Russia's invasion of Ukraine will accelerate the world's shift to renewable energy because of price shocks in oil and gas, a U.S. climate envoy said Thursday.

U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Rick Duke was speaking at an Australian National University forum after meetings with Australian government officials on bilateral cooperation in transitioning to net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050.

Hundreds of protesters have taken to the streets in western Iran over a lack of drinking water and the inability of officials to solve the problem, state media said Thursday.

Iran, a largely arid country, has for years suffered chronic dry spells and heat waves that are expected to worsen with climate change.

Tropical Storm Ma-on made landfall in southern China's Guangdong province on Thursday after bringing rain and stiff winds to Hong Kong, where the stock market was closed for the morning session due to the storm.

Residents of coastal areas around the city of Maoming were urged to stay away from the shore Thursday morning as the typhoon arrived at 10:30 a.m. (0230 GMT).

They fan out along the tense frontier with Israel in the pre-dawn darkness, setting traps and training their eyes on the other side of the separation fence — where the parakeets are.

Dozens of Palestinian men and boys have taken up bird trapping in recent years. It's a rare if meager source of income in Gaza, which has been under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the militant Hamas group seized power 15 years ago.

Younes Ajil turns on the tap in his home but nothing comes out: dozens of villages are without running water in drought-hit Iraq, surviving on sporadic tanker-truck deliveries and salty wells.

With China's biggest freshwater lake reduced to just 25% of its usual size by drought, work crews are digging trenches to keep water flowing to irrigate crops.

The dramatic decline of water coverage in Poyang Lake in the landlocked southeastern province of Jiangxi had otherwise cut off irrigation channels to neighboring farmlands in one of China's key rice-growing regions.

Dog shelters in Cyprus are overflowing in what some volunteers are calling a crisis caused by the abandonment of canines adopted during Covid as well as complications arising from Brexit.

Africa's migratory birds are threatened by changing weather patterns in the center and east of the continent that have depleted natural water systems and caused a devastating drought.

Hotter and drier conditions due to climate change make it difficult for traveling species who are losing their water sources and breeding grounds, with many now endangered or forced to alter their migration patterns entirely by settling in cooler northern areas.

Poaching and the illegal trade in horns have fallen in recent years but remain grave threats for the rhino's survival, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said Monday.

The Switzerland-based body said 2,707 rhinos were poached in Africa between 2018 and 2021, of which 90 percent were killed in South Africa, mainly in the Kruger National Park.

Brush fires have forced the evacuation of more than 1,500 people in southwest China and power rationing for factories has reportedly been extended as weeks of record heat and drought batter the region.

Some shopping malls in the megacity of Chongqing have been ordered closed for most of the day to reduce electricity demand, state broadcaster CCTV said, limiting opening hours to 4 to 9 p.m.