The U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday will auction vast oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico estimated to hold up to 1.1 billion barrels of crude, the first such sale under President Joe Biden and a harbinger of the challenges he faces to reach climate goals that depend on deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions.

The livestreamed sale invited energy companies to bid on drilling leases across some 136,000 square miles (352,000 square kilometers) — about twice the area of Florida.

There is a ray of hope for the vanishing orange-and-black Western monarch butterflies.

The number wintering along California's central coast is bouncing back after the population, whose presence is often a good indicator of ecosystem health, reached an all-time low last year. Experts pin their decline on climate change, habitat destruction and lack of food due to drought.

Europe is short of natural gas — dangerously short. A cold winter could mean a severe crunch, and utility bills are headed higher, burdening ordinary people and weighing on the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised to help fill European gas storages as energy prices soar — but supply shortages and political tensions have continued to rattle energy markets, keeping prices high. That's pinched businesses and forced them to pass along costs to customers already facing higher bills at home.

China and the U.S. have agreed to ease restrictions on each other's journalists amid a slight relaxation of tensions between the two sides.

The official China Daily newspaper on Wednesday said the agreement was reached ahead of Tuesday's virtual summit between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden.

The United Nations' atomic watchdog says it believes Iran has further increased its stockpile of highly enriched uranium in breach of a 2015 accord with world powers.

The International Atomic Energy Agency told member nations in its confidential quarterly report Wednesday that Iran has an estimated stock of 17.7 kilograms (39 pounds) of uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile purity, an increase of almost 8 kilograms since August.

As many parts of western Washington began drying out after a storm that dumped rain for days, waters in some areas continued rising, more people were urged to evacuate and crews worked to restore power and reopen roads.

Officials in the small city of Sumas, Washington, near the Canada border called the flood damage there devastating. Officials said on Facebook Tuesday that hundreds of people had been evacuated and estimated that 75% of homes had water damage.

Syria's state-run media said Israel carried out an attack on the country's south early Wednesday with two missiles targeting an empty house and causing no casualties

The missiles came from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and aimed at the building south of the capital Damascus, the state-run news agency SANA said. It said Syria's defense systems intercepted one of the incoming missiles. The attack caused no losses, the agency said.

TWICE, the nine-member K-pop band with over 9 million Twitter followers, says they feel their growing popularity overseas.

"People didn't know as much about us as they do now," band member Jihyo told The Associated Press ahead of last week's release of the band's third full-length album "Formula Of Love: O+T=3," adding that the growing popularity of K-pop around the world has allowed the band to release more English tracks.

Drugmaker Pfizer Inc. has signed a deal with a U.N.-backed group to allow other manufacturers to make its experimental COVID-19 pill, a move that could make the treatment available to more than half of the world's population.

In a statement issued Tuesday, Pfizer said it would grant a license for the antiviral pill to the Geneva-based Medicines Patent Pool, which would let generic drug companies produce the pill for use in 95 countries, making up about 53% of the world's population.

The Bank of England is one step closer to raising interest rates next month, analysts said Tuesday after official figures showed that the end of the British government's salary support program for workers during the coronavirus pandemic has not yet led to the feared increase in unemployment.

The Office for National Statistics found that the number of people on payroll surged by 160,000, to 29.3 million, in October, the first full month after the program ended.