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The wildfire scorching the western U.S. state of Oregon topped 300,000 acres on Monday as news emerged that a California power company links(linked) to previous fires may be responsible for a new blaze.
Oregon's giant Bootleg Fire has triggered over 2,100 evacuations and destroyed 67 homes in nearly two weeks of explosive growth. Firefighters have contained only a quarter of its perimeter.
The Bootleg Fire is now the largest in the United States at 340,000 acres taking up an area larger than the sprawling city of Los Angeles. It's driven by a multi-year drought, gusting winds and scorching temperatures that experts have linked to climate change.
The same trends have occurred further south in California where five times as many acres have burned compared to the same point in the year last year.
One of the fires now blazing in California - the Dixie Fire - has been linked to PG&E, the giant utility company. PG&E's power lines were blamed for sparking the deadliest fire in the state's modern history - the Camp Fire of 2018.
Meanwhile, in western Canada's British Columbia, where around 300 wildfires are burning, more than 2,500 homes were under evacuation orders on Monday. (The) province has recorded 13 new fires in the past 48 hours.
The United Nations education and culture agency has removed from its list of threatened world heritage sites a nature reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The reserve in question is Salonga National Park, the largest public park in the Central African country.
In a statement issued on Monday, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee praised improvements made to the park and the stability of the populations of bonobo ape(s) and elephants in the park.
Salonga is Africa's largest protected rain forest. It's home to 40 percent of the Earth's bonobo apes, along with several other endangered species. It was created in 1970 and has been on the endangered list since 1984.
And at the Olympics in Tokyo, another athlete has tested positive Monday for COVID-19.
