U.S. wildlife officials reversed their previous finding that a widely used and highly toxic pesticide could jeopardize dozens of plants and animals with extinction, after receiving pledges from chemical manufacturers that they will change product labels for malathion so that it's used more carefully by gardeners, farmers and other consumers.

Federal rules for malathion are under review in response to longstanding concerns that the pesticide used on mosquitoes, grasshoppers and other insects also kills many rare plants and animals. A draft finding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last April said malathion could threaten 78 imperiled species with extinction and cause lesser harm to many more.

Dripping flaming fuel as they go, a line of workers slowly descends a steep, snow-covered hillside above central Colorado's South Platte River, torching piles of woody debris that erupt into flames shooting two stories high.

It's winter in the Rocky Mountains, and fresh snow cover allowed the crew of 11 to safely confine the controlled burn.

Today on March 8, International Women’s Day, the United Nations celebrates the contribution of women and girls around the world, who are "leading the charge on climate change adaptation, mitigation, and response, to build a more sustainable future for all," a U.N. statement said.

"We are not only celebrating their efforts to alleviate the severe and lasting impacts of climate change on our environmental, economic, and social development, but also their integral role in sustaining viable communities," the statement said.

Thirty-one foreign ambassadors to Lebanon have co-authored an op-ed on the occasion of the International Women’s Day, entitled "Climate Justice Requires Gender Justice: a Call to Action for Leaders in Lebanon This International Women’s Day".

Below is the full text of the op-ed as received by Naharnet:

France will soon propose concrete measures to ensure the safety and security of Ukraine’s five main nuclear sites, the office of French President Emmanuel Macron said Saturday.

The safeguards will be drawn up on the basis of International Atomic Energy Agency criteria, a statement from the French presidency added.

The walls of Saifullah's home in northern Jakarta are lined like tree rings, marking how high the floodwaters have reached each year -- some more than four feet from the damp dirt floor.

When the water gets too high, Saifullah, who like many Indonesians only uses one name, sends his family to stay with friends. He guards the house until the water can be drained using a makeshift pump. If the pump stops working, he uses a bucket or just waits until the water recedes.

Although Africa has contributed relatively little to the planet's greenhouse gas emissions, the continent has suffered some of the world's heaviest impacts of climate change, from famine to flooding.

Yet from its coral reefs to its highest peaks, the reverberations of human-caused global warming will only get worse, according to a new United Nations report

"Herders and farmers have their feet on the ground, but their eyes on the sky." The old saying is still popular in Spain's rural communities who, faced with recurrent droughts, have historically paraded sculptures of saints to pray for rain.

The saints are out again this year as large swaths of Spain face one of the driest winters on record. Even as irrigation infrastructure boomed along with industrial farming, the country's ubiquitous dams and desalination plants are up against a looming water crisis scientists have been warning about for decades.

Scientists have long been warning that extreme weather would cause calamity in the future. But in South America — which in just the last month has had deadly landslides in Brazil, wildfire in Argentine wetlands and flooding in the Amazon so severe it ruined harvests — that future is already here.

In just three hours on Feb. 15, the city of Petropolis, nestled in the forested mountains above Rio de Janeiro, received over 10 inches of rainfall – more than ever registered in a single day since authorities began keeping records in 1932. The ensuing landslides swallowed the lives of more than 200 people, and left nearly 1,000 homeless.

Tens of thousands of people had been ordered to evacuate their homes by Tuesday and many more had been told to prepare to flee as parts of Australia's southeast coast are inundated by the worst flooding in more than a decade that has claimed at least 10 lives.

Scores of residents, some with pets, spent hours trapped on their roofs in recent days by a fast-rising river in the town of Lismore in northern New South Wales state.