The German government said Monday it is launching a campaign against deaths from heat waves that are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said Germany is learning lessons from France, which put in place numerous measures following a devastating heat wave in 2003 that caused about 15,000 deaths in the country.

Spain sweltered in its first official heat wave of the year on Monday as the government announced a new department to investigate and alleviate the effects of extreme temperatures on human health.

The state weather agency, AEMET, said temperatures were predicted to hit 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) in the country's south during the hot spell, expected to last until Thursday, and noted that heat waves have become more common during the month of June over the last 12 years.

New York has received a critical federal approval for its first-in-the-nation plan to charge big tolls to drive into the most visited parts of Manhattan, part of an effort to reduce traffic, improve air quality and raise funds for the city's public transit system.

The program could begin as soon as the spring of 2024, bringing New York City into line with places like London, Singapore, and Stockholm that have implemented similar tolling programs for highly congested business districts.

The emerald-green canopy shifts and rustles as a troop of willowy, golden-gray monkeys slides through a tropical ecosystem more threatened than the Amazon.

Karen Strier started studying the biggest monkey in the Americas four decades ago, when there were just 50 of the animals left in this swath of the Atlantic forest, in southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state.

Aston Martin on Monday announced a deal with US-Saudi electric vehicle specialist Lucid Group to help make the British group's luxury 'green' cars.

California-based Lucid will supply technology, including battery systems, for cash and shares worth about $232 million (213 million euros), Aston said in a statement.

Beijing and parts of northern China are experiencing record temperatures, with authorities urging people to limit their time outdoors.

The Nanjiao observatory in southern Beijing on Saturday for the first time recorded temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for a third consecutive day, according to the China Meteorological Administration.

Surveying the hills covered with near bone-dry pines stretching to the Pyrenees in the distance, Asier Larrañaga has reason to be on guard.

This part of northeast Spain is, like large swaths of the Mediterranean country, braced for wildfires due to the lethal combination of a prolonged drought, record-high temperatures and increasingly dense woods unable to adapt to a fast-changing climate.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is awarding almost $1.7 billion in grants for buying zero- and low-emission buses, with the money going to transit projects in 46 states and territories.

The grants will enable transit agencies and state and local governments to buy 1,700 U.S.-built buses, nearly half of which will have zero carbon emissions. Funding for the grants comes from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by President Joe Biden. The Democratic president has made it a priority to put more electric vehicles on the road — especially for schools and public transit — in an effort to contain the damage from climate change.

A new oil spill at a Shell facility in Nigeria has contaminated farmland and a river, upending livelihoods in the fishing and farming communities in part of the Niger Delta, which has long endured environmental pollution caused by the oil industry.

The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, or NOSDRA, told The Associated Press that the spill came from the Trans-Niger Pipeline operated by Shell that crosses through communities in the Eleme area of Ogoniland, a region where the London-based energy giant has faced decadeslong local pushback to its oil exploration.

Plumes of heat-trapping pollutants last billowed from the giant stacks of Komati Power Station in October, when the coal-fired plant that fed South Africa's hungry electrical grid for more than half a century was shut down to make way for a solar, wind and battery storage plant.

Converting Komati to be part of the clean energy revolution is seen as an important test case for coal-reliant South Africa, the world's 16th-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and developing nations elsewhere. It's supported by $497 million, most of it from the World Bank.