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.

Wildfires are raging across the Pantanal tropical wetlands in southern Brazil, one of the most biodiverse areas in the world and a major tourist destination, regional authorities said Thursday.

A Berlin court on Thursday threw out a case brought by three farmers against Chancellor Angela Merkel's government over its failure to meet climate protection targets, hyped by campaigners as the first such legal challenge in Germany.