Salah Chelab crushed a husk of wheat plucked from his sprawling farmland south of Baghdad and inspected its seeds in the palm of one hand. They were several grams lighter than he hoped.

"It's because of the water shortages," he said, the farm machine roaring behind him, cutting and gathering his year's wheat harvest.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Representative and Regional Director for West Asia, Sami Dimassi, together with the President of Nusaned, Ghaida Nawam, have signed an agreement to mark the start of their collaboration in implementing a series of pilot projects.

The agreement falls within the SwitchMed II initiative, funded by the European Union, aiming to provide support mechanisms to countries on the southern shores of the Mediterranean to switch to sustainable consumption and production patterns.

Hurricane Agatha, the season's first, headed for a stretch of tourist beaches and fishing towns on Mexico's southern Pacific coast Monday amid warnings of dangerous storm surge and flooding from heavy rains.

After forming on Sunday, Agatha quickly gained power, and it was predicted to make landfall as a powerful Category 3 hurricane Monday afternoon or evening, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

A critically endangered Sumatran elephant and its unborn baby were found dead from suspected poisoning in western Indonesia, a conservation official said on Thursday.

Environmental activists are meeting in South Africa this week to press governments and businesses to reduce the production of plastic because it is harming the continent's environment.

The conference, "Towards Zero Plastics to the Seas of Africa," being held in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), South Africa, through Friday brings together academics and experts on the plastics industry and its effects on the continent, say organizers.

A sandstorm blanketed parts of the Middle East on Monday, including Iraq, Syria and Iran, sending people to hospitals and disrupting flights in some places.

It was the latest in a series of unprecedented nearly back-to-back sandstorms this year that have bewildered residents and raised alarm among experts and officials, who blame climate change and poor governmental regulations.

Iraq closed airports and public buildings on Monday as another sandstorm -- the ninth since mid-April -- hit the country, authorities said.  

The capital Baghdad was enveloped in a giant dust cloud that left usually traffic-choked streets largely deserted, an AFP correspondent said. 

Chile holds itself out as a global leader on climate change. Nearly 22% of Chile's electricity is generated by solar and wind farms, putting it far ahead of both the global average, 10%, and the United States, at 13%. It was one of the first countries to declare a target for renewable energy, in 2008.

Yet even as solar farms have spread across the north and center of the long, narrow nation, imported natural gas, a polluting fossil fuel, has been able to sideline the clean electricity they provide thanks to a sweet deal won from the government.

A German court on Friday is set to begin hearing a case brought against Volkswagen by a farmer who claims the automaker is partly responsible for the impact that global warming is having on his family business.

"Farmers are already being hit harder and faster by climate change than expected," the plaintiff, Ulf Allhoff-Cramer, told reporters this week ahead of the hearing before a regional court in the western town of Detmold.

Sandstorms have engulfed the Middle East in recent days, in a phenomenon experts warn could proliferate because of climate change, putting human health at grave risk.

At least 4,000 people went to hospital Monday for respiratory issues in Iraq where eight sandstorms have blanketed the country since mid-April.