Pacific island leaders opened their annual regional summit Thursday with a colorful ceremony in Micronesia, as some of the world's smallest nations vowed to put up a big fight against climate change.

Members of the 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) were greeted by traditional dancers in grass skirts at the meeting's opening in the Micronesian capital Palikir.

Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the world's biggest, has placed U.S. group Duke Energy and three subsidiaries on its blacklist for causing "unacceptable" environmental damage, Norway's central bank said Wednesday.

Tropical storm Newton roared into northwestern Mexico early Wednesday, making landfall a second time after leaving two people dead in Baja California, US forecasters said.

Two months before it hosts the COP22 climate conference, Morocco is preparing to launch an ambitious project to turn its mosques green as a commitment to clean energy.

Global warming is making the oceans sicker than ever before, spreading disease among animals and humans and threatening food security across the planet, a major scientific report said on Monday.

China, Taiwan, Japan and the Koreas will experience more violent typhoons under climate change, said researchers Monday, presenting evidence for a recent rise in storm intensity caused by ocean warming.

The world edged closer to a 2020 goal to repair vast areas of damaged natural lands and forests, officials announced Saturday at the world's largest conservation meeting.

Malawi and Guatemala committed to restoring a total of 4.54 million hectares (11 million acres) of degraded land, officials said at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress.

Beekeeper Juanita Stanley woke up stunned Monday morning when she realized the familiar buzz at her South Carolina apiary had gone silent.

In an effort to control the spread of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, authorities over the weekend doused parts of the southeastern state with the controversial pesticide Naled -- a dose that proved fatal to millions of bees.

The United States and China on Saturday formally joined the Paris climate change agreement, with President Barack Obama hailing the accord as the "moment we finally decided to save our planet."

The move by the world's two biggest polluters is a major step forward for the 180-nation deal, which sets ambitious goals for capping global warming and funneling trillions of dollars to poor countries facing climate catastrophe.

President Barack Obama plunked down on a speck of coral reef in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on Thursday and gazed out at the turquoise waters of the marine monument he's widened to become the largest in the world.

Hundreds of albatrosses and rare birds fluttered in the skies halfway between Asia and North America as the president paid an unusual visit to Midway Atoll, one of the most remote areas of the ocean. Driving on a golf cart past dilapidated buildings left over from World War II, Obama said protecting the atoll and its surroundings was critical to ensuring delicate ecosystems survive the throes of global warming.