The recent stranding of more than 100 dolphins on Cape Cod, the largest such event involving dolphins in U.S. history, is partly due to the peninsula's geography, with its gently sloping sand flats, tidal fluctuations and proximity to productive feeding grounds, experts said.

The elements, along with the hook-like shape of the cape itself, make Cape Cod a global hotspot for dolphin mass strandings.

With the Paris Olympics less than two weeks away, a question hangs over the Games: Will the Seine River be clean enough for athletes to swim in?

Triathlon and marathon swimming are scheduled to take place in the Seine, where it has been illegal to swim for more than a century. Despite the city's efforts to clean up the long-polluted river, the water has tested unsafe for humans in recent weeks, and cleaner on other days. The Games run from July 26-Aug. 11.

Storms spawning multiple tornado reports blew through Iowa, Illinois — including Chicago — and Indiana on Monday, downing trees and power poles and cutting power to more than 460,000 customers and businesses. A woman in Indiana died after a tree fell onto a home, authorities said.

The 44-year-old woman died Monday night in Cedar Lake, Indiana, the Lake County Coroner's office said.

Heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan have killed at least 40 people and injured nearly 350 others, Taliban officials said Tuesday. Separately, at least 17 died when a bus overturned on a main highway, official media said.

Sharafat Zaman Amar, a spokesperson for the Public Health Ministry, confirmed that 40 people had died in Monday's storm and that 347 injured people had been brought for treatment to the regional hospital in Nangarhar from Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, and nearby districts.

After Greece's warmest winter and earliest heatwave on record, authorities are sounding the alarm over the risk of dire water shortages in the heat of the Mediterranean summer.

"Would you like some water? Turn off the tap!" one public service announcement in Athens implores; another daily spot urges the capital's residents to not fill their bath all the way to the top.

Spade-toothed whales are the world's rarest, with no live sightings ever recorded. No one knows how many there are, what they eat, or even where they live in the vast expanse of the southern Pacific Ocean. However, scientists in New Zealand may have finally caught a break.

The country's conservation agency said Monday a creature that washed up on a South Island beach this month is believed to be a spade-toothed whale. The five-meter-long creature, a type of beaked whale, was identified after it washed ashore on an Otago beach from its color patterns and the shape of its skull, beak and teeth.

Six firefighters have died battling a bushfire in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa and another two are in a critical condition, emergency services said Monday.

Authorities said they suspect that Sunday's fire may have been started by poachers trying to trap animals to kill.

Rescuers in Nepal have recovered a total of 11 bodies from the river that two buses full of people were swept into by a landslide, officials said Monday.

Rescuers found the bodies in different spots along the riverbanks as they searched for the missing buses and some 50 people who were on board.

Despite a record 46-day streak of triple digit feels-like temperatures, Miami's unprecedented brutal summer last year wasn't that deadly, contrasting with the rest of the nation where federal records show heat fatalities nationally spiked to a 45-year high.

One of the reasons is that Miami takes heat seriously, not just reacting when temperatures soar, but planning months in advance. Officials talk to vulnerable people, install air conditioning units early and essentially figure out what to do when things get nasty and practice at it. The Miami-Dade government and the local National Weather Service office team up to treat heat like something more scary, but often less deadly.

Heavy rains associated with Hurricane Beryl and the earlier Tropical Storm Alberto have led at least 200 crocodiles to enter urban areas in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, across from Texas, state and federal authorities said this week.

So far, authorities say they have captured and relocated around 200 of the big reptiles since Alberto pelted the region with rain in June. Beryl brushed the same area before making landfall in south Texas earlier this week.