he idea was striking in its ambition: African countries aimed to plant trees in a nearly 5,000-mile line spanning the entire continent, creating a natural barrier to hold back the Sahara Desert as climate change swept the sands south.

The project called the Great Green Wall began in 2007 with a vision for the trees to extend like a belt across the vast Sahel region, from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, by 2030. But as temperatures rose and rainfall diminished, millions of the planted trees died.

Sky obscured by thick, gray smog. Monuments and high-rise buildings swallowed by a blanket of haze. People struggling to breathe.

In the Indian capital, it is that time of the year again.

Heavy rain and flooding in a southern province in Egypt have left three people dead and more than 500 others hospitalized from scorpion stings, state-run media reported.

Downpours, hail and thunder in the province of Aswan over the weekend forced local authorities to suspend school classes Sunday, Gov. Ashraf Attia said.

At least one person has died after two strong earthquakes struck the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan, state TV reported.

State TV quoted Azizollah Konari, the Bandar Abbas governor, as saying a 22-year-old man died when an electric pole fell on his head as a result of the earthquake.

Negotiators at this year's U.N. climate talks in Glasgow appeared to be backing away Friday from a call to end all use of coal and phase out fossil fuel subsidies completely, but gave poor countries hope for more financial support to cope with global warming.

The latest draft proposals from the meeting's chair called on countries to accelerate "the phase-out of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels."

Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega, the founder of the Zara clothing brand, has entered the renewable energy sector with the purchase of a stake in a wind farm run by energy giant Repsol.

COP26 President Alok Sharma said there was still an array of unfinished business at the crunch U..N climate summit on Thursday as scientists urged negotiators to heed their warnings for the need for urgent action to global warming.  

Federal wildlife officials overseeing the world's only wild population of endangered red wolves have announced that they are abandoning a 2018 plan to limit the animals' territory and loosen protections for wolves that strayed from that area.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made the announcement as part of an ongoing federal court battle with conservation groups that argue the federal agency violated the Endangered Species Act by abandoning strategies that supported the wild population of wolves. Conservation groups welcomed the move but said more needs to be done to bolster a wild population of as few as 10 wolves.

The world's top carbon polluters, China and the United States, have agreed to increase their cooperation and speed up action to rein in climate-damaging emissions, signaling a mutual effort on global warming at a time of tension over their other disputes.

In back-to-back news conferences at U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and U.S. counterpart John Kerry said the two countries would work together to accelerate the emissions reductions required to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

The tightest of smiles on his face and the fabric of his traditional thobe swirling about him as he strides through a hallway at U.N. climate talks, Saudi Arabia's energy minister expresses shock at repeated complaints that the world's largest oil producer is working behind the scenes to sabotage negotiations.

"What you have been hearing is a false allegation, and a cheat and a lie," Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al Saud said this week at the talks in Glasgow, Scotland. He was responding to journalists pressing for a response to claims that Saudi Arabia's negotiators have been working to block climate measures that would threaten demand for oil.