Climate Change & Environment
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Spain announces $1.5 bn deal to protect prized Doñana wetland from drying up

National and regional authorities in Spain signed an agreement Monday to invest 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in areas around the treasured national park of Doñana in a bid to stop the park from drying up.

Ecological Transition Minister Teresa Ribera said the plan was aimed at encouraging farmers to stop cultivating crops that rely heavily on water from underground aquifers that have been overexploited in recent years, damaging one of Europe's largest wetlands.

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Tornadoes forecast in Black Sea as storm reportedly impacts Russian operations

Tornadoes were forecast for the Black Sea region on Tuesday, a day after a storm that left more than 2 million people without electricity in Crimea, Russia and Ukraine. A think tank said that the weather also impacted Russian military operations.

The storm killed at least 14 people in Russia and Ukraine officials said as it toppled trees, tore down power lines and flooded coastal areas.

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As Dubai prepares for COP28, some world leaders won't attend talks

Dubai prepared to host the COP28 climate talks Tuesday as world leaders including U.S. President Joe Biden signaled they would not be attending the negotiations that come during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war roiling the wider Middle East.

Workers under a still-scorching November sun stapled up bunting and decorated Dubai Expo City's iconic Al Wasl Dome with trees and other green foliage ahead of the summit, scheduled to start Thursday in the United Arab Emirates.

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Girl, 11, confirmed as fourth victim of Alaska landslide, two people still missing

Authorities recovered the body of an 11-year-old girl Saturday evening from the debris of a landslide in southeast Alaska that tore down a wooded mountainside days earlier, smashing into homes in a remote fishing village.

The girl, Kara Heller, was the fourth person confirmed killed by last Monday night's landslide.

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How did humans get to the brink of crashing climate?

Amid record-high temperatures, deluges, droughts and wildfires, leaders are convening for another round of United Nations climate talks later this month that seek to curb a centuries-long trend of humans spewing ever more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

For hundreds of years, people have shaped the world around them for their benefit: They drained lakes, deforested lands and mined for metals and minerals to grow wealth and economies. They dug up billions of tons of coal, and then oil and gas, to fuel empires and economies. The allure of exploiting nature and burning fossil fuels as a path to prosperity hopped from nation to nation, each eager to secure their own cheap energy. Over hundreds of years, that impulse has remade the planet's climate, too — and brought its inhabitants to the brink of catastrophe.

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Deadly storm cuts power to nearly 2 mn people in Russia, Ukraine

More than half a million people were left without power in Crimea, Russia and Ukraine after a storm in the Black Sea area flooded roads, ripped up trees and took down power lines, Russian state news agency Tass and Ukraine's energy ministry said. Meanwhile, the Moscow region experienced its heaviest snowfall in 40 years, the governor said.

The storms and snowfall were part of a weather front that left one person dead and many places without electricity amid heavy snow and blizzards in Romania and Moldova on Sunday.

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Sea turtle nests break records on US beaches, but global warming threatens their survival

Just as they have for millions of years, sea turtles by the thousands made their labored crawl from the ocean to U.S. beaches to lay their eggs over the past several months. This year, record nesting was found in Florida and elsewhere despite growing concern about threats from climate change.

In Florida, preliminary state statistics show more than 133,840 loggerhead turtle nests, breaking a record set in 2016. Same for green turtles, where the estimate of at least 76,500 nests is well above the previous mark set in 2017.

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Peru lost more than half of its glacier surface in just over half a century

Peru has lost more than half of its glacier surface in the last six decades, and 175 glaciers became extinct due to climate change between 2016 and 2020, Peruvian scientists from the state agency that studies glaciers said Wednesday.

"In 58 years, 56.22% of the glacial coverage recorded in 1962 has been lost," said Mayra Mejía, an official with Peru's National Institute of Research of Mountain Glaciers and Ecosystems, or Inaigem.

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Fires in Brazil threaten jaguars, houses and plants in world's largest tropical wetlands

Firefighters in Brazil's Pantanal wetlands earlier this month celebrated the end of the fire season on Facebook, saying in a Nov. 7 post that "it is a relief for everyone who lives in the region."

They spoke too soon.

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Turkey searches for 11 missing sailors after deadly storm

Turkish rescuers on Monday recovered the body of a crew member of a cargo ship that sank off Turkey's Black Sea coast in severe storms, officials said. Eleven other crew were reported missing.

The Turkish-flagged Kafkametler sank on Sunday after hitting a breakwater outside the harbor off the town of Eregli, some 200 kilometers (124 miles) east of Istanbul. Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said the vessel, which was on its way to the western Turkish port of Izmir, lashed into the breakwater several times before it sank.

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