Climate Change & Environment
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ADB to devote $14B to help ease food crisis in Asia-Pacific

The Asian Development Bank said Tuesday it will devote at least $14 billion through 2025 to help ease a worsening food crisis in the Asia-Pacific.

The development lender said it plans a comprehensive program of support to help the 1.1 billion people in the region who lack healthy diets due to poverty and soaring food prices.

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Vietnam imposes curfew, evacuations ahead of Typhoon Noru

Vietnam imposed a curfew and evacuated over 800,000 people as a powerful typhoon that had flooded villages and left at least eight dead in the Philippines aimed Tuesday for the country's central region.

People living near the coast where Typhoon Noru was expected to slam early Wednesday had been ordered to take shelter, national television VTV said. Schools were closed and public events canceled.

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Germany down to four glaciers as climate change bites

Germany lost one of its few remaining glaciers this summer as exceedingly warm weather ate away Alpine ice at a faster pace than feared, a scientific report released on Monday showed.

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Drowning island nations: 'This is how a Pacific atoll dies'

While world leaders from wealthy countries acknowledge the "existential threat" of climate change, Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano is racing to save his tiny island nation from drowning by raising it 13 to 16 feet (4 to 5 meters) above sea level through land reclamation.

While experts issue warnings about the eventual uninhabitability of the Marshall Islands, President David Kabua must reconcile the inequity of a seawall built to protect one house that is now flooding another one next door.

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Climate Migration: Indian kids find hope in a new language

Eight-year-old Jerifa Islam only remembers the river being angry, its waters gnawing away her family's farmland and waves lashing their home during rainy season flooding. Then one day in July of 2019, the mighty Brahmaputra River swallowed everything.

Her home in the Darrang district of India's Assam state was washed away. But the calamity started Jerifa and her brother, Raju 12, on a path that eventually led them to schools nearly 2,000 miles (3,218 kilometers) away in Bengaluru, where people speak the Kannada language that is so different from the children's native Bangla.

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6.8 magnitude earthquake shakes Mexico, 1 dead

A powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 struck Mexico early Thursday, causing buildings to sway and leaving at least one person dead in the nation's capital.

The earthquake struck early Thursday shortly after 1 a.m., just three days after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake shook western and central Mexico, killing two.

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Prince William cites queen's love for environment in climate plea

Prince William on Wednesday hailed his late grandmother's passion for the environment as he called for the "fastest change the world has ever known" in transitioning to sustainable energy sources. 

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Storm damages space center in Japan, 130K still lack power

A tropical storm that dumped heavy rain as it cut across Japan moved into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday after killing two and injuring more than 100, paralyzing traffic and leaving thousands of homes without power.

New damage was reported in southern Japan, where Typhoon Nanmadol hit over the weekend before weakening as it moved north.

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UN chief warns global leaders: The world is in 'great peril'

Warning that the world is in "great peril," the head of the United Nations says leaders meeting in person for the first time in three years must tackle conflicts and climate catastrophes, increasing poverty and inequality — and address divisions among major powers that have gotten worse since Russia invaded Ukraine.

In speeches and remarks leading up to the start of the leaders' meeting Tuesday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cited the "immense" task not only of saving the planet, "which is literally on fire," but of dealing with the persisting COVID-19 pandemic. He also pointed to "a lack of access to finance for developing countries to recover -- a crisis not seen in a generation" that has seen ground lost for education, health and women's rights.

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Fossil fuel reserves contain 3.5 trillion tons of CO2

Burning the world's remaining fossil fuel reserves would unleash 3.5 trillion tons of greenhouse gas emissions -- seven times the remaining carbon budget to cap global heating at 1.5C -- according to the first public inventory of hydrocarbons released Monday.

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