Climate Change & Environment
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Heavy flooding in southern Myanmar displaces more than 14,000 people

Flooding triggered by heavy monsoon rains in Myanmar's southern areas has displaced more than 14,000 people and disrupted traffic on the rail lines that connect the country's biggest cities, officials and state-run media said.

State television MRTV reported Monday evening that the number of displaced people in Bago township, about 68 kilometers (42 miles) northeast of Yangon, the country's biggest city, had climbed to that figure, and they were taking shelter in 36 relief camps. It said almost 1,000 more people in Mon state's township, just east of Bago, were sheltering in three relief camps, and there some evacuations in a northern part of Yangon.

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Millions of children are displaced due to extreme weather events

Storms, floods, fires and other extreme weather events led to more than 43 million displacements involving children between 2016 and 2021, according to a United Nations report.

More than 113 million displacements of children will occur in the next three decades, estimated the UNICEF report released Friday, which took into account risks from flooding rivers, cyclonic winds and floods that follow a storm.

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Whales, dolphins in American waters lose food and habitat to climate change

Whales, dolphins and seals living in U.S. waters face major threats from warming ocean temperatures, rising sea levels and decreasing sea ice volumes associated with climate change, according to a first-of-its-kind assessment.

Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration examined more than 100 stocks of American marine mammal species and found more than 70% of those stocks are vulnerable to threats, such as loss of habitat and food, due to the consequences of warming waters. The impacts also include loss of dissolved oxygen and changes to ocean chemistry.

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Icy flood kills 31 in India's Himalayan northeast after lake bursts through major dam

Hundreds of rescuers dug through slushy debris and fast-flowing, icy water Friday in a search for survivors after a glacial lake overflowed and burst through a dam in India's Himalayan north, a disaster that many had warned was possible for years.

The flood began in the early hours of Wednesday, when water overflowed a high mountain lake with enough force to break through the concrete of a major hydroelectric dam downstream. It then poured into the valley below, where it killed at least 31 people. One hundred are still missing, officials said, while thousands of people have had to flee their homes.

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More people are moving into high flood zones, increasing risk of water disasters

Far more people are in harm's way as they move into high flood zones across the globe, adding to an increase in watery disasters from climate change, a new study said.

Since 1985, the number of the world's settlements in the riskiest flood zones has increased 122%, compared to 80% for the safest areas, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Nature by researchers at The World Bank. The authors looked at settlement extent and expansion using satellites instead of population, with the world's built-up regions growing 85% overall from 1985 to 2015.

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New wildfire on Spain's Tenerife island forces 3,000 evacuations

Soldiers and firefighters were battling to control a new wildfire on Spain's Tenerife island that has forced some 3,000 people to leave their homes for safety, the Canary Islands government said Thursday.

The blaze, which started Wednesday, is centered on the towns of Santa Úrsula and La Orotava in the mountainous northeast of the island, away from the main tourist areas in Tenerife's southwest.

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Typhoon Koinu injures 190, brings record-breaking winds to Taiwan

Typhoon Koinu swept southern Taiwan on Thursday, injuring 190 people but causing no deaths as it brought pounding rain and record-breaking winds to the island, leading to school and office closures.

Koinu, which means "puppy" in Japanese, made landfall early Thursday in Cape Eluanbi, the southernmost tip of Taiwan, and is expected to weaken as it moves west toward Guangdong and Fujian provinces in southern China.

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Flash floods kill at least 14 in northeastern India, leave more than 100 missing

Rescue workers were searching for more than 100 people on Thursday after flash floods triggered by a sudden heavy rainfall swamped several towns in northeastern India, killing at least 14 people, officials said.

More than 2,000 people were rescued after Wednesday's floods, the Sikkim State Disaster Management Authority said in a statement, adding that state authorities set up 26 relief camps for more than 22,000 people impacted by the floods.

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Pope challenges leaders at UN talks to slow global warming before it's too late

Pope Francis shamed and challenged world leaders on Wednesday to commit to binding targets to slow climate change before it's too late, warning that God's increasingly warming creation is fast reaching a "point of no return."

In an update to his landmark 2015 encyclical on the environment, Francis heightened the alarm about the "irreversible" harm to people and planet already under way and lamented that once again, the world's poor and most vulnerable are paying the highest price.

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Wildfire destroys 3 homes in southeastern Australia, man injured by falling tree

Three homes were destroyed by a forest fire and a man was injured by a falling tree in the Bega Valley region of southeastern Australia, prompting a government leader to warn on Wednesday that a "horror" wildfire season was approaching.

Scores of wildfires have recently raged across the states of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania as Australia's driest September on record and unusually warm weather have brought an early start to the annual wildfire season, which peaks during the Southern Hemisphere summer.

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