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.

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.

Cyclone Emnati crashed into the southeastern coast of Madagascar in the early hours of Wednesday, ripping roofs off houses and raising fears of flooding and food shortages in a region still recovering from the destruction inflicted by another tropical storm just weeks ago.

More than 30,000 people were moved to safe accommodation before Emnati arrived and Madagascar's National Office for Risk and Disaster Management estimates more than 250,000 people could be impacted by the latest cyclone.

The International Energy Agency said Wednesday that emissions of planet-warming methane from oil, gas and coal production are significantly higher than governments claim.

The Paris-based agency said its analysis shows emissions are 70% higher than the official figure provided by governments worldwide. If all leaks were plugged, the methane captured would be enough to supply all of Europe's power sector, it said.

Environmental campaigners say Romania has failed to tackle illegal logging and nature destruction in areas protected by European Union law, two years after Brussels warned the country to put an end to illicit deforestation.

A new report authored by nongovernmental groups Agent Green, EuroNatur, and ClientEarth, obtained by The Associated Press before its official release, alleges that widespread destruction in Natura 2000 sites — areas of special value that are meant to be protected by EU law — has in some areas intensified since the EU Commission issued warnings in February 2020.

Climate activists on Wednesday blocked roads leading to Germany's three biggest airports, gluing themselves to the ground before police arrived.

Members of the group Uprising of the Last Generation said they wanted to disrupt cargo and passenger traffic at the airports in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin.

The United States and Egypt on Monday launched a working group to prepare for the COP27 climate summit this year, with U.S. envoy John Kerry urging more countries to come on board.

The Associated Press said that it is assigning more than two dozen journalists across the world to cover climate issues, in the news organization's largest single expansion paid for through philanthropic grants.

The announcement illustrates how philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism — at the AP and elsewhere — at a time when the industry's financial outlook has been otherwise bleak.

Millions of people in the U.K. were urged to cancel travel plans and stay indoors Friday as the second major storm this week prompted warnings of high winds and flying debris across northern Europe.

Britain's weather service said Storm Eunice, known as Storm Zeynep in Germany, was likely to cause significant disruption and dangerous conditions, with gusts that may exceed 90 miles per hour in highly exposed coastal areas.