Residents were stacking sandbags to protect low-lying properties Wednesday ahead of a tropical cyclone forecast to become the first in 51 years to hit the Australian east coast near Brisbane, the nation's third-most populous city.

Tropical Cyclone Alfred is forecast to cross the coast between the Queensland state capital Brisbane and the tourist city of Gold Coast to the south late Thursday or early Friday, Bureau of Meteorology manager Matt Collopy said. Brisbane and Gold Coast are a continuous urban sprawl. Their centers are 80 kilometers (50 miles) apart.

Japan is fighting a forest fire that has damaged dozens of homes and forced hundreds of residents to evacuate in a northeastern coastal city.

The fire has burned about 2,100 hectares (5,190 acres) of forest in Ofunato since it started Wednesday, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

Crews battled wildfires in North and South Carolina on Sunday amid dry conditions and gusty winds as residents were forced to evacuate in some areas.

The National Weather Service warned of increased fire danger in the region due to a combination of critically dry fuels and very low relative humidity.

Catherine Bashiama runs her fingers along the branches of the coffee tree she's raised from a seedling, searching anxiously for its first fruit buds since she planted it three years ago. When she grasps the small cherries, Bashiama beams.

The farmer had never grown coffee in her village in western South Sudan, but now hopes a rare, climate-resistant species will help pull her family from poverty. "I want to send my children to school so they can be the future generation," said Bashiama, a mother of 12.

Matt Ries has lived in Florida only three years, but everyone told him last summer was unusually hot. That was followed by three hurricanes in close succession. Then temperatures dropped below freezing for days this winter, and snow blanketed part of the state.

To Ries, 29, an Ohio native now in Tampa, the extreme weather — including the bitter cold — bore all the hallmarks of climate change.

More than half a million people in Afghanistan were displaced due to climate disasters in 2024, the International Organization for Migration said in a country report published on Tuesday.

The European Union executive on Wednesday announced plans for a major revamp of its economic strategy to meet demands of the bloc's captains of industry who have long complained about excessive taxation, sky high energy prices and an overbearing bureaucracy that makes the bloc unattractive.

At the same time, environmental groups say that far-reaching deregulation and the boosting of conditions for energy-intensive companies will come at the cost to the EU's ambitious climate targets.

For centuries, poets, scholars and theologians have flocked to Chinguetti, a trans-Saharan trading post home to more than a dozen libraries containing thousands of manuscripts.

But it now stands on the brink of oblivion. Shifting sands have long covered the ancient city's 8th-century core and are encroaching on neighborhoods at its current edge. Residents say the desert is their destiny.

Three tropical cyclones are spinning in the South Pacific, an occurrence that scientists say is unusual.

Tropical cyclones Rae, Seru and Alfred are all churning as the region is in the peak of a season that starts in November and ends in April.

An annual United Nations conference on biodiversity that ran out of time last year will resume its work Tuesday in Rome with money at the top of the agenda.

That is, how to spend what's been pledged so far — and how to raise a lot more to help preserve plant and animal life on Earth.