Fire crews moved to ramp up the battle Wednesday against two expanding forest fires threatening Sequoia National Park's giant sequoia trees and infrastructure.

The Colony and Paradise fires, ignited by lightning strikes last week, covered about 14 square miles (36 square kilometers) in California's steep Sierra Nevada.

Nearly every nation is coming up short — most of them far short — in their efforts to fight climate change, and the world is unlikely to hold warming to the internationally agreed-upon limit, according to a new scientific report.

Only one nation — tiny The Gambia in Africa — is on track to cut emissions and undertake its share of actions to keep the world from exceeding the Paris agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times, the report said.

Environmentalists in Sri Lanka are challenging a court order issued earlier this month that would allow the return of 14 illegally captured wild elephants to people accused of buying them from traffickers.

Rights groups and lawyers say the Sept. 6 court order is based on a government decree that violates Sri Lankan environmental laws. They fear the order could encourage a resurgence of trafficking of wild elephants, putting them at risk.

The head of the United Nations called Thursday for "immediate, rapid and large-scale" cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to curb global warming and avert climate disaster.

Ahead of the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting next week, Antonio Guterres warned governments that climate change is proceeding faster than predicted and fossil fuel emissions have already bounced back from a pandemic dip.

Firefighting crews in southern Spain are looking at the sky for much-needed rainfall expected on Monday and that they hope can help extinguish a major wildfire that has ravaged 7,700 hectares (19,000 acres) in five days and displaced around 2,600 people from their homes.

Authorities are describing the blaze in Sierra Bermeja, a mountain range in the Malaga province, as a sixth-generation fire of the extreme kind brought by the shifting climate on the planet. The "mega fires" are catastrophic events that kill, blacken large areas and are difficult to stop.

Firefighters were making progress on a wildfire that jumped across a Southern California freeway and spread across dry hillsides while a new blaze forced residents of a Northern California community to evacuate.

The fire broke out Saturday afternoon near Castaic in northern Los Angeles County. Pushed by 10-15mph (16-24 kph) winds, the blaze chewed through tinder-dry brush and jumped across the busy freeway, spread across more than a half of a square mile.

Tropical Storm Nicholas was strengthening just off the Gulf Coast and could make landfall in Texas as a hurricane Monday as it brings heavy rain and floods to coastal areas from Mexico to storm-battered Louisiana.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said top sustained winds reached 60 mph (95 kph). It was traveling north-northwest at 14 mph (22 kph) on a forecast track to pass near the South Texas coast later Monday, then move onshore along the coast of south or central Texas by Monday evening.

At least 14 people were killed and another three injured when lightning struck two houses in northwestern Pakistan, officials said Sunday.

Strong winds have further complicated the battle against a wildfire that has torn through more than 3,600 hectares of forest land, prompting the evacuation of 1,000 people in southeastern Spain and leading to the death of a firefighter.

The military's emergency brigade was on standby to intervene, as hundreds of firefighters worked through the night to clear out burnable material and open firewalls in the forest of a mountain range in the Malaga province, regional authorities said Friday. Arson is suspected.

It's a scorching September day and the Green party candidate hoping to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor leaps on stage in front of hundreds of supporters for what should be a home run.

Surveys show climate change is among the top concerns for many voters, and the audience in the eastern city of Halle is made up largely of students and retirees eager to hear how Annalena Baerbock plans to safeguard their future — or that of their grandchildren.