Another exceptional high tide swamped flood-hit Venice on Friday, prompting the mayor to order St Mark's square closed after Italy declared a state of emergency for the UNESCO city.

Football legend Didier Drogba helped launch a drive Friday to plant a million trees to halt deforestation in Ivory Coast.

Italy was poised to declare a state of emergency for Venice Thursday after an exceptional tide surged through churches, shops and homes, causing millions of euros worth of damage to the UNESCO city.

Wildfires such as those raging across eastern Australia have become more common across the world in recent years. AFP talked to scientists about the ways in which climate change can make them worse.

Fourteen people died and more than two million others spent a night huddled in storm shelters as Cyclone Bulbul smashed into the coasts of India and Bangladesh with fierce gales and torrential rains, officials said Sunday.

Bangladesh authorities have evacuated around 100,000 people from the country's low-lying coastal villages and islands with Cyclone Bulbul set to slam into the country later on Saturday, officials said.

Australian firefighters warned they were in "uncharted territory" as they struggled to contain more than a dozen out-of-control bushfires across the east of the country on Friday.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron declared on Wednesday that the Paris climate pact is "irreversible", after the United States formally withdrew from the accord this week.

The United States on Monday formally notified the United Nations that it was withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, making the world's largest economy the sole outlier from the agreement.

A Brazilian land defender was killed and a second injured in an ambush by loggers in the Amazon rainforest, regional authorities reported.