Torrential rains lashing the Canadian Atlantic province of Nova Scotia threatened to overwhelm a dam on Saturday and caused major damage in parts of Halifax, the largest city.

The province’s emergency office said a dam near the St. Croix River system could breach and told local residents to evacuate immediately. The alert covers a large part of central Nova Scotia.

“Dam overflow – Evacuation order for the St. Croix river system area. Dam at risk of breaching,” the province’s emergency management office said in a message sent to cellphones.

Further south, authorities in Halifax said there had been significant damage to roads and infrastructure and reported abandoned cars on highways.

“It has been a terrible night for our community,” Mayor Mike Savage wrote on Twitter.

Federal Emergencies Management Minister Bill Blair tweeted that the government was ready to help if needed.

Environment Canada said some parts of the province had received more than 15 cm (six inches) of rain.

The flooding was the latest weather-related calamity to pound Canada this year. Wildfires across much of the country have already burned a record number of hectares, sending clouds of smoke south into the United States.

Stunning drone footage has revealed details of the Batagaika crater, a one kilometre long gash in Russia’s Far East that forms the world’s biggest permafrost crater.

In the video two explorers clamber across uneven terrain at the base of the depression, marked by irregular surfaces and small hummocks, which began to form after the surrounding forest was cleared in the 1960s and the permafrost underground began to melt, causing the land to sink.

“We locals call it ‘the cave-in,'” local resident and crater explorer Erel Struchkov told Reuters as he stood on the crater’s rim. “It developed in the 1970s, first as a ravine. Then by thawing in the heat of sunny days, it started to expand.”

Scientists say Russia is warming at least 2.5 times faster than the rest of the world, melting the long-frozen tundra that covers about 65% of the country’s landmass and releasing greenhouse gases stored in the thawed soil.

And while it may attract tourists, the slump’s expansion is “a sign of danger,” said Nikita Tananayev, lead researcher at the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk.

“In future, with increasing temperatures and with higher anthropogenic pressure, we will see more and more of those mega-slumps forming, until all the permafrost is gone,” Tananayev told Reuters.

Thawing permafrost has already threatened cities and towns across northern and northeastern Russia, buckling roadways, splitting apart houses, and disrupting pipelines. Vast wildfires, which have become more intense in recent seasons, exacerbate the problem.

Locals in Sakha have taken note of the crater’s rapid growth.

“(Two years ago the edge) was about 20-30 metres away from this path. And now, apparently, it is much closer,” Struchkov said.

India’s monsoon-rain-swollen Yamuna river, which flooded parts of Delhi last week, has become so engorged that its waters were lapping Wednesday at the walls of India’s most iconic monument and tourist attraction, the Taj Mahal.

It’s the first time in almost half a century that the Yamuna’s waters in Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, have touched the outer walls of the 17th-century white marble monument. The last time this happened was in 1978.

Photos and videos shared by people on social media showed a garden located behind the Taj Mahal submerged, and water touching the red stone outer walls of majestic Taj Mahal compound.

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which maintains the UNESCO World Heritage site, said the monument was not under threat.

“It is unlikely that the floodwater will enter the monument. The ingenious design of the structure rules out such threats. Water cannot enter the main mausoleum even during high floods,” Raj Kumar Patel, Superintendent Archaeologist at the ASI, was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

It is rare for the Yamuna – a key tributary of the mighty river Ganges, which runs through the states of Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh – to rise so high as to pose a threat. While the monsoon rains that lash India every year from June through September do bring floods regularly, record rainfall this season had brought unusual, deadly flooding across a wide swathe of northern India.

Parts of the capital Delhi were flooded last week as Yamuna overflowed, grinding life in the city of some 30 million people to a halt. Other Himalayan states such as Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab also saw large-scale devastation due to landslides and house collapses – resulting in almost 100 deaths.

Police, government, and rescue workers have evacuated people from 50 villages and 20 urban neighborhoods in low-lying areas of Agra and surrounding areas as the water creeps into homes.

Around a 100 villages were without electricity and drinking water Wednesday, according to the Times of India.

Extreme weather events like this year’s monsoon rains are increasing in frequency and intensity due to climate change, experts have said, putting millions in the country of 1.42 billion at risk.

Air pollution, which is a significant contributor to the warming climate, is also threatening the Taj Mahal.

The city has consistently remained near the top of global charts ranking the world’s most polluted cities. In 2018, India’s toxic air turned the white marble of the monument hues of brown and green.

Around 2,000 penguins have appeared dead on the coast of eastern Uruguay in the last 10 days, and the cause, which does not appear to be avian influenza, remains a mystery, authorities said.

The Magellanic penguins, mostly juveniles, died in the Atlantic Ocean and were carried by currents to Uruguayan shores, said Carmen Leizagoyen, head of the Environment Ministry’s department of fauna.

 “This is mortality in the water. Ninety percent are young specimens that arrive without fat reserves and with empty stomachs,” she said, and stressed that all samples taken have tested negative for avian influenza.

Magellanic penguins nest in southern Argentina. In the southern hemisphere winter, they migrate north in search of food and warmer waters, even reaching the coast of the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo.

“It is normal for some percentage to die, but not these numbers,” Leizagoyen said, recalling that a similar die-off occurred last year in Brazil, for undetermined reasons.

Hector Caymaris, director of the Laguna de Rocha protected area, said that he counted more than 500 dead penguins along six miles (10 kilometers) of Atlantic coast.

Environmental advocates attribute the increase in Magellanic penguin deaths to overfishing and illegal fishing.

A subtropical cyclone in the Atlantic, which hit southeastern Brazil in mid-July, probably caused the weakest animals to die from the inclement weather, he added.

In addition to penguins, Tesore said he has recently found dead petrels, albatrosses, seagulls, sea turtles and sea lions on the beaches of Maldonado, a department east of the capital Montevideo.

Wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes have forced hundreds of tourists to flee their hotels amid scorching temperatures.

Authorities evacuated four locations close to the areas of Kiotari and Lardos in the southeastern part of the island as fire crews battled multiple blazes.

Local media said the flames had reached three hotels, forcing residents to evacuate.

Fire Service spokesman Yannis Artopios said more than 200 firefighters and 40 fire engines had been deployed to control the fires, assisted by three planes and five helicopters.

A drone attack on an ammunition depot in Crimea has led to civilian evacuations and disrupted transport, Russian authorities have said.

Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of occupied Crimea, said Ukraine was behind the attack, without providing evidence.

Mr Aksyonov said local residents living within five kilometres of the blast were being evacuated.

Rail services across the Kerch bridge have also reportedly been halted.

Earlier on Saturday, Russian authorities stopped traffic on the bridge, but then swiftly reopened it to cars.

A later update from the Moscow-installed government said road traffic was again halted until further notice.