A petition to cancel Sydney's famous New Year's Eve fireworks and use the money to fight bush fires ringing the city has topped 260,000 signatures, but officials say the show will go on.
Australian authorities said on Friday that they are focused on protecting water plants, pumping stations, pipes and other infrastructure from intense bushfires surrounding Sydney, the country's largest city. Firefighters battling the blazes for weeks received a reprieve of slightly cooler, damper conditions over Christmas, but the respite is not expected to last long.
Australian authorities declared a seven-day state of emergency in New South Wales state on Thursday as a record heatwave fanned unprecedented bushfires raging across the region.
Thousands of firefighters were fortifying containment lines on Monday as temperatures were forecast to soar, increasing the danger of a fresh wave of bushfires across Australia's east coast. More than 100 fires remain ablaze in the region, and authorities warned conditions would worsen on Tuesday, when temperatures were predicted to top 40 degrees Celsius.
American actor Leonardo DiCaprio denied a claim by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro that he had helped fund groups allegedly linked to fires in the Amazon rain forest.
The fire danger was elevated across wider swathes of southern Australia on Thursday, with residents warned to avoid at-risk areas as smoke from bushfires choked Sydney and other major cities. Devastating fires along the country's east coast have claimed six lives and destroyed more than 500 homes since mid-October, with climate change and unseasonably hot, dry conditions fuelling the unprecedented blazes.
More than 100 schools in Australia's southeast were closed on Wednesday and officials warned people in high-risk zones to be ready to evacuate as forecast high temperatures risked opening up a new front in raging bushfires.
Sydney was shrouded in dangerous haze on Tuesday as smoke from bushfire blazing along Australia's eastern board sent contamination levels soaring in the country's biggest city.
Wildfires raging in Bolivia's forests and grasslands since May have destroyed 1.7 million hectares, officials said on Wednesday, amid a US$11 million effort by the government to contain them.