U.S. President Joe Biden will travel to flood-hit areas of California on Thursday, the White House said, as the country's most populous state cleans up from a devastating and lethal series of storms.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen took China to task over clean-technology industries on Tuesday, threatening investigations over Beijing's subsidies in the sector.

The ninth atmospheric river in a three-week series of major winter storms was churning through California on Monday, leaving mountain driving dangerous and the flooding risk high near swollen rivers even as the sun came out in some areas.

Heavy snow fell across the Sierra Nevada and the National Weather Service discouraged travel. Interstate 80, a key highway from the San Francisco Bay Area to Lake Tahoe ski resorts, reopened with chain requirements after periodic weekend closures because of whiteout conditions.

Ukraine's first lady will give a rare international address as the World Economic Forum's annual gathering in the snowy Swiss town of Davos gets into full swing on Tuesday, part of a push by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his government to acquire more foreign weapons to defend against Russia's invasion.

Security teams fanned out and snowplows cleared streets as Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska and hundreds of government officials, corporate titans, academics and activists from around the world descended on the town billed as Europe's highest for the traditional winter gathering in Davos. The COVID-19 pandemic torpedoed the snow-covered event each of the last two years, but a springtime iteration was held eight months ago.

Mount Lebanon Environmental Prosecutor Judge Fadi Malkoun has filed charges against the state-run Council for Development and Reconstruction and its chief Nabil al-Jisr as well as against the contractor Jihad al-Arab and his company, LBCI television reported on Monday.

Malkoun accused the aforementioned parties of “executing the Costa Brava landfill project without obtaining an environmental impact approval from the Environment Ministry,” LBCI said.

Climate activists have occupied a giant digger at a coal mine in western Germany to protest the destruction of a nearby village for the expansion of a separate mine.

Energy company RWE told German news agency dpa that four people climbed onto the digger early Monday and operations at the Hambach lignite mine have been paused. Police have been informed of the incident, the company said.

More rain and snow fell during the weekend in storm-battered California, making travel dangerous and prompting evacuation warnings over flooding concerns along a swollen river near Sacramento.

Bands of gusty thunderstorms started Saturday in the north and spread south, with yet another atmospheric river storm following close behind Sunday, the National Weather Service said.

Earth's fever persisted last year, not quite spiking to a record high but still in the top five or six warmest on record, government agencies reported.

But expect record-shattering hot years soon, likely in the next couple years because of "relentless" climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas, U.S. government scientists said.

Exxon Mobil's scientists were remarkably accurate in their predictions about global warming, even as the company made public statements that contradicted its own scientists' conclusions, a new study says.

The study in the journal Science Thursday looked at research that Exxon funded that didn't just confirm what climate scientists were saying, but used more than a dozen different computer models that forecast the coming warming with precision equal to or better than government and academic scientists.

A massive storm system whipping up severe winds and spawning tornadoes cut a path across the U.S. South, killing at least seven people in Georgia and Alabama, where a twister damaged buildings and tossed cars in the streets of historic downtown Selma.

Authorities said a clearer picture of the extent of the damage and a search for additional victims would come Friday, when conditions were expected to clear. After the storm began easing Thursday night, tens of thousands of customers were without power across the two states.