Dangerous heavy metals used in oil production in war-torn South Sudan have leaked into drinking water sources used by 180,000 people with life-threatening health risks, a rights group said Friday.

Toxicological tests carried out on hair samples from 96 volunteers living around the Thar Jath oil processing plant in South Sudan's northern Unity region revealed they were "highly intoxicated with pollutants such as lead and barium," said Klaus Stieglitz, from the German-based Sign of Hope organisation.

It’s no surprise that wildly swinging temperatures, droughts, and floods aren’t exactly good for crops. California’s drought cost the state’s thirsty agricultural sector $1.84 billion in 2015 alone, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that a warming climate reduces yields of cereals like wheat, rice, and maize.

And with climate change messing with the frequency and intensity of at least some extreme weather events, we may be seeing more trouble for food security to come. But just how bad are these crazy weather patterns for our staple crops?

The EU is set to emit 2bn tonnes more CO2 than it promised at the Paris climate talks, threatening an agreement to cap global warming at 2C, a note from the European commission has revealed.

Carbon prices will rise too slowly to cut industrial emissions as much as needed, says a confidential note prepared for MEPs on the environment committee, which the Guardian has seen.

Canadian aboriginal leaders demanded Wednesday a bigger role in the country's fight against climate change, on the eve of a meeting between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and provincial leaders, as a self-imposed national deadline looms to start cutting CO2 emissions.

"It was a good start. Climate change and clean energy are issues that must be dealt with," Metis National Council president Clement Chartier told reporters. "But we want to be included in a meaningful way, not just as bit players." The council represents indigenous Canadians.

In response to questions raised by the “Anti-Corruption Monitor” on the 29th of February 2016, Sukleen has issued the below statement:

“1- Sukomi’s ambition had always been to ensure that 100% of the organic materials sorted from Sukleen collected waste goes for composting. We have been campaigning, without success, since 1997 to have the Government provide us with more land, as per the contracts, to build additional composting and sorting plants. For this purpose, and during our years of operation, 323 letters have been sent to the concerned authorities. These letters are documented in our registers and in the registers of the authorities who have received them.

Climate activists will use direct action to try to shut down major fossil fuel sites across the world in May, including the UK’s largest opencast coal mine in south Wales.

The dozen international sites facing civil disobedience from the Break Free 2016 campaign span the globe from the U.S. to Australia and South Africa to Indonesia.

If greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, rising temperatures and humidity wrought by global warming could expose hundreds of millions of people worldwide to potentially lethal heat stress by 2060, a new report suggests.

The greatest exposure will occur in populous, tropical regions such as India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. But even in the northeastern United States, as many as 30 million people might be exposed at least once a year to heat that could be lethal to children, the elderly, and the sick, according to the new study.

New research published Wednesday in the journal Nature reaffirms that key regions of the globe that have been a source of major climate worry to researchers — such as the Amazon rainforest and the forests of the global north — are exquisitely sensitive to swings in climate. And it also identifies some new and similarly vulnerable ecosystems that will bear very close watching.

“Understanding how ecosystems are going to respond to climate variability is an important feature that we still don’t have a lot of information on,” said Alistair Seddon, the study’s lead author and a biologist at the University of Bergen in Norway. “And so what our study is doing is providing that perspective at a global scale.” Seddon published the study with researchers from the University of Oxford and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in the UK.

Newly grown rainforests can absorb 11 times as much carbon from the atmosphere as old-growth forests, a study has shown.

The researchers have produced a map showing regions in Latin America where regrowing rainforests would deliver the greatest benefits.

A patisserie owner in an upmarket Tunis suburb was handed a three-month jail sentence Thursday for chopping down an ancient eucalyptus tree because it was obstructing his shopfront, court sources said.

They said the man was convicted in a Carthage court for causing "damage to the property of others" and also ordered to pay a fine of 1,000 dinars ($500).