The world is set to add a record amount of renewable electricity capacity this year as governments and consumers seek to offset high energy prices and take advantage of a boom in solar power, according to a new report Thursday.

The International Energy Agency said high fossil fuel prices — resulting from Russia's attack on Ukraine — and concerns about energy security had boosted the rollout of solar and wind power installations, which are expected to reach 440 gigawatts in 2023.

More than 300 firefighters from the United States and South Africa are heading to Canada in the coming days to help the country battle an unprecedented wildfire season.

Federal officials said Thursday that at least 100 U.S. firefighters will be arriving in Nova Scotia over the weekend to help knock down out-of-control wildfires that have forced about 21,000 people from their homes since Sunday.

Telling executives to "strive harder," hundreds of corporate Amazon workers protested what they decried as the company's lack of progress on climate goals and an inequitable return-to-office mandate during a lunchtime demonstration at its Seattle headquarters Wednesday.

The protest came a week after Amazon's annual shareholder meeting and a month after a policy took effect returning workers to the office three days per week. Previously, team leaders were allowed to determine how their charges worked.

The United Nations said it is ready to start salvage work on an oil tanker stranded off Yemen's coast with more than one million barrels of crude that pose an acute risk to the environment.

"We're very happy to be on site where we can start the work," David Gressly, the U.N. coordinator for Yemen, said by videoconference from aboard a support vessel that has arrived at the stricken ship, the FSO Safer.

Typhoon Mawar was a Category 4 super typhoon with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (241 kph) or greater when it crossed the northern tip of Guam on Wednesday night. It was the strongest typhoon to hit the U.S. Pacific territory since 2002.

A few commonly used weather terms and their definitions, which rely on material from the National Weather Service:

Where once the population of Barcelona drank mostly from its rivers and wells, Spain's second city now relies upon a labyrinth-like mesh of green, blue and purple pipes inside an industrial plant to keep it from going thirsty amid a prolonged drought.

Water is pumped from two kilometers (1.2 miles) into the Mediterranean Sea to where the Llobregat desalination plant sits on an isolated stretch of beach. After journeying through several cleaning and filtering systems it reaches its final stop: the twisting and turning multi-colored channels that squeeze every drop of water free of its salt.

A United Nations committee is meeting Monday in Paris to work on what is intended to be a landmark treaty to bring an end to global plastic pollution, but there is little agreement yet on what the outcome should be.

The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for Plastics is charged with developing the first international, legally binding treaty on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment. This is the second of five meetings due to take place to complete the negotiations by the end of 2024.

Philippine officials began evacuating thousands of villagers, shut down schools and offices and imposed a no-sail ban Monday as Typhoon Mawar approached the country's northern provinces a week after battering the U.S. territory of Guam.

The typhoon is packing maximum sustained winds of 155 kpm (96 mph) and gusts of up to 190 kph (118 mph) but is forecast to spare the mountainous region a direct hit. Current projections show the typhoon veering northeast toward Taiwan or southern Japan.

California rivers fed by this winter's massive Sierra Nevada snowpack have been turned into deadly torrents, drawing warnings from public safety officials ahead of the Memorial Day weekend's traditional start of outdoor summer recreation.

At least seven people, including two children, have died or gone missing this spring in the grasp of powerful rivers plunging down from California's towering mountain range, and there have been numerous rescues.

Just beyond the pastoral gardens and traditional homes of an eastern Hungarian village, a gigaproject of Chinese industry is taking shape.

Bulldozers and excavators are already preparing the land for construction of a nearly 550-acre electric vehicle (EV) battery plant. The 7.3 billion euro ($7.9 billion) factory will be one of Hungary's largest-ever foreign investments, and the government hopes it will make the Central European country a global hub of lithium-ion battery manufacturing in an era where governments are increasingly seeking to limit greenhouse gas emissions by switching to electric cars.