A strong quake rattled Indonesia Tuesday, sparking panic in the capital Jakarta and ripping roads apart in the countryside.

A rare heavy blanket of snow in Tokyo on Tuesday left thousands of travellers stranded and scores injured, as frozen conditions snarled public transport in the Japanese capital.

Japan's weather agency recorded as much as 23 centimetres (9.2 inches) of snow in some parts of Tokyo, the biggest snowfall since February 2014.

The spill from a sunken Iranian tanker off China's east coast has more than trebled in size, just over a week after the ship sank in a ball of flames.

For years China was the world's top destination for recyclable trash, but a ban on certain imports has left nations scrambling to find new dumping grounds for growing piles of garbage.

Dutch insurers said Friday that fierce storms that whipped across The Netherlands caused 90 million euros ($111 million) in devastation, as the country's train service slowly creaked back into gear.

Severe winter gales battered the Netherlands Thursday forcing Amsterdam airport to cancel all flights, bringing Dutch trains to a halt and toppling trucks as winds reached 140 kilometres (86 miles) an hour. 

France on Wednesday scrapped controversial plans for a new west coast airport, vowing to evict environmental activists who have occupied the huge site for almost a decade.

Australia is calling on the world's top scientific minds to help save the Great Barrier Reef, offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund research into protecting the world's largest living structure.

Chinese ships scrambled Monday to clean up a massive and expanding oil spill after an Iranian tanker sank off China, raising fears of devastating damage to marine life.

Wind power generated 43.4 percent of electricity consumed in Denmark last year, a new record for the Nordic nation which aims to rely on renewables for half of its energy needs by 2030, authorities said Thursday.