Unseasonably stormy weather moved eastwards across northern Italy as intense rain and 100km/h (62mph) winds battered the region.

In some places, tennis ball-sized hailstones injured people, damaged cars and uprooted trees.

A 16-year-old girl was killed when a tree fell on the tent she was sleeping in at a summer camp near the city of Brescia, while a middle-aged woman died after also being hit by a falling tree in Lissone, north of Milan.

The mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, said: “I have never seen anything like this…

The bodies of two children missing for three days after devastating floods in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia have been found by police.

The children were traveling in a car with three others when the vehicle became submerged over the weekend.

Authorities have also recovered the body of a 52-year-old man, while another youth remains missing.

The flooding was caused by the heaviest torrential rains to hit the Atlantic Canada region in 50 years.

Hundreds had been evacuated at one point and several highways, local roads and properties have been damaged.

The children were travelling in one car, while the man and the missing youth were travelling in another when both became submerged in flood waters.

They were all from the town of West Hants, north of Halifax, home to about 15,000 residents.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they recovered the bodies of one of the missing children on Tuesday morning, around 10:45 local time (14:45 BST).

The remains of the second child were found on Monday. Police did not confirm the ages of the children or the names of those dead and missing.

Three people survived after escaping from the car carrying the children, while two people escaped from the second car, which was carrying the man and the missing youth.

More than 40 people have died in Algeria, Italy and Greece and thousands have been evacuated as Mediterranean wildfires threaten villages and holiday resorts.

The entire island of Rhodes has been put into a state of emergency, as fires also rage on Corfu and Evia.

The current long heatwave shows no let-up – temperatures are expected to rise above 44C (111F) in parts of Greece.

High winds and tinder-dry vegetation mean firefighters are struggling in many areas to douse the flames and create firebreaks.

The heaviest death toll so far is in Algeria, where the 34 victims included 10 soldiers surrounded by flames during an evacuation in the coastal province of Bejaia, east of Algiers. Bejaia is the worst-hit area, accounting for 23 of the deaths, local media report.

Algerian authorities said 80% of the blazes had been put out since Sunday, but a massive firefighting effort continues, involving about 8,000 personnel, hundreds of fire engines and some aircraft.

Fires have also raged in neighbouring Tunisia, where 300 people had to be evacuated from the coastal village of Melloula.

Water disturbances experienced in Tabarka last week during an unprecedented heatwave made things even harder. “We couldn’t douse flames hours after the wooden building was devastated,” Mr Selmi said.

“I was employing 22 people,” he adds. “I don’t know how to get off this hook.”

The ravaged restaurant overlooks the sea. But the Mediterranean is barely seen, as the haze is still blanketing the area.

In Greece, the Civil Protection Ministry warned of an “extreme danger” of fire in six of the country’s 13 regions on Wednesday.

A team of climate scientists – the World Weather Attribution group – said this month’s intense heatwave in Southern Europe, North America and China would have been virtually impossible without human-induced climate change.

Two pilots died on the island of Evia, just north of Athens, when their Canadair firefighting plane crashed into a ravine. Elsewhere on the island a man’s charred body was found in a remote rural shack.

Holiday firms Jet2 and Tui have cancelled departures for Rhodes for the coming days.

Tourism accounts for one in five jobs in Greece, and the industry is vital for Rhodes and many other islands. The UK Foreign Office has not advised against travel to the affected parts of Greece, but has urged tourists to check with tour operators for updates.

Thousands of people have also been evacuated on Evia and Corfu, while Crete – another major holiday destination – is on high alert.

A fire on a cargo ship carrying almost 3,000 cars off the coast of the Dutch island of Ameland has left one sailor dead and 22 others hurt.

A major salvage operation is in full swing in an area of the North Sea designated a World Heritage site.

Twenty-two crew members were taken to hospital with breathing problems, burns and other injuries.

A Dutch coastguard spokesman said the fire was probably caused by one of 25 electric vehicles on board the ship.

Photos shared by the coastguard showed the Panamanian-flagged Freemantle Highway engulfed in smoke with flames licking the deck.

The coastguard told Dutch news agency ANP the fire could continue for days. The sides of the ship were being doused with water to cool it down, but rescue boats avoided pouring too much water on board because of the risk of sinking.

The cargo ship left the port of Bremerhaven in northern Germany at around 15:00 local time on Tuesday on course for Port Said in Egypt.

It ran into trouble overnight, about 27km (17 miles) north of the Ameland in the Wadden Sea, on the edge of the North Sea.

Members of the crew initially tried to douse the flames themselves but were overwhelmed and were eventually forced to evacuate.

The captain of the Ameland lifeboat, Willard Molenaar, told public broadcaster NOS that seven people had leapt 30m into the sea: “One by one they jumped and we had to fish them out of the water. They were really desperate so they had to jump.”

An electric vehicle is believed to have been the source of the fire

A tugboat was used to pull the cargo ship out of major shipping routes to and from Germany.

The freighter, which is operated by K-Line but owned by a subsidiary of the Japanese shipbuilding firm Imabari Shipbuilding, is currently stationary but the Dutch coastguard said it may be listing.

The immediate challenge for emergency crews at the scene is to extinguish the fire and keep the cargo ship afloat.

Salvage boats are circling, in preparation for all possible scenarios.

The North Sea foundation environmental group said the Wadden Sea had become increasingly vulnerable because of bigger ships using an extremely busy shipping route.

Four years ago 270 shipping containers, some containing chemicals, fell off another Panamanian-registered cargo ship in a storm and some of the containers washed up on Dutch beaches.

But this latest incident has also raised issues surrounding the risks of transporting electric vehicles.

Last year a cargo ship carrying 4,000 luxury cars caught fire and sank off the Azores. Lithium-ion batteries in the cars caught fire and firefighters needed specialist equipment to put out the fire.

The Boiling Lake is a flooded fumarole, which is filled with bubbling grayish-blue water that is usually enveloped in a cloud of vapor, located in the Morne Trois Pitons National Park on the island of the Commonwealth of Dominica.

As the national park is under protection of UNESCO, as it is a World Heritage Site, this interesting lake too is part of that list. The main feature of the Boiling Lake is thanks to the vicinity of a volcano which emits steam and gases escaping from molten lava below.

Approximately 60 meters (197 feet) in width and length, and around 59 meters (194 feet) deep, the first person to ever see this majestic site is Edmund Watt and Henry Alfred Alford Nicholls in 1870, who were working at that time on the island.

Soon after, in 1875, the government botanist Henry Prestoe, together with Nicholls was commissioned to investigate this natural phenomenon.

The water in the lake is fluctuating all the time, however, it always maintains some level which is regular. For instance, with an phreatic eruption lowered the lake level by some 10 meters (33 feet) between December 2004 and April 2005, nonetheless, the lake level rose again, refilling the lake in just one day.

The temperature is different around the lake, where average temperature at the edges is around 82 degrees Celsius (180 degrees Fahrenheit), and in the center the lake is actively boiling is at its highest.

Still, the fast draining and refilling implies that it is suspended above the local water table, which in other words is a continuous flux of steam or gas generated by an underlying magmatic intrusion that drives the water up into the lake.

When there is a disturbance in the supply of gas, then it can cause the lake to drain through the porous connection that normally allows steam to rise and heat the lake.

The Boiling Lake is definitely one of the most striking places on the island, with its cliff-top edges that rise some 30 meters (100 feet) above its shore, with the high rock walls that surround it and create the amazing basin which is fed most of the time by the yearly rainfall, as well as the other two small streams that drain into the area.

There is a trail that leads to the lake, however, one should be really cautious when hiking towards the lake, since once fallen off the wall, then the pot will consume and boil everything.