As Brazil seeks to boost its environmental credentials by hosting the United Nations' climate summit, a proposal to build a railway through the Amazon has threatened to tarnish that image amid protests by Indigenous groups and environmentalists.

The Ferrograo railway project would transport commodities including corn and soybeans nearly 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) from a city on the southern edge of the rainforest to a port along a major tributary of the Amazon River. From there, commodities would be ferried to a larger port near Belem, the host city of the COP30 conference, for export to China and other trading partners.

India is unlikely to submit its climate pledge before the end of the annual United Nations climate summit, raising questions about how the world's most populous nation can influence others on confronting climate change.

Experts say the delay may be a sign of India's displeasure with a lack of progress toward funding global climate priorities. However, this can also hurt its ability to lead at the climate talks in Brazil.

If heat-trapping pollution from burning coal, oil and gas continues unchecked, thousands of hazardous sites across the United States risk being flooded from sea level rise by the turn of the century, posing serious health risks to nearby communities, according to a new study.

Researchers identified 5,500 sites that store, emit or handle sewage, trash, oil, gas and other hazards that could face coastal flooding by 2100, with much of the risk already locked in due to past emissions. But more than half the sites are projected to face flood risk much sooner — as soon as 2050. Low-income, communities of color and other marginalized groups are the most at risk.

France's environment minister said Wednesday that governments remain far from reaching a deal at U.N. climate talks in Brazil, but she was nonetheless "more optimistic" than the day before.

Two global power players will spend Wednesday pushing negotiators to find compromises at United Nations climate talks in Brazil's Belém, where a self-imposed deadline is rushing up fast.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres roamed the meeting rooms on Tuesday, while Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was set to join the COP30 talks Wednesday morning.

In South Africa 's oldest township, volunteers in wetsuits jump into the thigh-deep water of the polluted Jukskei River to untangle a net that's designed to trap garbage but damaged by heavy rains. Without the nets, the shacks of low-lying Alexandra on the outskirts of Johannesburg could face disastrous flooding.

World leaders with the Group of 20 rich and developing nations will meet this weekend in Johannesburg for the bloc's first summit in Africa. Host South Africa wants to prioritize issues affecting poor countries, including responses to disasters made worse by climate change.

A mountain of illegally dumped trash near a river in the country outside Oxford was visible from space but few on Earth seemed to notice the mess.

Hidden behind a thick row of trees from the busy highway next to it, the pile grew to the length of three Olympic-sized swimming pools and reached up to the roof of a two-story house as motorists unknowingly sped past.

Venice has been charmed by a recent visitor: An acrobatic, wild dolphin. The feeling appears to be mutual — he so far refuses to leave — but proximity to humans has put him in danger.

The dolphin nicknamed Mimmo has been delighting tourists and Venetians for months with his acrobatic flips. Experts are now eager to move him into open water, especially after verifying wounds indicating that the dolphin had been likely hit by a boat propeller.

Pope Leo XIV on Monday urged countries at United Nations climate talks to take "concrete actions" to stop climate change that is threatening the planet, telling them humans are failing in their response to global warming and that God's creation "is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat."

In a video message played for religious leaders gathered in Belem, Leo said nations had made progress, "but not enough."

Battered by last month's ferocious climate-fueled hurricane, Jamaica joined other small island nations and impoverished countries at Monday's United Nations climate talks to implore the rest of the world to stop talking and start acting. Their message: Our lives are on the line.

As high-level ministers from governments around the world took over negotiations at the conference called COP30, vulnerable nations lined up to say how important it is for countries to cut emissions. They said the world's current climate plans aren't strong enough to keep warming below the 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.