The smell of fuel wafts from storage tanks to Dovi Sonny's apartment -- a long-time irritant, and now a major worry after Hezbollah revealed that the facility in northern Israel was in its sights.

Sonny, 66, has no idea what would happen should a rocket hit one of the towering circular containers about 100 meters (yards) from his building in Haifa.

Tropical Storm Ernesto battered the northeast Caribbean on Tuesday as it took aim at Puerto Rico, where officials shuttered schools and government agencies.

The storm was located about 300 miles (480 kilometers) east-southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Tuesday morning. It had maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 kph) and was moving west at 18 mph (30 kph).

Firefighters in Greece battled scattered fires as Tuesday broke, hoping to contain the remains of the major wildfire that burned into the northern suburbs of Athens, triggering evacuations and leaving at least one person dead.

With strong winds that had fanned the flames on Sunday and Monday dying down overnight, the fire department said the fire no longer had any active, advancing fronts and firefighters were concentrating their efforts on extinguishing the flames in hundreds of slow-burning areas.

A slow-moving storm has been dumping intense rains on northern Japan, swelling rivers, sending residents to shelters and disrupting traffic during a Japanese Buddhist holiday week.

The storm was once Typhoon Maria but has weakened, with winds now blowing up to 72 kph (45 mph). It made landfall near Ofunato City in Iwate prefecture Monday morning and was expected to cut across the Tohoku region as it moved northwest at 20 kph (12 mph), according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

A major forest fire was raging out of control on the northern fringes of the Greek capital Monday, triggering numerous evacuation orders for Athens suburbs and outlying areas as strong winds hampered the efforts of hundreds of firefighters and dozens of water-dropping planes.

The blaze that began Sunday afternoon was racing through pine forests left tinder-dry by repeated heat waves this summer. June and July of this year were the hottest months ever recorded in Greece, which also recorded its warmest winter ever.

Federal forecasters are still predicting a highly active Atlantic hurricane season thanks to near-record sea surface temperatures and the possibility of La Nina, officials said Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's updated hurricane outlook said atmospheric and oceanic conditions have set the stage for an extremely active hurricane season that could rank among the busiest on record.

Earth's string of 13 straight months with a new average heat record came to an end this past July as the natural El Nino climate pattern ebbed, the European climate agency Copernicus announced Wednesday.

But July 2024 's average heat just missed surpassing the July of a year ago, and scientists said the end of the record-breaking streak changes nothing about the threat posed by climate change.

A Yemeni official said Wednesday that 30 people have been killed and hundreds displaced in flooding in the southern city of Hodeidah following several days of heavy rains.

Hodeidah Gov. Mugammad Qahim told Houthi rebel-controlled Masirah TV that the floods displaced people from 500 homes. Five people were missing, he said.

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest slowed by nearly half compared to the year before, according to government satellite data released Wednesday. It's the largest reduction since 2016, when officials began using the current method of measurement.

In the past 12 months, the Amazon rainforest lost 4,300 square kilometers (1,700 square miles), an area roughly the size of Rhode Island. That's a nearly 46% decrease compared to the previous period. Brazil's deforestation surveillance year runs from August 1 to July 30.

A fast-moving wildfire that swept into a Southern California hillside community this week destroyed five homes and damaged three others, authorities said Tuesday.

The flames erupted Monday afternoon and chased residents from the neighborhood in San Bernardino, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) east of Los Angeles,