Powerful winds topping 100 kilometers per hour (62 mph) battered Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia on Thursday, injuring at least 25 people -- one seriously -- and forcing school closures and flight restrictions.

The two animals chosen as the mascots of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games are stoats, a weasel-like animal that's at risk because of climate change. One of the pair is brown and the other is white — because in cold climates, the tiny animals' fur changes from brown to white for winter, to blend in with the landscape.

However, stoats are increasingly turning white before there is any snow on the ground, leaving them vulnerable to predators — their snow-white coats amid dirt and rocks is like a target on their backs for sharp-eyed raptors.

Portugal's interior minister has stepped down in response to growing criticism of her government's response to successive winter storms this season, in which at least seven people have died.

Maria Lúcia Amaral resigned after concluding that she "no longer possessed the personal and political conditions necessary to hold the position," President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa's office said late Tuesday.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday called on the nation's highest court to lift a suspension on an economic emergency decree that would grant his government the authority to raise taxes without congressional approval.

In a televised Cabinet meeting, Petro said that the government must raise tens of millions of dollars to fund recovery efforts in two northern Colombian provinces that have been affected by floods that have killed at least 14 people and displaced an estimated 69,000.

Human-caused climate change had an important impact on the recent ferocious wildfires that engulfed parts of Chile and Argentina's Patagonia region, making the extremely high-risk conditions that led to widespread burning up to three times more likely than in a world without global warming, a team of researchers warned on Wednesday.

The hot, dry and gusty weather that fed last month's deadly wildfires in central and southern Chile was made around 200% more likely by human-made greenhouse gas emissions while the high-fire-risk conditions that fueled the blazes still racing through southern Argentina were made 150% more likely, according to World Weather Attribution, a scientific initiative that investigates extreme weather events soon after they happen.

At least 20 people were killed after a powerful cyclone struck Madagascar and 15 were missing, the Indian Ocean island's disaster authority said Wednesday.

Cyclone Gezani made landfall on Tuesday, slamming into the second-largest city Toamasina, with winds reaching 250 kilometers per hour.

The beekeepers rise early. They've come a long way to spend the winter months in the electric yellow mustard fields of Assam, and they have to make the trip worth it.

At dawn, they eat a simple breakfast and won't eat again until dusk. They'll spend all day checking the hives, smoking them to disperse the bees so they can collect thick golden honeycombs to be sold overseas.

A record snow drought with unprecedented heat is hitting most of the American West, depleting future water supplies, making it more vulnerable to wildfires and hurting winter tourism and recreation.

Scientists say snow cover and snow depth are both at the lowest levels they've seen in decades, while at least 67 Western weather stations have measured their warmest December through early February on record. Normal snow cover this time of year should be about 460,000 square miles — about the size of California, Utah, Idaho and Montana — but this year it's only California-sized, about 155,000 square miles, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The European Parliament Tuesday gave its final approval to an ambitious target for cutting EU greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, a key milestone towards the bloc's goal of becoming carbon neutral by mid-century.

Lawmakers voted by 413 to 226 in favour of a 90-percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels -- with flexibility to allow carbon credits bought outside the 27-nation EU to help reach the goal.

Drought conditions have left over 2 million people facing hunger in parts of Kenya, with cattle-keeping communities in the northeast the hardest hit, according to the United Nations and others.

In recent weeks, images of emaciated livestock in the arid area near the Somali border have shocked many in a region that reels from the effects of climate change.