Heavy rain in central Europe has caused floods which killed at least seven people, cut off towns and forced the evacuation of residents from submerged villages by helicopter, authorities and local media said Saturday. The Polish town of Bogatynia was cut off after a river overflowed its banks, covering the main bridge leading into the…

An ice island four times the size of Manhattan broke off from one of Greenland’s two main glaciers, scientists said on Friday, in the biggest such event in the Arctic in nearly 50 years. The new ice island, which broke off on Thursday, will enter a remote place called the Nares Strait, about 620 miles…

This year’s low-oxygen “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest ever, about the size of Massachusetts, and overlaps areas hit by oil from BP’s broken Macondo well, Louisiana scientists report. The area of hypoxia, or low levels of oxygen, covered 7,722 square miles (20,000 square kilometers) of the bottom of…

Sri Lanka’s central highlands and a protected marine area in Hawaii, the only habitats of several endangered plant and animal species, have been added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage sites, the U.N. body said on Saturday. Sri Lanka’s central highlands were deemed of prime importance because of the pristine forests that are home to…

Muscovites struggled to breathe on Monday and Red Square was blanketed in smoke as a record-setting heatwave that that has already ruined crops caused fires that set the area around the capital ablaze. The emergency ministry said 34 peat fires and 26 forest fires were blazing on Monday in the area surrounding Moscow, covering 59…

President Barack Obama set a new policy on Monday intended to improve coordination of uses of U.S. coastal waters ranging from recreation to commercial fishing to offshore drilling. As his administration contends with the BP Plc oil spill, Obama was to sign an executive order creating a single National Ocean Council to make sense of…

Soaring temperatures across large swathes of Russia have destroyed nearly 10 million hectares of crops and prompted a state of emergency to be declared in 17 regions. On Friday the state-run Moscow region weather bureau said it expected the heatwave, which has gripped the country since late June and is estimated to have already cost…

Hurricane Alex strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico early on Wednesday and was expected to make landfall later in the day but skirt Mexican oil rigs and U.S. oil fields, alleviating concerns in crude markets. The first named storm of the Atlantic season became a Category 1 hurricane late Tuesday night as it slowly moved…

A 20-pound (9-kg) Asian carp was fished out of a waterway close to the Great Lakes and beyond twin electric barriers designed to keep them out, authorities said on Wednesday. It was the first time the voracious invader has been found beyond the electric barriers in the waterways that connect Lake Michigan, one of the…

Hurricane Celia, the first hurricane of the 2010 Pacific season, formed in the eastern Pacific Ocean near Mexico on Sunday but was headed away from land, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. A Category 1 hurricane with winds up to 80 mph, Celia was 370 miles south of the tourist resort of Acapulco and was…