Talks for a free trade deal between Europe and the US face a serious impasse with “irreconcilable” differences in some areas, according to leaked negotiating texts.

Nuclear war. Climate change. Pandemics that kill tens of millions.

The high-speed navy boat stopped on the moonlit waters of Mexico's Gulf of California as sailors looked through binoculars for small vessels conducting illegal activities under the cover of darkness.

While naval forces patrol the seas to thwart drug trafficking, the sailors were not searching for cocaine ships that night off the coast of San Felipe, a fishing town.

The Canadian city of Fort McMurray remained under threat from catastrophic wildfires Wednesday, authorities warned, after more than 80,000 residents were forced to flee the raging inferno sweeping through Alberta's oil sands region.

No casualties have been reported from the monster blaze, which lashed at residences and motor home parks, causing traffic chaos as people scrambled to safety.

Heaps of dead whales, salmon and sardines blamed on the El Nino weather phenomenon have clogged Chile's Pacific beaches in recent months.

Last year, scientists were shocked when more than 300 whales turned up dead on remote bays of the southern coast, the first in a series of grim finds.

For the second time this year, New Delhi is attempting to unclog its choked roads by keeping half the city’s cars off the streets on weekdays based on whether their license plates end in an odd or even number. But the current two-week experiment has not gone well. Many drivers, reluctant to ride non-air-conditioned buses in the intense heat, have ignored the odd-even directive. And traffic jams created by breakdowns of decrepit public buses have counteracted the benefits of pulling cars off the roads. 

A similar experiment in January, initiated by New Delhi’s progressive chief minister, went somewhat more smoothly. But because public buses are crowded and unreliable, many commuters opted for mini-taxis or hopped on their old polluting scooters rather than take the bus — limiting the scheme’s impact on air quality and congestion. 

The UK government is to be sued in the high court over its air pollution plans, just a year after losing at the supreme court and being ordered to fulfil its legal duty to cut pollution rapidly.

A plan to transform Australia’s energy use to 100% renewable was published by GetUp! and SolarCitizens on Tuesday after a modelling study commissioned by the groups suggested such a transition was technically feasible and would be cheaper than the status quo.

The “homegrown power plan” spells out dozens of policy ideas the two organisations say would achieve a switch to 100% renewable energy while delivering more equitable access to electricity and a fair transition for workers in the fossil-fuel industry.

More than half of the US population lives amid potentially dangerous air pollution, with national efforts to improve air quality at risk of being reversed, a new report has warned.

During the 872-day German siege of Leningrad in World War II, in which an estimated 1.1 million civilians died, a small band of workers devoted themselves to safeguarding a priceless trove of 200,000 seeds at the Institute of Plant Industry. Then the world’s largest seed bank, the collection had been amassed, in large part, by famed Soviet botanist Nikolai Vavilov during expeditions to 64 countries. 

As the siege wore on and starvation became epidemic, workers at the institute refused to eat the seeds and protected them from hungry citizens.