Officials in Japan have urged men to buck local gender stereotypes and carry parasols to protect themselves from the sun in the midst of a deadly national heatwave.

Firefighters aided by calmer winds were gaining control  on Thursday of a wildfire near Spain's famous Estrecho natural park in the southwest of the country, an official said.

Monsoon rains have pummelled the Mekong region in recent days with Myanmar bearing the brunt of flooding that has forced 150,000 to flee and threatens to destroy levees shielding thousands of homes.

Iraqi farmer Sayyed Sattar knows he'll soon have to let some of his buffalo go as he surveys the herd bathing in a dwindling pond close to the holy city of Najaf.

A powerful typhoon hurtled towards Japan on Saturday, prompting local authorities to issue early evacuation orders, with western areas recently devastated by floods and landslides in the storm's crosshairs.

Heat waves are setting all-time temperature records across the globe, again. Europe suffered its deadliest fire in more than a century, and one of nearly 90 large fires in the U.S. West burned dozens of homes and forced the evacuation of at least 37,000 people near Redding, California. Flood-inducing downpours have pounded the U.S. East this week.

Intense heatwaves like the one which fuelled Greece's deadly wildfires are set to become increasingly frequent around the world due to climate change, experts warn.

A raging wildfire raced into a town in northern California early Friday, killing one person and sending people fleeing, authorities said.

The so-called Carr fire outside Redding swept across a river late Thursday and is only six percent contained.

A powerful typhoon is on track to batter parts of western Japan that were hit earlier this month by devastating flooding and landslides, Japanese officials warned on Friday.

Shipping, pollution and overfishing have reduced areas of "wilderness" to just 13 percent of the world's oceans, a study showed Friday, warning untouched marine habitats could completely vanish within half a century.