The money is a small fraction of what the U.S. has contributed in the past but reflects what the administration believes is a generous amount that will maintain the United States’ status as the world’s largest humanitarian donor.

A key split is whether the treaty should require cutting plastic production, with powerful oil-producing nations opposed; most plastic is made from fossil fuels. They say redesign, recycling and reuse can solve the problem, while other countries and some major companies say that’s not enough.

President-elect Donald Trump is starting to fill key posts in his second administration, putting an emphasis so far on aides and allies who were his strongest backers during the 2024 campaign.

United Nations human rights investigators said in a statement: “These heinous alleged human rights violations appear to a significant extent to be rooted in systemic racism and have disproportionately affected people of African and Latin American descent.”

Biden used his wide-ranging address to speak to a need to end the Middle East conflict and the 17-month-old civil war in Sudan and to highlight U.S. and Western allies’ support for Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. He also raised concern over artificial intelligence and its potential to be used for repression.

Of the 1,189 creatures listed by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, more than one in five are threatened. They include species from all sorts of animal groups — whales, sharks, elephants, wild cats, raptors, birds and insects, among others.

Now in its seventh week, the war has leveled vast swaths of Gaza, fueled a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank, and stirred fears of a wider conflagration across the Middle East.

More United Nations aid workers have been killed in Gaza than in any other single conflict in the organization’s 78-year history, a stark reminder that humanitarian staff have not been spared from Israel’s relentless bombardment of the besieged strip.

The latest Israel-Hamas war has claimed at least 2,800 lives on both sides since Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Oct. 7.

Humanity still has a chance, close to the last, to prevent the worst of climate change’s future harms, a top United Nations panel of scientists said Monday.

That estimate is considerably lower than the toll reported by Human Rights Activists in Iran, a U.S.-based group that has been closely tracking the protests since they erupted after the Sept. 16 death of a young woman being held by the country’s morality police.

It could have been worse, UN Executive Secretary for Climate Simon Stiell said in a seaside interview with The Associated Press. The talks did achieve the historic creation of a fund for poor nations that are victims of climate disasters, he said.

The world's population will likely hit an estimated 8 billion people on Tuesday, according to a United Nations projection, with much of the growth coming from developing nations in Africa.

The president’s brief attendance at the United Nations climate conference, known as COP27, was largely a victory lap as he emphasized new spending on clean energy initiatives that will “change the paradigm” for the United States and the rest of the world.

Of the three main types of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — the biggest jump from 2020 to 2021 was in methane, whose concentrations in the air came in with the biggest year-on-year increase since regular measurements began four decades ago, WMO said.

Air raid warnings sounded throughout the country for a second straight morning as Ukrainian officials advised residents to conserve energy and stock up on water. Strikes in the capital and 12 other regions Monday caused power outages and pierced the relative calm that had returned to Kyiv and many other cities far from the war’s front lines.