SCIENCE

Lawmakers began grilling would-be members of the next European Commission Monday, with a personal tale of bereavement bringing unexpected poignancy to the start of hearings to confirm Ursula von der Leyen's top team.

Thousands of rescuers pumped water from submerged buildings, churned through muddy streets and cleared debris on Monday as Spain braced for more deaths from its worst floods in decades.

The social media platform X has for months been aflush with praise for United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan in posts shared by hundreds of profiles -- and all found to be fake.

Bitter rivals Kamala Harris and Donald Trump embark on a final frenzied campaign blitz Monday with both hitting must-win Pennsylvania on the last day of a tight and volatile US presidential election campaign.

Eight people went on trial in France on Monday charged with contributing to the climate of hatred that led to an 18-year-old Islamist radical of Chechen origin beheading teacher Samuel Paty outside Paris in 2020.

World leaders kick off UN climate talks next week, days after a knife edge US election that could send shockwaves through global efforts to limit dangerous warming.

Spain's king and queen are due on Sunday to visit the Valencia region, Spanish media reported, where devastating floods have killed more than 200 people with more rain on the horizon.

Rescuers raised the death toll in Spain's worst floods for a generation to 205 on Friday and fears grew for the dozens missing as hopes of finding survivors faded.

One year after world leaders issued the landmark call for a global move away from fossil fuels, nations are failing to turn that promise into action, say climate diplomats, campaigners and policy experts.

Papua New Guinea on Thursday declared a boycott of next month's UN climate summit, branding the global warming negotiations a "waste of time" full of empty promises from big polluters.

Spanish rescuers on Wednesday scrambled to save people trapped by surging tides of muddy water in floods that have killed at least 64 people in the country's east.

Climate change poses a growing threat to human health in a variety of record-breaking ways, a major report said Wednesday, the experts warning that "wasted time has been paid in lives".

Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached new record highs in 2023, the UN warned on Monday, with countries falling "miles short" of what is needed to curb devastating global warming.

Every rainy season for the past 12 years, floods have swept through 67-year-old Idris Egbunu's house in central Nigeria.

The Commonwealth's 56 members agreed the "time has come" for talks about the legacy of the "abhorrent" transatlantic slave trade Saturday, in a landmark summit declaration that raised the prospect of future reparations.

Civil society groups implored Google on Thursday to rigorously enforce its policy to demonetize environmental disinformation, saying ads placed alongside climate denial content persistently popped up despite the tech titan's pledge to crack down.

Homeowners in the northern Philippines used spades and rakes to clear out debris left by Tropical Storm Trami on Friday while rescuers trawled through thick mud looking for the missing as the death toll rose to 76.

Glinting in the sun by the world's biggest nuclear plant, the Sea of Japan is calm now.

The World Bank will unveil plans to tackle job creation, gender disparities, and food security at next week's gathering of the world's finance ministers and central bankers in Washington, its president said in an interview.

Gulf leaders including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with European heads of state and government in Brussels Wednesday for summit talks the EU hopes could help defuse an "extremely dangerous escalation" in the Middle East.

The death toll from Hurricane Milton rose to at least 16 on Friday, officials in Florida said, as residents began the painful process of piecing their lives and homes back together.

The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to the Japanese anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha.

Strong state support and huge private investment have made China's solar industry a global powerhouse, but it faces new headwinds, from punitive tariffs abroad to a brutal price war at home.

Last month was the second-warmest September ever registered globally in an exceptional year "almost certain" to become the hottest on record, the EU climate monitor Copernicus said on Tuesday.

Hurricane Milton exploded in strength Monday to become a potentially catastrophic Category 5 storm bound for Florida, threatening the US state with a second ferocious hurricane in as many weeks.

The sheep huddle together, bleeding from the nose, aborting lambs or suffocating on saliva as they succumb to bluetongue, a virus sweeping through flocks on the Italian island of Sardinia.

Cancer research or drugs treating cardiovascular illnesses could win a Nobel Prize on Monday when a week of laureate announcements kicks off, bringing a ray of optimism to a world beset by crises.

From his ranch on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, Joel Ferry has a front row view of climate change: a native of Utah, the Republican farmer has seen the water's surface area shrink by two-thirds in the past 40 years.

The only road to Pensacola, in the remote mountains of western North Carolina, is now a muddy path through deep, twisting gorges.