SCIENCE

The United States and China will hold their first talks on artificial intelligence on Tuesday, with Washington set to raise concerns about Beijing's use of the fast-emerging technology, US officials said.

The world's biggest banks financed fossil fuels to the tune of $705 billion in 2023, with US and Japanese lenders leading the way, an annual report by climate campaigners said Monday.

Fifty countries are meeting in France on Tuesday to discuss the lack of access to clean cooking methods worldwide which causes millions of deaths every year and fuels global warming.

Farmer Chhim Laem shakes his head as he walks between long rows of dead bushes, their brown leaves scorched by heat and drought that have devastated Cambodia's famed Kampot pepper crop.

River levels were rising again Sunday as strong rains lashed waterlogged southern Brazil, where flooding has killed more than 140 people and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.

Rain continued to soak waterlogged southern Brazil on Saturday, bringing fresh misery to victims of flooding that has killed 136 people so far.

The climate catastrophe that has struck southern Brazil, killing more than a hundred people and displacing nearly two million, has also spawned a spate of bizarre conspiracy theories, some involving jets' vapor trails and weather antennas in faraway Alaska.

More than 200 people were killed in flash floods that ripped through multiple Afghan provinces, the United Nations said on Saturday, as authorities declared a state of emergency and rushed to rescue the injured.

At least 50 people, mainly women and children, were killed Friday in flash flooding that ripped through northern Afghanistan, official said, in a country highly vulnerable to climate change.

The skies opened once again Friday in southern Brazil, offering little respite for those whose homes have been swallowed by floodwaters, while the number of people forced to evacuate doubled in 24 hours.

Floodwaters in Brazil have swallowed up soybean fields and farming equipment, cutting off roads, livestock farms and warehouses in the latest extreme weather event to hit the agricultural giant.

When fish numbers diminished in the Ecuadoran Amazon, the Siona Indigenous people blamed envious, rival shamans for blocking the animals' passage through the rivers of Cuyabeno, a biodiverse wetland.

With Mammoth's 72 industrial fans, Swiss start-up Climeworks intends to suck 36,000 tonnes of CO2 from the air annually to bury underground, vying to prove the technology has a place in the fight against global warming.

Israel qualified for this weekend's Eurovision song contest grand finale, defying thousands of demonstrators marching on Thursday in host country Sweden over the Gaza war.

Teams raced against the clock Thursday to deliver aid to flood-stricken communities in southern Brazil before the arrival of new storms forecast to batter the region again.

Scientists Geoffrey Hawtin and Cary Fowler, who on Thursday received the prestigious World Food Prize for "their work to preserve the world's heritage of seeds", are on a mission.

The dazzling Thai holiday islands made famous by Hollywood film "The Beach" are facing a severe water shortage following a blistering heatwave across Asia, a tourism official and locals said Thursday.

Record-breaking heat last month that prompted governments in Asia to close schools offers fresh evidence of how climate change is threatening the education of millions of children.

The United States is seeing an investment surge as President Joe Biden pushes to rebuild "hollowed out" industrial communities and grow domestic supply chains in key sectors like electric vehicles (EVs), batteries and semiconductors.

Latin America and the Caribbean had their warmest year on record in 2023 as a "double-whammy" of El Nino and climate change caused major weather calamities, the World Meteorological Organization said Wednesday.

The death toll from devastating floods that have ravaged southern Brazil for days reached 100 on Wednesday, authorities said, as the search continued for dozens of people still missing.

The reservoir behind the massive Darbandikhan dam, tucked between the rolling mountains of northeastern Iraq, is almost full again after four successive years of drought and severe water shortages.

Imagine feeling like an elephant is sitting on your chest, you can't breathe, there's a sense of impending doom and the pain is so intense you want to die.

Just a few months ago, the Colombian mountain peak of Ritacuba Blanco was covered in an unbroken layer of white ice and snow, just as it had been for as long as anyone can remember.

Washington is redoubling efforts to disrupt migration routes that lead to the United States, in particular via charter flights to Central America, top diplomat Antony Blinken said at regional talks Tuesday.

The rains may have abated, but floodwaters on Monday continued their assault on southern Brazil, with hundreds of municipalities in ruins amid fears that food and drinking water may soon run out.

Scotland's likely next leader John Swinney is a political veteran who will have to unify his fractured separatist party and revitalise its flagging independence movement.

Far-right populist parties are way ahead of their traditional rivals in the race for voter attention on social media, where disinformation is stirring fear and rage around key issues in June's European elections, experts say.

From top to bottom, rescuers scour buildings in Porto Alegre for inhabitants stuck in apartments or on rooftops as unprecedented flooding turned the streets of the Brazilian metropolis into rivers.