcanic eruption felt like an "atomic bomb" that shook "the whole island", an aid worker told AFP on Friday, as the Pacific nation raced to address a drinking water shortage.