With a direct letter sent to nations, host country Brazil is shifting the U.N. climate conference into a higher gear.

The letter sent late Monday comes during the final week of what has been billed as a historic climate summit, the first ever in the Amazon rainforest, a key regulator of climate because trees absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that warms the planet.

A powerful atmospheric river had mostly moved through California after causing at least six deaths and dousing much of the state, but lingering thunderstorms brought the risk of mudslides in areas of Los Angeles County that were recently ravaged by wildfire.

Flood advisories remained in place through Sunday afternoon for LA, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, where localized showers were still possible after heavy downpours on Friday and Saturday.

Rescue workers dug through tons of mud and rubble on Monday as they searched for 34 missing people after two separate landslides in two different regions on Indonesia's main island of Java killed at least 18 people.

Rescuers recovered more bodies since landslides triggered by torrential rains on Thursday evening that hit dozens of houses in three villages in the Cilacap district of Central Java province, increasing the death toll to 16, said Abdul Muhari, spokesperson for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, or BNPB.

Heavy rain swept central Vietnam on Monday, triggering landslides and floods, killing at least seven, injuring dozens and stranding thousands.

The deluges have wreaked widespread destruction across a region already battered weeks ago by floods from record rainfall and the powerful typhoon Kalmaegi.

A London judge Friday ruled that global mining giant BHP Group is liable in Brazil's worst environmental disaster when a dam collapse 10 years ago unleashed tons of toxic waste into a major river, killing 19 people and devastating villages downstream.

High Court Justice Finola O'Farrell said Australia-based BHP was responsible despite not owning the dam at the time.

About 100 protesters blocked the main entrance to the United Nations climate conference on the edge of the Brazilian Amazon Friday morning.

Brazilian military personnel kept demonstrators from entering the site during negotiations at the COP30 meetings in Belem, but there appeared to be no physical altercations with the protesters.

Landslides triggered by torrential rains in Indonesia 's Java island killed two people and left 21 others missing, officials said Friday. Rescuers are still searching for the 21 reported missing.

Several days of heavy rainfall in the region caused the landslides that hit dozens of houses in three villages in Indonesia's Central Java province on Thursday evening, officials said in a statement.

At about 10 o'clock every morning, women in hijabs and loose long dresses wade through Zanzibar's turquoise shallow tides to tend their sponge farms -- a new lifeline after climate change upended their former work.

Hundreds of people in Tunisia's city of Gabes protested on Thursday in front of a court as it examined whether to suspend a nearby factory accused of widespread pollution.

More heavy rain fell in parts of Taiwan on Thursday from a tropical depression that caused flooding and brought a continued risk of landslides.

A total of 95 people were injured around the island due to the storm that made landfall in southern Pingtung County on Wednesday evening. Authorities had evacuated more than 8,500 people from coastal and mountainous areas as Fung-wong approached.