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.

A new study blames pollution of all types for 9 million deaths a year globally, with the death toll attributed to dirty air from cars, trucks and industry rising 55% since 2000.

That increase is offset by fewer pollution deaths from primitive indoor stoves and water contaminated with human and animal waste, so overall pollution deaths in 2019 are about the same as 2015.

The wedding industry remains fraught with waste, but a growing contingent of brides and grooms is pushing for more sustainable changes, from the way they invite guests to the food they serve and the clothes they wear.

The wedding resource The Knot estimates that more than two-thirds of about 15,000 site users did or planned to incorporate eco-conscious touches, including secondhand decor, minimizing food waste and avoiding one-time use products. Nearly 1 in 3 said vendors should be more proactive in leading the way.