Australia's military launched the seaborne evacuation of hundreds of people trapped in a southeastern town Friday, as the country braced for yet more catastrophic bushfire conditions.

A navy landing craft from HMAS Choules docked in the town of Mallacoota, where residents who had been stuck on the foreshore since New Year's Eve clambered aboard with family, pets and a few belongings. 

Car giant Volkswagen said Thursday it would open talks on a possible settlement in a mass lawsuit brought by hundreds of thousands of German diesel car owners over emissions cheating.

Australia ordered residents and tourists out of the path of raging bushfires Thursday as the country braced for a weekend heatwave expected to fan the deadly inferno.

Catastrophic blazes ripped through the country's south-east on New Year's Eve, killing at least eight people and stranding holidaymakers.

Thai retailers kicked off 2020 with a ban on single-use plastic bags, joining the battle against throwaway carriers in the Southeast Asian nation where citizens go through an average of eight every day. 

The move, taken on Wednesday by several major mall operators and the ubiquitous 7/11 convenience stores, will see customers instead paying a small fee for a reusable bag made of a cloth-like fabric. 

Flames from flying New Year's Eve lanterns might have sparked a blaze that killed dozens of monkeys at a zoo in northwestern Germany, management and security services said Wednesday.

The blaze tore through the monkey enclosure shortly before midnight, killing at least 30 animals, including orangutans, chimpanzees and marmosets, police said.

Thousands of holidaymakers and locals were forced to flee to beaches in fire-ravaged southeast Australia Tuesday, as blazes ripped through popular tourist areas leaving no escape by land.

This year was the hottest ever registered in Russia, the country's weather chief said on Monday, as climate change pushes global temperatures to record highs.

"This year in Russia was the hottest for the entire period of instrumental observations," the head of the Gidromedtsentr weather service, Roman Vilfand, told Russian news agencies.

Around 100,000 people were urged to flee five Melbourne suburbs on Monday evening as Australia's spiralling bushfire crisis killed a volunteer firefighter battling a separate blaze in the countryside.

Tropical Cyclone Sarai was moving slowly away from Fiji on Sunday, leaving two people dead and more than 2,500 needing emergency shelter.

The number of deaths from a powerful storm that hit the Philippines on Christmas has climbed to 41, authorities said Sunday, with tens of thousands still in evacuation centers.