The Seine continued to rise Thursday, flooding streets and putting museums on an emergency footing as record rainfall pushed rivers over their banks across northeastern France.

For some residents of drought-stricken Cape Town, the prospect of the taps running dry is almost too much to bear.

A powerful 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Alaska early Tuesday, sparking tsunami warnings along the Pacific coasts of the U.S. and Canada that were later called off.

A strong quake rattled Indonesia Tuesday, sparking panic in the capital Jakarta and ripping roads apart in the countryside.

A rare heavy blanket of snow in Tokyo on Tuesday left thousands of travellers stranded and scores injured, as frozen conditions snarled public transport in the Japanese capital.

Japan's weather agency recorded as much as 23 centimetres (9.2 inches) of snow in some parts of Tokyo, the biggest snowfall since February 2014.

The spill from a sunken Iranian tanker off China's east coast has more than trebled in size, just over a week after the ship sank in a ball of flames.

For years China was the world's top destination for recyclable trash, but a ban on certain imports has left nations scrambling to find new dumping grounds for growing piles of garbage.

Dutch insurers said Friday that fierce storms that whipped across The Netherlands caused 90 million euros ($111 million) in devastation, as the country's train service slowly creaked back into gear.

Severe winter gales battered the Netherlands Thursday forcing Amsterdam airport to cancel all flights, bringing Dutch trains to a halt and toppling trucks as winds reached 140 kilometres (86 miles) an hour. 

France on Wednesday scrapped controversial plans for a new west coast airport, vowing to evict environmental activists who have occupied the huge site for almost a decade.