MPs Najat Aoun Saliba and Melhem Khalaf on Monday held a press conference in parliament to tackle the issue of the long-running blaze at the blast-hit grain silos of Beirut’s port, which has been burning for around a month.

Representatives of Dutch farmers were meeting Friday with Prime Minister Mark Rutte and other Cabinet ministers to discuss the government's nitrogen emissions reduction goals that have sparked disruptive protests in recent weeks.

But the prospect of success appeared slim, with two main activist farmers' organizations demanding concessions and not attending because they have no trust in the veteran politician appointed to act as intermediary. They say the mediator, Johan Remkes, is not independent.

China on Friday said it is canceling or suspending dialogue with the United States on a range of issues from climate change to military relations and anti-drug efforts in retaliation for a visit this week to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The measures, which come amid cratering relations between Beijing and Washington, are the latest in a promised series of steps intended to punish the U.S. for allowing the visit to the island it claims as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary. China on Thursday launched threatening military exercises in six zones just off Taiwan's coasts that it says will run through Sunday.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne warned that France is facing the "most severe drought" ever recorded in the country and announced the activation of a government crisis unit.

Borne said in a written statement on Friday that many areas in France are going through a "historic situation" as the country endures its third heatwave this summer.

As much of Europe bakes in a third heatwave since June, fears are growing that extreme drought driven by climate change in the continent's breadbasket nations will dent stable crop yields and deepen the cost-of-living crisis. 

The United Nations chief sharply criticized the "grotesque greed" of oil and gas companies on Wednesday for making record profits from the energy crisis on the back of the world's poorest people, "while destroying our only home."

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was "immoral" that the largest energy companies in the first quarter of the year made combined profits of close to $100 billion.

Little snow cover and glaciers melting at an alarming rate amid Europe's sweltering heatwaves have put some of the most classic Alpine hiking routes off-limits.

The world must prepare for a "climate endgame" to better understand and plan for the potentially catastrophic impacts of global heating that governments have yet to consider, scientists warned Tuesday. 

Climate models that can predict the extent of global warming depending on greenhouse gas emissions are increasingly sophisticated and provide policymakers with an accurate trajectory of global temperature rises. 

When ash began to fall and his throat was burning from the smoke, Franklin Thom decided it was time to leave the city where he grew up on the edge of the national forest in California.

He made it to a shelter with his daughter and just his medicine, some clothes and his shower shoes. Unlike some others, he was told that he had escaped California's largest fire of the year with his home still standing.

Drought and unusually hot weather have raised the salinity in Italy's largest delta, where the mighty Po River feeds into the Adriatic Sea south of Venice, and it's killing rice fields along with the shellfish that are a key ingredient in one of Italy's culinary specialties: spaghetti with clams.

At least one-third of the stock of prized double-valve clams raised in the Po Delta have died off. Plants along the banks of the Po River are wilting as they drink in water from increasingly salty aquifers and secondary waterways have dried up, shrinking amphibians and birds' wetland homes.