Wildfires raged through seaside resorts near the Greek capital, torching homes, cars and forests and killing at least 50 people, authorities said Tuesday. Twenty-six of the dead were believed to be groups of families or friends who were found huddled together, some of them hugging.

Rescue crews were searching the charred remains of homes and cars in the deadliest of the fires, the one in the Rafina area northeast of Athens, and there were fears the death toll could rise. More than 170 people were treated in hospitals for injuries including burns.

The country’s prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, declared three days of national mourning for those killed in the deadliest fire season to hit Greece in more than a decade.

With the flames whipped up by gale-force winds that frequently changed direction, many tourists and residents fled toward the coastline. Some swam out to sea, braving rough water and strong currents to escape the ferocious flames and choking smoke. A flotilla of boats, including some from the coast guard, evacuated more than 700 people by sea from threatened beaches overnight, authorities said.

“It happened very fast. The fire was in the distance, then sparks from the fire reached us. Then the fire was all around us,” said resident Nikos Stavrinidis, who had gone with his wife to fix up his summer home for a visit by his daughter.

The young soccer teammates and their coach who were rescued after being trapped in a cave in northern Thailand had their heads shaved in a ceremony Tuesday as they prepared to be ordained as Buddhist novices and monks.

Eleven of the 12 boys and their coach prayed to ancient relics and offered drinks and desserts in gilded bowls to spirits at a Buddhist temple. The 12th team member who was trapped in the cave didn’t take part because he isn’t Buddhist.

The boys, whose ages range from 11 to 16, will be ordained to become Buddhist novices in a ceremony on Wednesday, while the 25-year-old coach will be ordained as a monk, said Parchon Pratsakul, the governor of Chiang Rai province.

Wednesday’s ordainment ceremony will take place at another temple on a Chiang Rai mountaintop before the group returns to reside for more than a week at the Wat Pha That Doi Wao temple near Thailand’s northern border with Myanmar. That temple is close to the group’s homes, making it easier for friends and relatives to visit.

“This temple will be where they will reside after the ordination and I hope they will find peace, strength and wisdom from practicing Buddha’s teaching,” said the temple’s acting abbot, Phra Khru Prayutjetiyanukarn.

Buddhist males in Thailand are traditionally expected to enter the monkhood, often as novices, at some point in their lives to show gratitude, often toward their parents for raising them. It’s believed that once a person is ordained they gain merit that is also extended to their parents.

“Ordinations are supposed to give us peace of mind,” said…

People often ask Japanese tidying queen Marie Kondo what containers they need to achieve her brand of organizational success. They expect her to “reveal some hitherto secret storage weapon, ” she explains in her popular book.

Instead, she advised when “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” was first published in Japanese in 2011, “You can solve your storage problems with things you already have in the house.”

But Kondo’s thinking has evolved as she’s leveraged her massive, global fan base to expand her empire. She’s now got an upcoming Netflix show, a fledgling corps of consultants working around the world to help her fans declutter their homes, and, on Tuesday, she’s launched her first product line: six-piece sets of beautiful, sturdy paper boxes for $89 a pop.

In a recent appearance in Manhattan to announce the show and merchandise line, Kondo said she thinks lovely storage options will spark the life-changing joy she wrote about in her book, which has sold more than 10 million copies in 40-plus countries. She also hopes the boxes will motivate more people to actually complete all the steps in her laborious KonMari Method of sorting, tossing and putting things away in their right and righteous locations.

The new storage sets are the shape and size of shoe boxes. (Her book had recommended using real shoe boxes for organizing.) Smaller boxes in the set are akin to iPhone boxes (another reuse hack she recommends). All are intended to be of service on shelves or in drawers (the sets are called Hikidashi, which means “drawer” in Japanese) to hold such things…

A hydroelectric dam collapsed in southeastern Laos, leaving an unknown number of people dead and hundreds missing, state media said Tuesday. Rescue efforts were underway as top government officials rushed to the site and public appeals were launched for aid.

The official Lao news agency KPL said the Xepian-Xe Nam Noy hydropower dam in Attapeu province collapsed Monday evening, releasing cascades of water that swept away houses, flooded villages and made more than 6,600 people homeless.

The dam was made by a joint venture led by South Korean companies with Thai and Lao partners, and was still under construction. KPL described the portion that collapsed as a “saddle dam,” which is an auxiliary dam used to hold water beyond what is held by the main dam.

South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency quoted an unidentified official at SK Engineering & Construction, one of the two South Korean partners in the project, as saying rain in the area was triple the usual amount, and one of five auxiliary dams had overflowed.

Many areas of Laos have recently been hit by floods from heavy seasonal rains.

KPL said the disaster “claimed several human lives” and “left hundreds of people missing,” without providing details.

Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith “suspended the planned monthly meeting of the government for August and led his Cabinet members and other senior officials to Sanamxay (district) to monitor rescue and relief efforts being made for flood victims,” KPL said.

Provincial authorities issued a call for emergency aid — clothing, food, drinking water, medicine, cash and other…