Just what a vulnerable world economy didn't need — a conflict that accelerates inflation, rattles markets and portends trouble for everyone from European consumers to indebted Chinese developers and families in Africa that face soaring food prices.

Russia's attack on Ukraine and retaliatory sanctions from the West may not portend another global recession. The two countries together account for less than 2% of the world's gross domestic product. And many regional economies remain in solid shape, having rebounded swiftly from the pandemic recession.

With California entering the third year of severe drought, federal officials said Wednesday they won't deliver any water to farmers in the state's major agricultural region — a decision that will force many to plant fewer crops in the fertile soil that yields the bulk of the nation's fruits, nuts and vegetables.

"It's devastating to the agricultural economy and to those people that rely on it," said Ernest Conant, regional director for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. "But unfortunately we can't make it rain."

In the coal fields of eastern Montana, climate change is forcing a stark choice: halt mining that helped build everything from schools to senior centers or risk astronomical future damage as fossil fuel emissions warm the planet and increase disasters, crop losses and premature deaths.

One of the largest mines in this arid region straddling the Wyoming border is Spring Creek -- a gaping hole among sagebrush hills where house-sized mechanical shovels dig up millions of tons of coal annually, much of it shipped overseas and burned in Asian power plants.

A warming planet and changes to land use patterns mean more wildfires will scorch large parts of the globe in coming decades, causing spikes in unhealthy smoke pollution and other problems that governments are ill prepared to confront, according to a U.N. report.

The Western U.S., northern Siberia, central India, and eastern Australia already are seeing more blazes, and the likelihood of catastrophic wildfires globally could increase by a third by 2050 and more than 50% by the turn of the century, according to the report from the United Nations Environment Program.

The Palestinian U.N. ambassador, wearing a mask saying "End Apartheid,"has accused Israel of engaging in "apartheid" in nearly a dozen ways, and Israel's ambassador accused him of regurgitating claims from the Palestinian Authority, which he said "promotes hate, incitement, violence and terror."

The exchange at the U.N. Security Council's monthly meeting on the Middle East reflected the huge chasm between Israel and the Palestinians, and the immense challenge to ending decades of conflict with a two-state solution that would see the antagonists live side-by-side in peace, as the United Nations and many others have sought for years.

Yemen's Houthi rebels have detained another official of the long-closed U.S. Embassy there, bringing the number of local ex-U.S. Embassy staffers in the rebel group's custody to at least 11, according to accounts from Yemeni officials and others.

The Houthis, an Iran-backed group that controls the capital, Sanaa, and much of Yemen's north, took into custody a former press officer from the U.S. Embassy last week, according to a rights lawyer in Sanaa, Abdel-Majeed Sabra, and a family member of a detainee. The family member spoke on condition of anonymity because of the fear of reprisals.

The head of the U.N. food agency has warned that 13 million Yemenis are headed for starvation due to a protracted civil conflict and a lack of funding for humanitarian aid.

In an interview with The Associated Press, David Beasley said that Yemen was "in a very bad situation" with more than 40 percent of the population already relying on food supplies from the World Food Program.

As Russian troops attacked Ukraine, world leaders reacted Thursday with outrage — one called it "an unjustified barbarian act" — and vowed to both tighten sanctions and hold the Kremlin accountable.

The turmoil from the beginning of a long-feared act of aggression rippled from Europe to Asia. Stock markets plunged, oil prices surged, and European aviation officials warned of a high risk to civilian aircraft over Ukraine, reminding air operators that "this is now an active conflict zone."

Britain promised to hit Russia with "powerful" sanctions over its military confrontation with Ukraine. But the slim sheaf of measures announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson has disappointed allies and critics alike.

The U.K. has slapped asset freezes and travel bans on three wealthy Russians and sanctioned five Russian banks in response to President Vladimir Putin's decision to recognize two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine and to authorize sending in what he called "peacekeeping" troops.

Álvaro Molina has had his run-ins with the burly bunch of neighbors with disreputable contacts who showed up about a decade ago along the river in front of his house in Colombia's Antioquia province. But he's learned to live with them and says he is worried about a government plan he fears could harm them.

People around Puerto Triunfo have grown accustomed to the herd of hippopotamuses descended from a few that were imported illegally from Africa in the 1980s by flamboyant drug lord Pablo Escobar, whose former ranch is nearby.