Two small Western Australian towns suffered "widespread damage" when Cyclone Seroja struck part of the country that rarely experiences tropical storms, emergency services said Monday.

The idea of forgiving debt held by poor countries in exchange for "green" investments gained ground this week during the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank, with concrete proposals expected in time for a global climate summit this fall.

Indonesian navy ships packed with aid arrived Thursday in a cyclone-ravaged section of the archipelago, as the death toll from the disaster rose to above 200 people, including dozens killed in neighboring East Timor. 

Warming waters have driven thousands of ocean species poleward from the equator, threatening marine ecosystems and the livelihoods of people who depend on them, researchers reported Monday.

Tropical cyclone Seroja pounded Indonesia and East Timor Monday after torrential rains triggered floods and landslides that have killed at least 91 people and left dozens missing.

An area of pristine rainforest the size of the Netherlands was burned or hacked down last year, as the destruction of the planet's tropical forests accelerated despite a global economic slowdown, according to research Wednesday.

The cost of global warming will far outweigh the cost of rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions, more than 700 economists from around the world said Tuesday in an unprecedented call to climate action.

Staff at an airport on the Galapagos Islands found 185 tortoises in a suitcase that was heading for Ecuador's mainland, environment authorities said on Sunday.

U.S. President Joe Biden has invited his counterparts Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia to a virtual climate summit he is hosting on April 22 and 23, a State Department official told AFP on Friday.

Russian conservationists hailed Friday a rare sighting of an Amur leopard mother with three cubs in the Far East as proof of the efficiency of the country's efforts to boost the population of the endangered species.