Umm Mohammed, 74, waves a fan back and forth to cool down, but in the blistering heat of Iraq's southern city of Basra there is nothing but stiflingly hot air.

While Basra is used to scorching summers, this year it has started sooner than expected, bringing misery to residents in a city also plagued by chronic electricity shortages. 

Hazmat-suited workers poke plastic swabs down millions of throats in China each day, leaving bins bursting with medical waste that has become the environmental and economic levy of a zero-Covid strategy.

World airlines on Monday called on governments to support the industry's goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Firefighters in Spain and Germany have struggled to contain wildfires amid an unusual heat wave in Western Europe for this time of year.

The worst damage in Spain has been in the northwest province of Zamora, where over 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) have been consumed, regional authorities said, while German officials said that residents of three villages near Berlin were ordered to leave their homes because of an approaching wildfire Sunday.

Floods in Bangladesh continued to wreak havoc Monday with authorities struggling to ferry drinking water and dry food to flood shelters across the country's vast northern and northeastern regions, officials and local media said.

More than a dozen people died across the country since the monsoon began last week, authorities said. The government called in soldiers Friday to help evacuate people.

Monsoon storms in Bangladesh and India have killed at least 41 people and unleashed devastating floods that left millions of others stranded, officials said Saturday.

President Joe Biden, who has recently been focused on boosting oil production to reduce rising gas costs, will turn his attention to climate change on Friday when he convenes a virtual meeting of some of the world's biggest economies.

Among the participants will be China, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and the European Union. Also present will be Egypt, which is hosting the next United Nations summit on climate change, and the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres.

With the polar bear species in a fight for survival because of disappearing Arctic sea ice, a new distinct group of Greenland bears seem to have stumbled on an icy oasis that might allow a small remote population to "hang on."

But it's far from "a life raft" for the endangered species that has long been a symbol of climate change, scientists said.

Floating fences in India. Whimsical water- and solar-driven conveyor belts with googly eyes in Baltimore. Rechargeable aquatic drones and a bubble barrier in The Netherlands.

These are some of the sophisticated and at times low-tech inventions being deployed to capture plastic trash in rivers and streams before it can pollute the world's oceans.

Rich countries including the European Union and the United States have pushed back against efforts to put financial help for poor nations suffering the devastating effects of global warming firmly on the agenda for this year's U.N. climate summit.

Observers and campaigners attending a ten-day preparatory meeting in Bonn, Germany, that's wrapping up Thursday expressed frustration at the resistance shown by developed nations to formally discussing how poor countries can get more aid when they're hit by climate disasters.