British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday called the wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest "an international crisis", ahead of a G7 summit that will hammer out a response to the issue.

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said Friday he is considering deploying the army to help combat fires raging in the Amazon rainforest, as a growing global outcry over the blazes threatens to torpedo a huge trade deal. 

G7 leaders gathering in France this weekend plan to hammer out "concrete measures" in response to the wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest, putting them on a collision course with Brazil's rightwing leader.

Rain and flash floods have killed 54 people in Sudan since the start of July and affected nearly 200,000, the United Nations said Friday.

French President Emmanuel Macron believes his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro lied to him on Brazil's stance on climate change, and France will now block a trade deal between the EU and South American nations.

The fires raging in the Amazon rainforest amount to an "acute emergency" and Chancellor Angela Merkel believes it should be discussed by world leaders when they meet for this weekend's G7 summit, her spokesman said Friday.

Many high-profile figures seeking to denounce the fires in the Amazon -- from Madonna and Cristiano Ronaldo to Leonardo DiCaprio and Emmanuel Macron -- have unwittingly ended up misleading millions on social media, either sharing photographs of the region that are years old or images taken in other parts of the world.

Official figures show nearly 73,000 forest fires were recorded in Brazil in the first eight months of the year, the highest number for any year since 2013. Most were in the Amazon.

"A few" people died and 12 were injured Thursday during a sudden thunderstorm that saw lightning strike a metal cross in the Tatra mountains in southern Poland, rescuers said. 

British supermarkets are starting to go "nude."

South Korea said Tuesday it would issue fines and file criminal complaints against Volkswagen and and its luxury arm, Porsche, for installing "illicit devices" that helped multiple diesel vehicles cheat pollution standards.