It is a sight in decline across Switzerland: glaciers sprawled across the Alps, formed over centuries of snow and sediment packed into a crystalline mass.

With the glaciers now dwindling at an alarming rate because of human-caused climate change, team members of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology monitor what's left in an attempt to slow their demise.

Just a dot on the horizon at first, the bug-like and surprisingly quiet electrically-powered craft buzzes over Paris and its traffic snarls, treating its doubtless awestruck passenger to privileged vistas of the Eiffel Tower and the city's signature zinc-grey rooftops before landing him or her with a gentle downward hover. And thus, if all goes to plan, could a new page in aviation history be written.

After years of dreamy and not always credible talk of skies filled with flying, non-polluting electric taxis, the aviation industry is preparing to deliver a future that it says is now just around the corner.

A line of severe storms has produced multiple tornadoes on the Rolling Plains in Texas, killing at least three people and causing significant damage around the northern town of Matador.

The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported that the storms also produced softball-size hail and wind gusts topping 100 mph (161 kph) in other communities including Jayton, which also was under a tornado warning as the line moved southeast Wednesday night, according to the National Weather Service in Lubbock.

French President Emmanuel Macron called Thursday for concrete solutions and massive investment for developing countries at the start of a two-day summit aimed at seeking better responses to tackle poverty and climate change issues by reshaping the global financial system.

Speaking in Paris, Macron said no country should have to choose between "reducing poverty or protecting the planet."

Saudi Arabia has ambitious plans to welcome millions more pilgrims to Islam's holiest sites. But as climate change heats up an already scorching region, the annual Hajj pilgrimage — much of which takes place outdoors in the desert — could prove even more daunting.

The increased number of pilgrims, with the associated surge in international air travel and infrastructure expansion, also raises sustainability concerns, even as the oil giant pursues the goal of getting half its energy from renewable resources by 2030.

Heads of state, finance leaders and activists from around the world will converge in Paris this week to seek ways to overhaul the world's development banks — like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank — and help them weather a warmer and stormier world.

While restructuring debt and reducing poverty will be part of the summit Thursday and Friday, climate will be the main driver, with representatives from developing nations in Africa, Asia and elsewhere having a prominent seat at the table.

The Biden administration was expected to propose new rules for protecting imperiled plants and animals on Wednesday that would reverse changes under former President Donald Trump that weakened the Endangered Species Act.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to reinstate a decades-old regulation that mandates protections for species that are newly classified as threatened. That measure was dropped under Trump as part of a suite of changes to the species law that was encouraged by industry.

Tropical Storm Bret grew stronger on Wednesday as it took aim at islands in the eastern Caribbean that braced for torrential rainfall, landslides and flooding.

Bret had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph) early Wednesday morning and was moving westward across the Atlantic Ocean at 16 mph (26 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Delfina Guiwan's heart was pounding as she snuck back to her village, now abandoned and eerily quiet, in the fertile foothills of gently erupting Mayon volcano in the northeastern Philippines.

When patrolling police spotted her, they warned that the village is off-limits because of the danger of a violent eruption at any time. Guiwan, 47, said she knew the risks but begged to stay a few minutes more to get her daughter's school uniform from their shack and feed her pigs.

Germany's chancellor pressed China to lean harder on Russia over its war in Ukraine on Tuesday, while leaders from both countries pledged to work together to combat climate change as two of the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitters.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz and about half of his Cabinet hosted a delegation led by Chinese Premier Li Qiang, making his first foreign trip since becoming China's No. 2 official in March, as the two nations held high-level government consultations for the seventh time.