Israel and Jordan signed a declaration of intent on Thursday at the U.N. climate conference to conserve and protect their shared Jordan River — a sacred waterway nearly running dry because of climate change, pollution and other threats.

The agreement, struck at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where world leaders are discussing how to mitigate the escalating impact from a changing climate, marks an important, albeit initial, step in cooperation.

As international climate talks in the Egyptian desert go into their final days, negotiators are trying to move key countries' lines in the sand on multiple issues, including compensation for climate disasters, phasing down all fossil fuel use and additional financial help for poor nations.

The final document from the annual U.N. climate gathering, known as COP27, is required to be unanimous. There are at least half a dozen instances where nations are "taking negotiations hostage" by taking hardline, seemingly inflexible stances, said Alden Meyer, a long-time negotiations observer at the think tank E3G.

After Typhoon Haiyan's towering waves flattened scores of Philippines villages, Jeremy Garing spent days helping with recovery from the historic storm that left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and inflicted billions of dollars in damage.

"I keep helping other people, but then at the end, you find out that all of your family is gone," Garing said, recalling those terrible times in 2013. "It's so painful."

Below the turquoise waters off the coast of Australia is one of the world's natural wonders, an underwater rainbow jungle teeming with life that scientists say is showing some of the clearest signs yet of climate change.

The Great Barrier Reef, battered but not broken by climate change impacts, is inspiring hope and worry alike as researchers race to understand how it can survive a warming world. Authorities are trying to buy the reef time by combining ancient knowledge with new technology. They are studying coral reproduction in hopes to accelerate regrowth and adapt it to handle hotter and rougher seas.

Men usually outnumber and outrank women negotiators in climate talks, except when it comes to global warming's thorniest diplomatic issue this year — reparations for climate disasters.

The issue of polluting nations paying vulnerable countries is handed over to women, who got the issue on the agenda after 30 years. Whether this year's United Nations climate talks in Egypt succeed or fail mostly will come down to the issue called loss and damage in international negotiations, officials and experts say. It's an issue that intertwines equity and economics, balancing the needs of those hurt and those who would pay.

On the Greek island of Naxos, two divers reeled in not the catch of the day but a jumble of cable, rope, fishing nets and old clothes from the seafloor.

Turkey on Tuesday unveiled at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh a revised plan for cutting its carbon emissions that was immediately criticized by analysts as insufficiently ambitious.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry met Tuesday with his Chinese counterpart at annual United Nations climate negotiations in Egypt, in a further hint of improving relations between the world's top two polluters a day after a meeting between their leaders.

Kerry met with China's top climate official Xie Zhenhua in a room at the Chinese delegation's offices in the COP27 conference zone.

The American University of Beirut was ranked 1st in the MENA region in sustainability and tied with Princeton University at the 140th place globally in the QS World University Rankings (WUR): Sustainability 2023, the university said in a statement Tuesday.

In its first edition, the QS Sustainability Rankings were announced by the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) university ranking agency. The rankings looked at 700 of the world’s top universities that were deemed eligible and compared them against environmental and social sustainability metrics, to see which universities are doing the most to tackle major environmental, social, and governance (ESG) challenges. "The American University of Beirut was the only university in Lebanon to be ranked and number one in the MENA Region," the statement said.

Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate slammed world leaders Tuesday who persist in backing new fossil fuel projects despite science warnings that this will push temperatures across the planet to dangerous highs.

Countries agreed in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century if possible. But scientists say that with about 1.2 Celsius (21. Fahrenheit) of warming already reached, that target is likely to be missed.