German Chancellor Angela Merkel is making clear that she opposes setting new, more ambitious European emissions reduction targets for 2030. She says the continent needs to concentrate on fulfilling the aims it has already set.

The European Union wants to achieve a 40 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2030. Last week, EU climate chief Miguel Arias Canete told Germany's dpa news agency that he plans to propose increasing that to 45 percent.

With a gaping hole in the ground and tangled corn stalks strewn across Yves Rolland's field, it looks as if it has been hit by a tornado. He already knows who the culprits are.

Torrential rain pounded Hawaii on Friday as Hurricane Lane, now downgraded to a tropical storm, crawled toward the island state, triggering landslides and "catastrophic" flooding, and forcing thousands to seek emergency shelter.

A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck along Peru's border with Brazil on Friday, the US Geological Survey said.

A strong typhoon barrelled toward Japan's northern island Friday after churning over parts of western Japan already hit by deadly flooding last month, but while transport links were disrupted, injuries and damages were limited.

A new satellite that will use advanced laser technology to track global winds and improve weather forecasts has been successfully put into orbit, launch company Arianespace said.

Garbage has never smelled so sweet for a small village in southern Benin since it opened a pilot waste treatment centre to turn household rubbish into gas -- and cash. 

Hurricane Lane has grown to a category 5 storm as it approaches Hawaii with potential for torrential rain, flash flooding and landslides, forecasters said.

As per the latest models, the center of Lane will move very close to or over the main Hawaiian Islands from Thursday through Saturday, the National Weather Service's Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu said.

As temperatures rise in the U.S. West, so do the flames.

Indonesia is about to open the Asian Games but its traffic-clogged capital Jakarta remains shrouded in a haze of air pollution that threatens to mar the world's second-biggest multi-sport event.