Germany called Tuesday for governments around the world to work on setting an ambitious target for renewable energy that would "ring in the end of the fossil fuel age" and help prevent dangerous global warming.

Speaking at the start of a two-day meeting in Berlin attended by dozens of top climate envoys, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock noted that the world needs to sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

Dutch government plans to drastically cut emissions of nitrogen pollution cleared a key hurdle Tuesday when the European Union's executive arm gave the green light to farm buyout schemes worth nearly 1.5 billion euros ($1.65 billion).

The plans to reduce nitrogen deposits — mainly by livestock farms — on EU-designated areas of vulnerable nature have sparked heated debate and widespread protests by angry farmers in this small nation that is a major producer and exporter of farm products. Dutch agricultural exports were worth 122.3 billion euros last year, according to the national statistics office.

Paramedics summoned to an Arizona retirement community last summer found an 80-year-old woman slumped inside her mobile home, enveloped in the suffocating 99-degree (37 C) heat she suffered for days after her air conditioner broke down. Efforts to revive her failed, and her death was ruled environmental heat exposure aggravated by heart disease and diabetes.

In America's hottest big metro, older people like the Sun Lakes mobile home resident accounted for most of the 77 people who died last summer in broiling heat inside their homes, almost all without air conditioning. Now, the heat dangers long known in greater Phoenix are becoming familiar nationwide as global warming creates new challenges to protect the aged.

Climate activists staged a 10th straight day of protests in Berlin, blocking key roads during rush hour and bringing parts of the German capital to a standstill on Friday.

Members of the group Last Generation glued themselves to the road, causing long traffic jams for commuters driving into the city. The group wants to draw attention to the threat of global warming and the need for governments to step up measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The world's oceans have suddenly spiked much hotter and well above record levels in the last few weeks, with scientists trying to figure out what it means and whether it forecasts a surge in atmospheric warming.

Some researchers think the jump in sea surface temperatures stems from a brewing and possibly strong natural El Nino warming weather condition plus a rebound from three years of a cooling La Nina, all on top of steady global warming that is heating deeper water below. If that's the case, they said, record-breaking ocean temperatures this month could be the first in many heat records to shatter.

In rural Arizona's La Paz County, on the state's rugged border with California, the decision by a Saudi-owned dairy company to grow alfalfa in the American Southwest for livestock in the Gulf kingdom first raised eyebrows nearly a decade ago. Now, worsening drought has focused new attention on the company and whether Arizona should be doing more to protect its groundwater resources.

Amid a broader investigation by the state attorney general, Arizona last week rescinded a pair of permits that would have allowed Fondomonte Arizona, a subsidiary of Almarai Co., to drill more than 1,000 feet (305 meters) into the water table to pump up to 3,000 gallons (11 kiloliters) of water per minute to irrigate its forage crops.

On a tiny sliver of land in southern India, the future of an ancient grain that helps combat climate change is in doubt.

An ongoing tussle in Chellanam village, a suburb of the bustling city of Kochi, which has the Arabian Sea on one side and estuaries on the other, could decide the fate of the cultivation of pokkali rice.

Asia must rapidly cut fossil fuel subsidies and plow more money into a clean energy transition to avoid catastrophic climate change that puts its own development at risk, according to a new report Thursday from the Asian Development Bank.

The region's economic development is being fueled in a carbon-intensive way that is well above the world average, said David Raitzer, an ADB economist and one of the authors of the report. He urged quick action on an energy transition for greater benefits and lower costs.

Ya Ya the giant panda landed Thursday afternoon in Shanghai after departing from the Memphis Zoo in Tennessee, where she spent the past 20 years on loan.

The popular panda's trip was closely followed online.

The ongoing drought in Eastern Africa has been made worse by human-induced climate change, which also made it much likelier to occur in the first place, an international team of climate scientists concluded.

The report Wednesday came from World Weather Attribution, a group that seeks to quickly determine whether certain extreme weather events were influenced by climate change. Nineteen scientists from seven nations assessed how climate change affected rainfall in the region.