Brijesh Krishnan, a farming enthusiast based in Thrissur, harvested a fresh batch of 100 per cent organic pomelo fruit, commonly known in Kerala as "bumbli mass", on Friday. A natural citrus fruit native to South and Southeast Asia and similar in appearance to a large grapefruit, pomelo is hard to find in Dubai supermarkets.

The very next day after Brijesh harvested the fruit, Merry Kurian and her family of four residing in Sharjah, were enjoying a selection of ripe and delicious 'bumbli mass' and a selection of several other delicious fruits and vegetables. "I've been having these vegetables and fruits for the last two months. I don't miss out a single week and I've noticed a drastic change in the health of my kids and husband," Merry told Khaleej Times.

Thanks to Krishnan, his associate Praveen Kottavathil and seven to eight organic farming enthusiasts, around 100 families in Dubai and Sharjah enjoy farm-fresh, organic fruits and vegetables every week. Launched by Kottavathil, Naturebeatz is a community-run initiative supplying farm-fresh fruits and veggies grown using sustainable practices in Kerala.

The initiative began with 60-100 families two years ago and today, a fast-growing network of 600 families are part of the entirely-community run initiative. An average of 100 families get a total of 5.5-6 kgs of vegetables and fruits each - or a 'kit' - every week. Each kit is priced at Dh60. "Our aim is not to sell and make a profit; even in the future, we don't intend to ever retail these vegetables. It is to introduce more people to a natural, healthy, organic lifestyle," he said.

"Vegetables harvested in Kerala are delivered to homes in the UAE the very next day, completely removing the need for storage, fancy packaging or retailing facilities," added Kottavathil. "For example, this particular batch of sweet passion fruits, yams, and pineapples (pointing to a vegetable kit), were harvested and packed yesterday and we are giving it to families today," said Vijeesh Gopinathan, a volunteer at Naturebeatz.

From farm to the kitchen, in a matter of hours
Naturebeatz grows the fruits and veggies on a five-acre farm at Mala, Thrissur, Kerala, and also procure them from 1,500 other farmers in Kerala. "We've fixed a price for each commodity. For example, the price for a kilo of tomato is 20 Indian rupees. Even if the market rate falls to 3 Indian rupees, we still pay the farmer 20 rupees," said Kottavathil. The farmers don't use any kind of harmful pesticides and the land is made fertile using only natural fertilisers such as cow dung.

"We have two consignments coming in from Kerala every few days," said Kottavathil. 

Health benefits of organic veggies
 The Naturebeatz community insists that young children need to be given healthier options. "Children assume that good-looking fruits and vegetables in the market are good for health. But that is not always the case," said Kottavathil. Conventional farmers sometimes use harsh chemical pesticides and ionizing radiation to grow their produce, which could negatively affect growth.

Deepika Deepak, another resident who is part of the initiative, said: "Some of the veggies are not native to the states where I come from. But they're so nutritious and delicious. The only downside to this is that you can't select the vegetables."

Dr Rola Bashir, a general practitioner at Sunny's Clinic, also a part of the initiative said: "The health benefits of consuming food that is naturally produced and not stored for long periods of time are incredible."

What is in the kit?
Except for onion and garlic, the group supplies an entire myriad of fruits and veggies. The list includes purple yam, long yard beans, cucumber, aubergine, pumpkin, papaya, bitter gourd, snake gourd, tomatoes, pineapples, green chillies, jackfruit, bananas, potatoes, beetroots, ginger, and much more.

The spill from a sunken Iranian tanker off China's east coast has more than trebled in size, just over a week after the ship sank in a ball of flames.
Authorities spotted three oil slicks with a total surface area of 332 square kilometres (128 square miles), compared to 101 square kilometres reported on Wednesday, the State Oceanic Administration said in a statement late Sunday.

The Sanchi, which was carrying 111,000 tonnes of light crude oil from Iran, collided with Hong Kong-registered bulk freighter the CF Crystal in early January, setting off a desperate race by authorities to search for survivors and stave off a massive environmental catastrophe.

The amount was revised down from the original estimate of 136,000 tonnes, the Ministry of Transportation said Friday.

The bodies of only three of the ship's 30 Iranian and two Bangladeshi crew members have been found.

Three coast guard vessels were on the scene Sunday night assessing the spill, the oceanic administration said.

The type of condensate oil carried by the Sanchi does not form a traditional surface slick when spilt, but is nonetheless highly toxic to marine life and much harder to separate from water.

Few fish

The area where the ship went down is an important spawning ground for species like the swordtip squid and wintering ground for species like the yellow croaker fish and blue crab, among many others, according to Greenpeace.

It is also on the migratory pathway of numerous marine mammals, such as humpback and grey whales.

While the accident is unlikely to have a significant impact on the coastal ecology, it has already had an effect on marine life, said Liu Hongbin, a professor at Ocean University of China.

"But, it is necessary to do more observation to know how big the concrete impact will be," Liu said.

Wang Junding, a Chinese fisherman, told AFP that the spill is unlikely to have much effect on his industry, since "there aren't many fish there to begin with".

In addition to the light crude oil, the Sanchi also carried a fuel tank able to accommodate some 1,000 tonnes of heavy diesel.

If all of the Sanchi's cargo spills into the sea, it would be one of the biggest oil slicks from a ship in decades.

By comparison, in the eighth-worst oil spill since the 1960s, the Sea Star dumped 115,000 tonnes in the Gulf of Oman in 1972, according to figures from the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation website.

Geoengineering schemes designed to deflect some of the Sun’s planet-warming rays would backfire if suddenly discontinued, wiping out species and entire ecosystems, a study published Monday warns.

“Rapid warming after stopping geoengineering would be a huge threat to the natural environment and biodiversity,” said co-author Alan Robock, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Half-a-century’s worth of warming could rebound in a handful of years, dooming many amphibians, mammals, corals and land plants to local or global extinction, according to the findings, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

So-called solar radiation management — still untested — would inject billions of tiny particles into the upper atmosphere to bounce a bit of sunshine back into space, lowering Earth’s surface temperature a notch or two.

Sometimes nature does the same: more than 15 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide thrust into the stratosphere by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines cooled the planet by more than half a degree Celsius (one degree Fahrenheit) for about two years.

Advocates of the controversial technology say it could provide a quick and cheap fix for dangerous global warming, which has already begun to wreak havoc.

With an increase of only 1 C (1.8 F) so far compared to pre-industrial times, the world has already seen an upsurge of deadly heat waves, droughts, and storms amped up by rising seas.

The 197-nation Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, enjoins the world to cap global warming at “well under” 2 C, and even 1.5 C if possible.

But efforts to achieve these goals by reducing greenhouse gas emissions have stalled, leading scientists and policy makers to seriously consider engineered solutions seen only a decade ago as far-fetched.

For the study, led by University of Maryland professor Christopher Trisos, scientists tested solar geoengineering scenarios in computer models.

They assumed that planes will spray five million tonnes of sulphur dioxide a year into the stratosphere at the equator over a period of 50 years, from 2020 to 2070.

Humanity, meanwhile, continues to curb carbon pollution, but not quickly enough to cap global warming on its own.

The models show Earth’s average surface temperature dropping by about 1 C, effectively erasing the increase since the mid-19th century.

But how will wildlife cope, the scientists asked, if Sun-dimming were to stop abruptly, leading to a temperature increase ten times faster than if geoengineering had not been deployed?

The researchers calculated how quickly animals and plants would have to move to stay within a hospitable climate.

Many creatures, they found, would be unable to migrate quickly enough, especially amphibians and land mammals. Plants have even less capacity to migrate.

It gets worse: In many cases, wildlife would have to go in one direction to find a liveable temperature but a different one to find the right amount of rainfall.

Harvard professor David Keith, author of “A Case for Climate Engineering,” did not challenge the potential dangers for biodiversity, but told AFP he could not imagine the world’s nations abruptly halting solar radiation management — a scenario sometimes called “termination shock”.

“A decision to suddenly terminate would have to be near unanimous,” he told AFP. Any country who decided doing so was against its interest “could continue geoengineering unilaterally.”

Solar engineering unproven

All this speculation assumes that solar engineering is feasible, which has yet to be proven.

“If solar radiation management is unworkable, we need to know now,” commented Ben Kravitz, a climate scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington and an expert on geoengineering.

“What terrifies me is that people are going to start relying on it, and then we find out later that it is not going to work and we are already locked in,” he told AFP by email.

But that doesn’t mean solar geoengineering should be taken off the table, the other scientists caution.

Even the study authors agreed. “Given current emissions trajectories, it would be irresponsible not to study the potential benefits and costs of proposed climate engineering,” they wrote.

Keith and Harvard colleague Frank Keutsch plan to conduct preliminary atmospheric tests in the Arizona desert this fall, but any conclusions are years away, they said.

“It will be really hard to hit 1.5 C or 2 C without solar radiation, management,” said Kravitz. “Not impossible, but very hard.” MKH

Hong Kong's famous skyline was engulfed in smog Monday, with residents urged to stay indoors.

The winter months regularly bring worse air quality to Hong Kong and other parts of the region due to wind direction and weather conditions.

But as acrid air shrouded the city's skyscrapers, harbour and surrounding hills, residents said they were afraid for their health.'It feels stuffy and airless. It's more difficult to breathe,' said Elsa Choi, 32.

'I'm not sure if masks could filter out (the particles). I won't go outside as much,' Choi added.

The air quality in Hong Kong Monday was categorised as 'unhealthy' on the World Air Quality Index.

Readings of damaging fine particles known as PM 2.5 hit an average concentration of 198 micrograms per cubic metre.

The World Health Organization recommends a maximum average exposure of 25 micrograms per cubic metre in a 24-hour period.The winter months regularly bring worse air quality to Hong Kong and other parts of the region due to wind direction and weather conditions

In Beijing, where pollution has reached hazardous levels in the past, the average reading was 25, categorised as 'good'.

The government said that pollution in Hong Kong was higher than normal and that the risk to health was 'very high', as it warned residents to avoid outdoor activities.

Schools were urged to take 'appropriate measures' to safeguard students' health.

The environment bureau blamed the smog on a mix of light winds, preventing dispersion of pollutants, and sunshine which it said worsens the problem.

But campaigners said authorities should not simply look to the weather.

'We know that there is a weather factor but we also know that roadside air pollution comes from traffic,' said Patrick Fung of NGO Clean Air Network, who said there should be traffic controls on high pollution days.

Fung added that few people in the densely packed city could go about their daily routine without being close to the clogged roads.

A clean air plan was introduced in 2013, and the environment bureau has said roadside pollutants have dropped by up to 74 percent in the past 20 years.

But the number of days where pollution readings were categorised as a high health risk in 2017 was almost double the number in 2016, according to bureau statistics, although it was an improvement on 2014 and 2015.

Campaigners have questioned the speed at which authorities are implementing change and encouraging a drop in fossil fuel use.

In February last year the government was slammed by environmentalists, lawmakers and manufacturers for axing a tax waiver on electric cars as a way to fight congestion.

Resident Susane Yip, 40, said the smog would also put off tourists who want to capture the city's epic harbour views.

'I hope the government can devote its efforts to solving this problem,' Yip told AFP.

A giant mushroom-shaped cloud shot up from the Philippines' most active volcano on Monday, turning day into night as it rained ash on communities where tens of thousands have fled after warnings of an impending eruption.

"Hazardous eruption imminent," the state volcanology agency concluded in its latest bulletin, saying Mayon volcano could blow up within days after two weeks of activity.

Fine ash and sand fell on Legazpi, a city of about 200,000 people, and nearby areas after the midday explosion turned the area into virtual nighttime, forcing motorists to switch on their lights and use windscreen wipers, an AFP video stringer said.

The ash column rose several kilometres above the volcano, blotting out the sun in a largely agricultural region some 330 kilometres (205 miles) southeast of Manila.

"I had to stop because my helmet had filled up with ash," local housewife Girlie Panesa, 39, told AFP as she parked her motorcycle by the roadside in the nearby town of Ligao.

She asked bystanders for water to wash the cement-grey ash off her visor, saying she plans to ride home despite the hazardous conditions because her teenage daughter was alone in their house.

"We expect the explosions to continue," Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology director Renato Solidum told a news conference in Manila.

"There is a possibility of a dangerous eruption, the start of which we are already witnessing," Solidum added.

He advised local officials to evacuate more areas around the crater, expanding the danger zone from six kilometres to eight kilometres.

He also warned aircraft to steer clear of the area due to the danger of jet engines sucking in ash which could gum up turbines, potentially causing a catastrophic crash.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) said it shut down Legazpi airport until further notice, disrupting several domestic flights, while warning off other aircraft from the region.

"CAAP advised pilots flying near the area to exercise extreme caution, as ash from volcanic eruption can be hazardous to the aircraft," it said in an advisory.

More than 40,000 people had fled in the past week, the civil defence office in Manila said Monday.

Solidum said superheated volcanic rocks and ash rolled down the volcano's flanks while the ash column was shooting up, threatening surrounding communities.

Mayon, a near-perfect cone, rises 2,460 metres (8,070 feet) and is considered the most volatile of the country's 22 active volcanoes.

There have been 51 previous eruptions in recorded history, the last one in 2014. In 1814 it buried the town of Cagsawa, killing more than 1,000 people.

The Philippines is part of the Pacific "Ring of Fire" of islands that were formed by volcanic activity.

The most powerful explosion in recent years was the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, about 100 kilometres northwest of Manila, which killed more than 800 people.

France failed to meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in 2016, the government said Monday, just a month after President Emmanuel Macron warned that "we are losing the battle" against global warming.

The environment ministry said the country emitted 463 tons of greenhouse gases, measured as carbon dioxide equivalents, or 3.6 percent more than its goal.

It attributed the slip in part to lower oil prices which can prompt people and businesses to consume more in areas such as transportation or heating.

But emissions were down 15.3 percent from 1990 levels.

As part of the Paris climate accord signed by 195 nations in 2015, France has pledged to cut carbon emissions 27 percent from 2013 levels by 2028, and by 75 percent by 2050.

But the disappointing 2016 results show that "France can't be looking down" on other nations, environment minister Nicolas Hulot said.

"So stronger measures seem necessary to remain on track with our targets", he said.

Macron hosted world leaders last month for talks on financing efforts to combat climate change, with a coalition of 225 companies announcing a five-year plan for monitoring 100 of the world's largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters.

"We're not moving fast enough, that's the problem," Macron told the One Planet Summit, called to bolster the 2015 accord in light of US President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the deal.

For years China was the world's top destination for recyclable trash, but a ban on certain imports has left nations scrambling to find new dumping grounds for growing piles of garbage.

The decision was announced in July and came into force on January 1, giving companies from Europe to the United States barely six months to look for other options, and forcing some to store rubbish in parking lots.In China, some recycling companies have had to lay off staff or shut down due to the lost business.

The ban bars imports of 24 categories of solid waste, including certain types of plastics, paper and textiles.

"Large amounts of dirty... or even hazardous wastes are mixed in the solid waste that can be used as raw materials. This polluted China's environment seriously," the environment ministry explained in a notice to the World Trade Organization.

In 2015 alone, the Asian giant bought 49.6 million tonnes of rubbish, according to the latest government figures.

The European Union exports half of its collected and sorted plastics, 85 percent of which goes to China. Ireland alone exported 95 percent of its plastic waste to China in 2016.

That same year, the US shipped more than 16 million tonnes of scrap commodities to China worth more than $5.2 billion.

- Filling China's enormous shoes -

The ban has been like an "earthquake" for countries dependent on China, said Arnaud Brunet, head of the Bureau of International Recycling.

"It has put our industry under stress since China is simply the largest market in the world" for recycled materials, he told AFP, noting that he expected exports of certain materials to tank by 40 percent or more.

Global plastic exports to China could sink from 7.4 million tonnes in 2016 to 1.5 million tonnes in 2018, while paper exports might tumble nearly a quarter, according to Brunet's estimate.

The decrease will be partly due to a fall in the threshold of impurities China is willing to accept per tonne of waste -- higher standards that most countries currently cannot meet.

Some are now looking at emerging markets elsewhere such as India, Pakistan or southeast Asia, but it could be more expensive than shipping waste to China.

Sending recyclables to China is cheaper because they are placed on ships that would "otherwise be empty" when they return to the Asian country after delivering consumer goods in Europe, said Simon Ellin, chief executive of the Britain-based Recycling Association.

Brunet also warned that many alternate countries may not yet be up to the task of filling China's enormous shoes, since "processing capacity doesn't develop overnight."

The ban risks causing a "catastrophic" environmental problem as backlogs of recyclable waste are instead incinerated or dumped in landfills with other refuse.

In the US, collectors of recyclables are already reporting "significant stockpiles" of materials, said Adina Renee Adler, senior director of international relations at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI).

"Some municipalities have announced that they will either not take certain materials or direct them to landfills," she said.

Brandon Wright, a spokesman for the US National Waste and Recycling Association, told AFP that some facilities were storing inventory outside or in parking lots.

- 'Hard to do business' -

The ban has also created challenges for Chinese companies dependent on foreign waste.

"It will be very hard to do business," said Zhang Jinglian, owner of the Huizhou Qinchun plastic recycling company in southern Guangdong province.

More than half their plastics were imported, and as prices for such raw materials go up, production will be reduced by at least a third, he said. He had already let go a dozen employees.

Others, such as Nantong Heju Plastic Recycling in coastal Jiangsu province, will "no longer do business" at all, a representative said.

But at the same time, the ban could jolt China into improving its own patchy recycling systems, allowing it to reuse more local materials, said Greenpeace plastics expert Liu Hua.

"In China at the moment, there isn't a complete, legal and regulated recycling system in place," he said, with even big cities like Beijing reliant on illegal scavengers.

"When there aren't resources coming from abroad, there's a greater likelihood of us improving our own internal recycling."

In Europe, the ban could also have the positive effect of prompting countries to focus on developing domestic recycling industries, said Jean-Marc Boursier, president of the European Federation of Waste Management and Environmental Services.

"The Chinese decision forces us to ask ourselves whether we wouldn't be interested in making processing plants in Europe so as to export products rather than waste," he said.

On Tuesday, the EU unveiled plans to phase out single-use plastics such as coffee cups and make all plastic packaging recyclable by 2030.

Littering cigarette butts can now invite a fine of Dh 500 in Dubai. According to the Dubai Municipality, based on Local Order No.11 of 2003, fine shall be imposed on the person throwing cigarette butts on Dubai roads, streets, parks or other locations.

Man dies as flat catches fire from cigarette he lit

The fine has been imposed as a part of the Dubai Municipality's efforts to keep the city clean. The residents are required to stay away from littering while driving, walking or shopping anywhere in Dubai.

Tourist hotspots in Mexico's Baja California Peninsula were shaken Friday by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake -- but no injuries or damage were reported, authorities said.

The epicenter was located in the Gulf of California, 76 kilometers northeast of Loreto, a small city in the state of Baja California Sur, the National Seismological Service said.

"There are no reports of people being affected or material damage," Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto posted on Twitter.

The Baja California peninsula, which borders the United States, is home to various resorts including Los Cabos -- a favorite among North American and European tourists.

A spotted hyena has been sighted in a Gabon national park for the first time in 20 years, conservationists said Friday, the latest large predator to have returned to a region where many had gone locally extinct.
The Bateke Plateau National Park lies close to Gabon's border with the Republic of Congo.
Its forests and grasslands once teemed with wildlife, including many large mammal predators, but the ecosystem was decimated by decades of poaching.
Officials said a spotted hyena had been caught on camera traps in the park for the first time in two decades giving hope that more large mammals might return after years of conservation efforts.
The sighting comes two years after a lone male lion was photographed by camera traps after returning.
"The return of these large carnivores is a great demonstration that the efforts of our rangers and partners are having a positive effect on Bateke wildlife," professor Lee White, director of Gabon's National Parks Agency said in a press release.
The spotted hyena was so unknown in recent memories that when researchers showed local park rangers the photographs from the camera traps they did not know the species.
But village elders in communities north of the park instantly recognised the hyena, researchers said.
The sightings are a far cry from when researchers first set up their camera traps in 2001.
That year all they photographed in Bateke was a lone antelope and multiple poachers crossing into the park from the Republic of Congo.
The lion first spotted in 2015 has since made the park his home. But he has yet to be joined by any others.
"This lion... has been continuously photographed during his three-year reign of the park, but remains alone, calling for a mate," the researchers said.

The black clouds hanging over the boats in Dutch ports on Friday (Jan 19) were not the remnants of wild winter gales, but harbingers of another devastating storm brewing for Dutch fishermen.

On Tuesday, the European Parliament struck what may prove to be the death knell for some of the Dutch fishing fleet by demanding a ban on electric pulse fishing.

For the Dutch, who invented this experimental method of trawling the North Sea for fish, the decision came as a bombshell, spelling likely catastrophe.In the northern village of Urk, Andries de Boer, a third generation fisherman, said he like many others now faced an uncertain future after investing heavily to equip their boats with the technology.

On the western coast, in the bustling port of Scheveningen near The Hague, his colleague Anton Dekker said he was "bewildered and extremely disappointed" by "this injustice".

Standing among the nets on his boat, his gaze was lost on the horizon as his crew prepared to head out into the cold North Sea for four days.Pulse fishing involves dragging electrically charged lines just above the seafloor to shock marine life up from low-lying positions into trawling nets.

EU rules allow member states to equip up to 5 per cent of their fleets with electrodes, and the method has been adopted in particular by Dutch vessels fishing for sole.

Some 84 Dutch boats use the practice, alongside just three Belgian vessels, representing 0.1 per cent of the total European fishing fleet.

"Sole is a fish which hides under 10cm of sand during the day. By sending out these little electric pulses, they come out of the sand and bingo, they're in the net," said Dekker.

"When you've been working for years to improve the environment and CO2 emissions, to catch fewer unwanted or small fish, and you've reached your goal - which is what we believe - to then see it reduced to nothing, is terrible," said de Boer bitterly.

In Urk, a 10th-century village which used to be an island in Flevoland, fishermen have spent hundreds of thousands of euros after having won the go-ahead from the EU on an experimental basis.

But MEPs voted on Tuesday by 402 members to 232 in favour of the ban, while 40 abstained.

"It is a wonderful victory against a terribly harmful kind of fishing," said Yannick Jadot, a French member of the Greens party, who took part in the campaign against the practice.

But Pim Visser, head of the Dutch fisherman's organisation VisNed, said the campaign had been based on "half-truths, non-facts, insinuations and allegations".

"It's a scandal, and a blow," he said, denying Jadot's accusations by insisting there was no terrible environmental harm.

On the contrary, the Dutch fishermen said: "The seabed is less disturbed" than by more traditional methods of fishing for sole. There is "no scientific basis for saying that electric fishing is not good", he added.Researcher Adriaan Rijnsdorp, from the University of Wageningen, agreed. He is due to complete a study of the environmental effects next year.

"It's a very promising technique, which is important for limiting the damage which fishing inflicts on the ecosystem," he told the NOS public broadcaster.

But the row has increasingly pitted the Netherlands against France - particularly after 200 top European chefs pledged to stop sourcing seafood obtained through electric pulse fishing.

"We refuse to work with seafood coming from a fishing method that condemns our future and that of the ocean," the chefs said in a text written by two-star Michelin chef Christopher Coutanceau.

They alleged that electric trawlers "produce catches of poor quality, fish which underwent stress and are often marked by post-electrocution bruises".

Greenpeace activists who hung a banner from the Eiffel Tower in protest against far-right leader Marine Le Pen should be given 500 euro fines and suspended sentences, French prosecutors said Friday.Demonstrators from the environmental campaign group unfurled the banner which read "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity #Resist" from the iconic tower on May 5 last year, two days before the second round of the election.

The protest was in response to the "crazy situation" which saw the Front National leader reach the run-off vote with the eventual winner Emmanuel Macron, one activist said.

On Friday, nine of the defendants admitted having cut a safety net to carry out the protest but denied having damaged a fence.

Prosecutors asked the courts to hand each activist a three month suspended sentence and a 500 euro fine for trespassing.

The defendants, who refused to offer a DNA sample in custody, should be handed an extra 200 euro fine, they added.

A Greenpeace spokeswoman said the penalties requested were "particularly severe".

The group are due to be sentenced next month.

Facebook has emerged as the top site for wildlife trafficking in the Philippines, a watchdog said Friday, with thousands of endangered crocodiles, snakes and turtles illegally traded in just three months.

Monitoring network TRAFFIC said Facebook had not done enough to shut down the trade, which saw more than 5,000 reptiles from 115 species put up for sale on its discussion groups from June to August 2016 alone.

"Facebook is the platform of choice for illegal traders in the Philippines because of its popularity and insufficient internal monitoring enforcement," the report said.

"This magnitude of commerce in live wild animals online is just mind-boggling," said Serene Chng, TRAFFIC's programme officer for Southeast Asia.

The groups where live reptile advertisements were posted had more than 350,000 members when the study began, with numbers growing 11 percent in three months.

Most transactions were completed using Facebook's Messenger service, the report said, adding that trading continues on the platform despite periodic government raids.

Over half the species bought and sold were protected internationally and by the Philippines' wildlife act, which carries jail terms and fines.

The radiated tortoise, black spotted turtle, Bengal monitor lizard, and Dumeril's boa -- all threatened with extinction -- were among them, as well as the critically endangered Philippine crocodile and Philippine forest turtle.

In one transaction, a trader also used an unnamed ride-sharing service to deliver wildlife to a buyer.

"This small snapshot reinforces how social media has taken over as the new epicentre of wildlife trade," Chng said.

A statement from Facebook's PR firm said the site does not tolerate wildlife trade and is working with TRAFFIC to tackle the problem.

"Facebook does not allow the sale and trade of endangered animals and we will not hesitate to remove any material that violates our community standards when it is reported to us," it said.

TRAFFIC's regional spokeswoman Elizabeth John said that Facebook was "seeking additional information in order to take action" and that the watchdog was helping it liaise with Philippine authorities.

Findings from the study were used to launch raids on suspected illegal traders in Manila and other areas last year, TRAFFIC said, with numerous arrests made.

Philippine customs authorities also intercepted packages with illegal wildlife destined for China, Sweden, and the United States.

Crude production of 9.9 million barrels per day (bpd) in the US was now at the highest level in nearly 50 years, "putting it neck-and-neck with Saudi Arabia, the world's second largest crude producer after Russia," the IEA said.

"Relentless growth should see the US hit historic highs above 10 million bpd, overtaking Saudi Arabia and rivalling Russia during the course of 2018 -– provided OPEC/non-OPEC restraints remain in place," it said.

A global supply glut pushed oil prices as low as $30 per barrel at the start of 2016.

But producing nations -- both inside and outside the OPEC oil cartel -- struck a deal at the end of 2016 to cut back production and drive prices higher.

Geopolitical tensions and a reduction in oil stocks have also contributed to the recovery.

Crude recently rose above $70 per barrel for the first time since 2014 after OPEC and non-OPEC countries agreed to extend their combined cutbacks until the end of this year.

Rising prices have, in turn, made it more attractive for shale companies to increase drilling.

And since the United States is not a party to the deal, its shale production can continue uninhibited.

"US growth in 2017 beat all expectations ... as the shale industry bounced back, profiting from cost cuts, (and) stepped up drilling activity," the IEA said.

"Explosive growth in the US and substantial gains in Canada and Brazil will far outweigh potentially steep declines in Venezuela and Mexico," it said.

"The big 2018 supply story is unfolding fast in the Americas," the IEA said.

Shale production is controversial, because in order to extract oil and gas, a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals is blasted deep underground to release hydrocarbons trapped between layers of rock.

And environmentalists argue that the process -- known as fracking, or hydraulic fracturing technology -- may contaminate ground water and even cause small earthquakes.

- Market nearly balanced -

Regarding OPEC output, the IEA said that there was "no clear sign yet of OPEC turning up the taps to cool down oil's rally".

In its own monthly market report published on Thursday, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries had said that the global oil market was moving closer to reaching a healthy balance between supply and demand.

The IEA, which advises advanced market economies on energy policy, said that there was 95-percent compliance by OPEC countries with the agreed cuts.

In the first annual decline since 2013, total oil production from the group's 14 members fell from 39.6 million bpd to 39.2 million bpd, it said.

And while "supply discipline from the non-OPEC camp has been less rigorous, 82 percent for 2017," it was "nonetheless strong," the agency said.

At the same time, the increase in US production offset roughly 60 percent of the realised cuts, the IEA said.

The impact of the reduction was further blunted by a rebound in output from Libya and Nigeria, excluded from the cuts.

The IEA calculated that the global oil supply eased by 405,000 bpd to 97.7 million bpd in December, but this was due mostly to unplanned outages in the North Sea and lower Venezuelan output, the IEA said.

That compares with estimated overall global demand for oil of 97.8 million bpd.

The IEA said that if both OPEC and non-OPEC countries maintained compliance, "then the market is likely to balance for the year as a whole."

For producers, there was a silver lining to taking part in the supply cuts, since "they earned more in 2017 while pumping less," it said.

Among OPEC producers, Saudi Arabia saw the biggest reward, making nearly $100 million a day in additional revenue. Beleaguered Venezuela, on the other hand, only earned an extra $9 million.

As a whole, OPEC producers netted an extra $362 million a day.

Russia, not a member of the cartel, earned the most of all, pocketing an additional $117 million a day, the IEA calculated.

China's air quality improved across the country in 2017, the environmental protection ministry said Thursday, after the problem was so dire in previous years that some periods were dubbed an "airpocalypse".

The average level of PM2.5 particles -- which penetrate deep into the lungs -- in 338 cities stood at 43 micrograms per cubic metre last year, falling 6.5 percent year-on-year, according to a ministry statement.

The World Health Organization recommends a maximum average exposure of 25 micrograms per cubic metre in a 24-hour period.

The average level of slightly larger PM10 particles in the cities declined to 75 micrograms per cubic metre, 5.1 percent less than in 2016, the ministry said.

Pollution has plagued China for years, with the dramatic fouling of the country's air, water and soil representing the dark side of breakneck economic growth that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.

Analysts said recent improvements were sparked by favourable weather conditions and more aggressive enforcement of environmental rules.

Authorities have ordered polluting factories to leave Beijing and its surroundings, and designated "no-coal zones" where more than three million homes have abruptly switched to gas or electric heating.

Questions remain, however, on whether the government's measures are sustainable. On Thursday evening, heavy smog blanketed the capital and surrounding northern areas.

As China nears the end of its five-year plan for combating smog, experts and activists have called for a new strategy for long-term success.

A Greenpeace analysis released this month found that while PM2.5 levels in Beijing, Tianjin and 26 surrounding cities declined 33.1 percent year-on-year in the last three months of 2017, for the full year it fell just 4.5 percent around the country -- the lowest rate of decline since 2013.

China's air quality improved across the country in 2017, the environmental protection ministry said Thursday, after the problem was so dire in previous years that some periods were dubbed an "airpocalypse".

The average level of PM2.5 particles -- which penetrate deep into the lungs -- in 338 cities stood at 43 micrograms per cubic metre last year, falling 6.5 percent year-on-year, according to a ministry statement.

The World Health Organization recommends a maximum average exposure of 25 micrograms per cubic metre in a 24-hour period.

The average level of slightly larger PM10 particles in the cities declined to 75 micrograms per cubic metre, 5.1 percent less than in 2016, the ministry said.

Pollution has plagued China for years, with the dramatic fouling of the country's air, water and soil representing the dark side of breakneck economic growth that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.

Analysts said recent improvements were sparked by favourable weather conditions and more aggressive enforcement of environmental rules.

Authorities have ordered polluting factories to leave Beijing and its surroundings, and designated "no-coal zones" where more than three million homes have abruptly switched to gas or electric heating.

Questions remain, however, on whether the government's measures are sustainable. On Thursday evening, heavy smog blanketed the capital and surrounding northern areas.

As China nears the end of its five-year plan for combating smog, experts and activists have called for a new strategy for long-term success.

A Greenpeace analysis released this month found that while PM2.5 levels in Beijing, Tianjin and 26 surrounding cities declined 33.1 percent year-on-year in the last three months of 2017, for the full year it fell just 4.5 percent around the country -- the lowest rate of decline since 2013.

Small electrical appliances such as microwave ovens, kettles and hair dryers harm the environment in a dozen different ways, and consumers can do far more to reduce the impacts, researchers said Thursday.

In the European Union, the electricity used by 130 million microwaves puts 7.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, equivalent to the annual emissions of nearly eight million cars, they reported in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

"Electricity consumption has the biggest impact," said lead author Alejandro Gallego-Schmid, a research associate at the University of Manchester.

"This is because of the fuels used to generate the electricity."

Add 150 million vacuum cleaners, 144 million kettles and more than 100 million hair dryers in Europe alone, and the carbon footprint becomes significant.

Clearly, banishing fossil fuels from the energy mix would slash emissions ascribed to small household appliances.

But that isn't going to happen overnight: coal and gas still account for more than 40 percent of electricity generation in the EU. For the rest of the world, that figure is about 70 percent.

Until that changes, there are other ways to limit the environmental damage caused by the energy-hungry devices that have become part of everyday life, Gallego-Schmid said.

To start with, consumers can be less wasteful.

"On average, kettles boil 50 percent more water than people need," he told AFP.

"There are about 144 million kettles in the European Union. The environmental impacts -- and the margin for improvement -- is huge."

Likewise, most people operate microwaves longer than needed to heat or cook food, he added.

- Diminishing lifespan -

Consumers should also resist the temptation to discard ever-cheaper ovens for models that sport more features or fit in with a new kitchen's colour scheme.

An analysis by other researchers of 100 cast-off microwaves at a recycling point in Britain showed that half still worked, and most of the rest could be easily repaired, Gallego-Schmid said.

In 2005, 184,000 tonnes of waste was generated from discarded microwaves in the European Union alone.

Manufacturers are not beyond reproach. The average lifespan of a microwave oven today is seven years shorter than it was 20 years ago.

Regulations also play a role, and the European Union

Last September, for example, Brussels mandated that new vacuum cleaners sold in the European Union could not have motors exceeding 900 watts, a measure designed to reduce energy use.

Officials touted the new ruling as a money-saver, but some disgruntled consumers rushed out to buy powerful machines before they disappeared from the shelves.

Plugging a device into the wall is not the only way that toasters, microwaves and blow dryers produce CO2 pollution, the study pointed out.

If the "cradle-to-grave" life cycle of small household appliances is taken into account, electricity use only accounts for 67 percent of CO2 emissions.

A quarter is associated with manufacture, six percent with the materials used in construction, and one percent with recycling.

"Manufacturing, transport, end-of-life waste management -- this is where we can improve," Gallego-Schmid said.

Finland on Thursday welcomed a panda pair after a long plane ride from their native China, which leased the fluffy animals to the Nordic nation to strengthen ties.

As part of "Panda Diplomacy" -- China's historic use of the charming creatures to foster relations with trade partners -- Jin BaoBao (Flurry) and Hua Bao (Snow) were greeted by a Chinese and Finnish delegation at the Helsinki Airport, before making their way to the Ahtari Zoo, 325 kilometres (200 miles) north of the capital.

A zookeeper and a veterinarian accompanied the pair to make sure the 6,500 kilometre voyage from China's southwestern Sichuan province to Helsinki was as pleasant as possible, the Ahtari Zoo said in a statement.

"During the trip, the pandas also got food and drink, naturally. Their packed lunch included their favourite foods: bamboo, carrot, apple and panda cakes," panda keeper Anna Palmroth said.

The animals will live in an indoor enclosure. The public will be able to meet the cuddly mammals for the first time on February 17.

"They get to go to their own indoor enclosures where they have fresh bamboo to make their adaptation easier," Palmroth said.

The Finnish climate resembles that of the panda's natural habitat in China's Qionglai Mountains, where the animals are used to snow.

"During the first few days, we will monitor the pandas' behaviour and appetite intensively," she added.

In the first visit by a Chinese leader to Finland since 1995, President Xi Jinping in 2017 announced China would lease the pandas to the zoo for 15 years to mark Finland's 100th anniversary of its independence.

China is Finland's fifth largest trading partner.

There are an estimated 1,864 giant pandas left in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and they can only be found in certain parts of south central China.

Nine people including two firefighters were killed Thursday as violent gales battered northern Europe, snapping air and train links.

Germany halted all long-distance rail traffic for at least a day, while numerous domestic flights were scrapped as hurricane-force winds lashed the country.

The storm claimed six lives in Germany, including two firefighters deployed in emergency operations and two truck drivers whose vehicles were blown over by the gales.

Another driver died when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed in to a truck.

A 59-year-old camper was killed instantly when a tree fell on him in North Rhine-Westphalia state, German police said, as wind speeds reached a high of 203 kilometres an hour (126 mph) at the Brocken -- the highest peak of northern Germany.

The storm, named Friederike, also ripped the roof off a school in the eastern state of Thueringia while children were still in the building. Authorities said no one was hurt there.

In the Bavarian alps, the strong gales forced the cancellation of a ski world championship qualifier at Oberstdorf.

It is the worst storm to strike Germany since 2007, according to the German weather service.

Passengers stuck at rail stations were given a voucher for a hotel room, German rail service Deutsche Bahn spokesman Achim Strauss said.

"We must have protect our passengers and our staff," he added, without saying when the rail service would return to normal.

In the Netherlands, which had borne the brunt of the severe winter storms earlier Thursday, two people were crushed by falling trees as bitter winds barrelled off the North Sea to hit the low-lying country with full force.

As the national weather service raised its warning to the highest code red level, a 62-year-old man was killed in the central Dutch town of Olst by a falling branch when he got out of his truck to remove debris blocking the road.

A second Dutchman, also 62, was killed in eastern Enschede when a tree toppled onto his car, the Dutch news agency ANP said.

In neighbouring Belgium, a woman driver reportedly died when her car was crushed by a tree as she was travelling through a wood in the Grez-Doiceau area, about 35 kilometres south of Brussels.

Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, one of the continent's busiest travel hubs, was forced to briefly cancel all flights as winds gusted up to 140 kilometres an hour in some areas.

Flights later resumed but all passengers were being advised to check their flight status, the airport said in a tweet, adding "up until now, 320 flights have been cancelled".

The airport also had to close the entrances to two of its three departure halls when some roof tiles were whipped off the terminal building.

- Storm carpool -

The traffic chaos also plagued the roads, with the Dutch national traffic office reporting 66 trucks had been toppled over by the high winds causing huge traffic jams on the motorways, the highest recorded number since 1990.

The Dutch NS national train service said meanwhile that only a few trains would be put into service late Thursday, and warned of further disruption on Friday as many overhead lines had been brought down by the high winds.

The hashtag #StormPoolen (or storm carpool) began trending with people searching rides between cities, and some drivers offering spare seats in their cars.

“My lovely boyfriend is trying to get from Leiden Central to Delft. He’s very nice and there’s a bottle of wine in it for whoever can return him unharmed. #StormPoolen,” wrote one Twitter user Molly Quell.

Puk van de Lagemaat promised "mad Dj-ing and Karaoke skills to accompany you in the traficjam (sic)" if anyone could give her a ride from Amsterdam central station to The Hague.

Thalys, the high-speed train operator, said suspended services to the Netherlands and Belgium would resume on Friday while services to Germany would depend on when the Aachen Cologne line reopens.

- Avalanche risk -

Germany's rail service said stranded passengers will receive a hotel voucher or will have the option of spending a night in a train at the station.

Traffic is expected to resume only very gradually, said a German rail spokesman.

Dutch insurers warned that the bill for Thursday's storm damage could top 10 million euros ($12.25 million).

Four people were injured in Antwerp, including one woman who was seriously hurt after being hit in the head by flying metal debris, the Belgian news agency Belga said.

Elsewhere in Europe, Tyrol state in western Austria said part of the Westbahn train line linking Vienna, Linz and Salzburg was closed on Thursday morning because of avalanche risk, national railways company OeBB said.

"We don't want to take any risks," OeBB spokesman Christoph Gasser-Mair said.

The last three years were the hottest on record, the United Nations weather agency said Thursday, citing fresh global data underscoring the dramatic warming of the planet.

Consolidated data from five leading international weather agencies shows that "2015, 2016 and 2017 have been confirmed as the three warmest years on record", the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.

It added that 2016 remains the hottest year ever measured, due to the warming effect of El Nino, while 2017 was the warmest non-El Nino year beating out 2015 by less than one hundredth of a degree.

"The long-term temperature trend is far more important than the ranking of individual years, and that trend is an upward one," WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

The 21st century has so far been a period of the hottest weather, accounting for 17 of the 18 warmest years on record.

"And the degree of warming during the past three years has been exceptional," Taalas added.

The WMO also highlighted the intensification of weather and climate related disasters, which hit record levels in the United States last year, while multiple countries were devastated by cyclones, floods and drought.

The WMO findings were based on data provided by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US space agency NASA, Britain's Met office, the European Centre for medium range weather forecasts and the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Using those inputs, the UN said that the average global surface temperature last year was 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.98 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

"Basically, all of the warming in the last 60 years is attributable to human activities," said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

The warmth also led to the second smallest average annual sea ice coverage on record in the Arctic, NOAA said.

Reacting to the results, experts warned that the planet is moving closer to a set of red lines laid out in the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement.

That treaty calls for capping global warming at "well under" two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

"When even 'colder' (non-El Nino) years are rewriting the warmest year record books we know we have a problem," said Dave Reay, the Carbon Management chair at the University of Edinburgh.

"Global temperatures will continue to bob up and down from year to year, but the climate tide beneath them is rising fast."

- 'Focus' needed -

There is mounting global consensus on the need to slash CO2 and methane emissions, improve energy efficiency, and develop technologies to remove CO2 from the air.

But US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris accord has rattled the international community and complicated efforts at forging joint action -- even though many US state governments insist they remain committed to cut emissions.

Since industrialisation took off in the early 19th century, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by nearly half, from 280 parts per million to 407 parts per million.

Trump will head to the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, an annual gathering of global elite, where he will confront some of the political and civil society leaders who fought hard for the Paris deal.

"Collaborative efforts" to combat unprecedented shared challenges will be a major theme of meeting, WEF boss Klaus Schwab said this week.

"The record temperature should focus the minds of world leaders, including President Trump, on the scale and urgency of the risks that people, rich and poor, face around the world from climate change," said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the London School of Economics.

Canadian energy company TransCanada has secured 20-year oil supply contracts allowing it to move forward with the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, it announced Thursday in a statement.

The agreements set out the transportation of around 500,000 barrels per day for two decades, a volume sufficient to confirm the pipeline's construction.

In November, the US state of Nebraska granted the last major permit needed to authorize construction of the pipeline -- but required it be built along a different route to that originally put forward.

The Keystone extension will be connected to an existing pipeline network in the US, allowing for 830,000 barrels of oil to be transported from landlocked Alberta, Canada to US Gulf Coast refineries.

The project, launched in 2008, was blocked by the Obama administration before Trump gave it the green light last year.

"Over the past 12 months, the Keystone XL project has achieved several milestones that move us significantly closer to constructing this critical energy infrastructure for North America," said Russ Girling, TransCanada's president and chief executive officer, in a statement.

"We thank President Donald Trump and his administration for their continued support," he added.

TransCanada share prices rose 0.21 percent to $48.20 on the New York Stock Exchange as of 1720 GMT.

Cape Town will next month slash its individual daily water consumption limit by 40 percent to 50 litres, the mayor said Thursday, as the city battles its worst drought in a century.

Mayor Patricia de Lille has warned that if rains do not materialise and drastic consumption reductions are not achieved the normal water supply will be shut off.

Instead residents will have to queue at standpipes for daily water rations of 25 litres (6.6 US gallons).

"We have reached a point of no return... We can no longer ask people to stop wasting water -- we must force them," De Lille said as she announced a raft of tough new measures to fend-off the so-called "Day Zero" standpipe scenario, currently forecast for April 21.

A typical shower uses 15 litres per minute while a standard toilet consumes 15 litres per flush, according to WaterWise, a South African water usage awareness campaign.

One of the measures, which the council will vote on Friday, is a punitive tariff for the city's thirstiest consumers.

"Despite our urging for months, 60 percent of Capetonians are callously using more than 87 litres per day," said De Lille, referring to the current daily water consumption limit.

"At this point, we must assume that they will not change their behaviour," she said.

The city has rolled out a string of projects in recent months to increase its water reserves, including efforts to drill into aquifers and the construction of desalination plants.

But De Lille said those measures "will simply not be enough" and that the chance of reaching "Day Zero" was now "very likely".

"The crisis has reached a new severity necessitating a series of new emergency measures," she said.

The city, which attracts millions of tourists every year, has enforced strict waste controls including splash bans at municipal pools and hauling wasteful homeowners before the courts.

Water consumption in Cape Town has nearly halved since early 2016, but has remained stubbornly high at around 620 million litres per day -- 120 million litres above the city's target. "Day Zero" has crept forward by a week since the beginning of the year.

Mayor De Lille said the city would unveil 200 water collection points across the city next week "so that communities can begin preparing for that eventuality".

Strong summer rains saw much of southern Africa recover from a drought brought on by the El Nino weather phenomenon.

But Mediterranean-like Cape Town receives most of its rain in the southern hemisphere's winter -- and scientists warn there is no guarantee of a good rainy season.

Australia is calling on the world's top scientific minds to help save the Great Barrier Reef, offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund research into protecting the world's largest living structure.

The UNESCO World Heritage-listed reef is reeling from significant coral bleaching due to warming sea temperatures linked to climate change.

The 2,300-kilometre (1,400-mile) site is also under pressure from farming runoff, development and predatory crown-of-thorns starfish, with experts warning it could be suffering irreparable damage.

On Tuesday, the Australian government announced a Aus$2.0 million (US$1.6 million) funding pot available to people with bright ideas on how to save the reef.

"The scale of the problem is big and big thinking is needed, but it's important to remember that solutions can come from anywhere," said Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg.

He said the money would be available to the world's "greatest scientific minds, industry and business leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs".

"Solutions could focus on anything from reducing the exposure of corals to physical stressors, to boosting coral regeneration rates by cultivating reef-building coral larvae that attract other important marine species," Frydenberg added.

Up to Aus$250,000 is available for an initial feasibility stage, where researchers can test the technical and commercial viability of their proposals for up to six months.

More than one proposal is expected to be accepted at this stage, the government said.

A further Aus$1 million will then be made available to the best solutions at the proof of concept stage, where applicants develop and test their prototypes for up to 12 months.

Those that are successful will retain intellectual property rights and will be able to try to commercialise their innovation.

UNESCO's World Heritage Committee last year decided not to place the Barrier Reef on its list of sites "in danger" despite concern over the mass coral bleaching.

The 2017 bleaching marked the second-straight year that corals have been damaged by warming sea temperatures, an unprecedented occurrence that scientists said would give the invertebrate marine creatures insufficient time to fully recover.

Coral reefs make up less than one percent of Earth's marine environment, but are home to an estimated 25 percent of ocean life, acting as nurseries for many species of fish.

The Paris Agreement goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius will slip beyond reach unless nations act now to slash carbon pollution, curb energy demand, and suck CO2 from the air, according to a draft UN report.

Without such efforts, "holding warming to 1.5 C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the 21st century [is] extremely unlikely," said the 1,000-page report, prepared by hundreds of scientists.

"There is a very high risk that under current emissions trajectories, and current national pledges, global warming will exceed 1.5 C above preindustrial levels."

On current trends, Earth's thermometer will cross that threshold in the 2040s, said the report.

The greenhouse gas emissions guaranteeing that outcome will have been released within 10 to 15 years.

Under any scenario, there is no model that projects a 66-percent-or-better chance of holding global warming below 1.5 C, the synthesis of recent scientific studies concluded.

With only a single degree Celsius of warming so far, our planet is already coping with a crescendo of climate impacts including deadly droughts, erratic rainfall, and storm surges engorged by rising seas.

The landmark, 197-nation climate treaty, inked in 2015, calls for limiting global warming to "well under" 2 C, and "pursuing efforts" for the 1.5 C cap.

All countries made voluntary carbon-cutting pledges, running out to 2030.

At the same time, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) was mandated to prepare a special 1.5 C report covering impacts and feasibility.

The final version, vetted by governments, will be unveiled in October.

- Moral hazard -

Pressure for the lower temperature target and the report came from nations whose fate could turn on the half-degree difference between a 1.5 C and 2 C world.

Rising seas, for example, threaten the existence of small island states and could displace tens of millions in Bangladesh, Vietnam and other counties with densely populated river deltas.

"There is a tipping point on sea level rise" -- driven mainly by melting icesheets on Greenland and Antarctica -- "somewhere between 1.5 C and 2 C," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

"With 2C, according to our models, sea level will just keep on rising," he told AFP.

The pathways that do exist for stabilising at 1.5 C would require breaching that threshold and then dialling down Earth's surface temperature by drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere and then using if for fuel or storing it underground.

None of technologies that do this exist today on an industrial scale, and some experts fear the long-shot 1.5 C target could pose problems of its own.

"Any scenario for 1.5 C stabilisation likely requires a dubious dependence on 'negative emissions' technologies, whereas 2 C stabilisation is still possible without that," said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

The lure of silver-bullet fixes, he and others point out, could weaken resolve to reduce greenhouse emissions at their source -- an unintended side-effect known as "moral hazard".

Ensuring even a 50/50 chance of a 1.5 C world would require the equivalent of a climate change Marshall Plan, the study concluded.

- Lifestyle changes -

By 2050, carbon dioxide emissions would need to fall to "net" zero, meaning that any CO2 released into the air would have to be offset. Renewable energy sources -- mainly solar and wind -- would by then be the dominant energy source, and burning coal a distant memory.

Other planet-warming gases such as methane and HFCs would also have to be drastically reduced.

"Rapid and large-scale behaviour and lifestyle changes," such as a shift away from eating meat, will also be essential, the report said.

"We don’t have any margin for less than total commitment," said Chris Field, Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment in California and a former co-chair of the IPCC's Working Group II.

"Tackling climate is making serious investments more than making exactly the right mix of investments."

IPCC officials and scientists cautioned that the report -- which has already gone through three rounds of editing by scientists -- is bound to change before it is approved by governments at a meeting in October.

"Drafts are collective works-in-progress that do not necessarily represent the IPCC's final assessment," said IPCC spokesman Jonathan Lynn.

The current review cycle is the first in which government officials will submit comments.

"The final approval process is a dialogue between governments -- which have requested and will use the report -- and the scientists who have written it," he told AFP.

Earth’s surface will almost certainly not warm up four or five degrees Celsius by 2100, according to a study which, if correct, voids worst-case UN climate change predictions.

A revised calculation of how greenhouse gases drive up the planet’s temperature reduces the range of possible end-of-century outcomes by more than half, researchers said in the report, published in the journal Nature.

“Our study all but rules out very low and very high climate sensitivities,” said lead author Peter Cox, a professor at the University of Exeter.How effectively the world slashes CO2 and methane emissions, improves energy efficiency and develops technologies to remove CO2 from the air will determine whether climate change remains manageable or unleashes a maelstrom of human misery.

But uncertainty about how hot things will get also stems from the inability of scientists to nail down a very simple question: By how much will Earth’s average surface temperature go up if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is doubled?

That “known unknown” is called equilibrium climate sensitivity, and for the last 25 years the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the ultimate authority on climate science – has settled on a range of 1.5C to 4.5C (2.7 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit).

Cox and colleagues, using a new methodology, have come up with a far narrower range: 2.2C to 3.4C, with a best estimate of 2.8C.

If accurate, it precludes the most destructive doomsday scenarios. “These scientists have produced a more accurate estimate of how the planet will respond to increasing CO2 levels,” said Piers Forster, director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds.Gabi Hegerl, a climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh who, like Forster, did not take part in the research, added: “Having lower probability for very high sensitivity is reassuring. Very high sensitivity would have made it extremely hard to limit climate change according to the Paris targets.”

The landmark Paris climate agreement in 2015 called for capping global warming at “well under” 2C compared to a pre-industrial benchmark, and pursuing efforts for a 1.5C ceiling.

The findings should not be seen as taking pressure off the need to tackle climate change, the authors and other experts warned. “We will still see significant warming and impacts this century if we don’t increase our ambition to reduce CO2 emissions,” said Forster.

Even a 1.5C increase will have consequences. With a single degree Celsius of warming so far, the Earth is already coping with a crescendo of climate impacts including deadly droughts, erratic rainfall, and storm surges engorged by rising seas.

A 3.5 C world, scientists say, could pull at the fabric of civilisation.

Since industrialisation took off in the early 19th century, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by nearly half, from 280 parts per million to 407 parts per million.Up to now global warming predictions have focused on the historical temperature record.

Cox and colleagues instead “considered the year-to-year fluctuations in global temperature,” said Richard Allan, a climate scientist at the University of Reading.

By analysing the responsiveness of short-term changes in temperature to “nudges and bumps” in the climate system, he explained, they were able to exclude the outcomes that would have resulted in devastating increases of 4C or more by 2100.

One wild card not taken into consideration by the new model is the possibility of rapid shifts in climate brought on by the planet itself. “There is indeed evidence that the climate system can undergo abrupt changes or ‘tipping points’,” Cox said.

The collapse of the gulf stream, the thawing of carbon-rich permafrost, or the melting of ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica – any of these could quickly change the equation, and not in the Earth’s favour.

A critically endangered Sumatran elephant has given birth to a new calf in Indonesia, the country's conservation agency said Wednesday.

Sumatran elephants are a protected species, but rampant deforestation for plantations has reduced their natural habitat and brought them into conflict with humans.

The newborn was found with its 40-year old mother Seruni, who was being closely monitored by the agency in anticipation of the birth inside a conservation forest in Riau on the island of Sumatra.

Officials expressed jubilation at the arrival of the baby who is believed to be a week old. Its gender has not yet been determined.

"The birth of the elephant is a conservation gift," the agency said in a statement.

"The calf is constantly being guarded by its mother and two other adult elephants."

Dozens of elephants were found dead in Sumatra last year, including an adult without tusks in Aceh, along with its abandoned 11-month-old calf.

Most were killed by humans, according to conservationists.

Last month, a pregnant elephant was found dead in a palm oil plantation in Sumatra, in what authorities suspected was a deliberate poisoning.

There are believed to be around 2,000 Sumatran elephants left in the wild.

A giant panda loaned to Malaysia from China has given birth to a second cub during its stay in the Southeast Asian country, zoo officials said Wednesday.

The baby was born Sunday to Liang Liang, who has been on loan to Malaysia since 2014 along with a male panda, said Mat Naim Ramli, director of the national zoo's panda centre outside Kuala Lumpur.

He said officials were not yet sure of the cub's gender as the mother was keeping the youngster so tightly in her grasp zookeepers could not get near.

"The mother is very attentive and protective. She doesn't allow us to (take the cub)," he told AFP.The first cub, a female called Nuan Nuan, was born in August 2015 and sent to China in November last year as part of Beijing's agreement with Malaysia that cubs born in captivity must go back at the age of two.

Mat Naim said the new cub appeared to be healthy and slightly larger than its elder sister when she was born.

He added that officials were trying to get a closer look at the cub, and that the government would likely hold a competition to name the animal soon.Liang Liang and the male, Xing Xing, came to Malaysia in 2014 on a 10-year loan.

Their arrival was held up by a month after the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 -- carrying mostly Chinese passengers -- caused tensions between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.

There are an estimated 1,864 giant pandas left in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and they can only be found in certain parts of south central China.

The IUCN classifies them as "vulnerable".

The wreck of an Iranian oil tanker that collided with a cargo ship off China this month has been located, Beijing said Wednesday, but gave no new details about the environmental impact of the disaster.

The Sanchi, which was carrying 136,000 tonnes of light crude oil from Iran, ran into Hong Kong-registered bulk freighter the CF Crystal on January 6, sparking a fire that Chinese rescue ships struggled to extinguish.It sank on Sunday after a new and massive fire erupted, sending a cloud of black smoke as high as a kilometre above the East China Sea. The bodies of only three of the 32 crew members -- 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis -- have been found.

On Monday Chinese ships scrambled to clean-up a massive oil spill amid fears of devastating damage to marine life.

"The location of the wreck has been confirmed," China's transport ministry said on its official social media platform, adding that the ship lay at a depth of around 115 metres.

Thirteen vessels were sent to continue emergency operations at the scene on Tuesday.

Next, "underwater robots will be deployed to explore the wreck waters," the transport ministry added.

Three separate slicks were easily visible from surveillance planes, up to 18.2 kilometres (11.3 miles) in length, China's State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said in a statement Monday, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The type of condensate oil carried by the Sanchi does not form a traditional surface slick when spilt, but is nonetheless highly toxic to marine life and much harder to separate from water.

The area where the ship went down is an important spawning ground for species like the swordtip squid and wintering ground for species like the yellow croaker and blue crab, among many others, according to Greenpeace.

It is also on the migratory pathway of numerous marine mammals, such as humpback and gray whales.

In addition to the light crude oil, the Sanchi also carried a fuel tank able to accommodate some 1,000 tonnes of heavy diesel.

Takuya Matsumoto, a spokesman for Japan’s coastguard said it was not yet clear how much fuel remained in the ship.

"It is difficult to give an immediate assessment of what kind of environmental impact the oil leak may leave at this point. It depends on how much fuel the ship still had inside," he told AFP on Tuesday.

"We believe the situation is reasonably under control for now."

Alaska-based oil spill consultant Richard Steiner has slammed governments for failing to gather environmental data more quickly.

"As no one has been conducting a scientific assessment of (the environmental impact), the governments and ship owners are likely to claim, erroneously, there was limited damage," he said.

All of Norway’s short-haul airliners should be entirely electric by 2040, the country’s airport operator said on Wednesday, cementing the Nordic nation’s role as a pioneer in the field of electric transport.

Avinor, the public operator of Norwegian airports, “aims to be the first in the world” to make the switch to electric air transport, chief executive Dag Falk-Petersen said.

“We think that all flights lasting up to 1.5 hours can be flown by aircraft that are entirely electric,” he said, noting that would cover all domestic flights and those to neighbouring Scandinavian capitals.All of Norway’s short-haul airliners should be entirely electric by 2040, the country’s airport operator said on Wednesday, cementing the Nordic nation’s role as a pioneer in the field of electric transport.

Avinor, the public operator of Norwegian airports, “aims to be the first in the world” to make the switch to electric air transport, chief executive Dag Falk-Petersen said.

“We think that all flights lasting up to 1.5 hours can be flown by aircraft that are entirely electric,” he said, noting that would cover all domestic flights and those to neighbouring Scandinavian capitals.Electric air travel will also at least halve noise levels and the operating cost of aircraft, Falk-Petersen said.

But before reaching that point, Avinor said it would need to use intermediary technologies, such as biofuels and hybrid fuel-electric solutions.

Boeing and Airbus are currently exploring the viability of electric aircraft.

After abandoning a project for 100% electric planes last year, Airbus decided to refocus its efforts on developing a hybrid model, signing a partnership with British engine maker Rolls Royce and German industrial group Siemens. The first flight is planned for 2020.

Zunum Aero, a start-up partly financed by US aeronautics group Boeing, plans to bring a hybrid plane to the market by 2022.

Floating on the murky waters of the River Thames in London, activist paddle-boarders are trying to rid the waterway of a plague of plastic waste and draw attention to the problem.

As the sun rises on the Thames behind historic Kew Bridge in the west of the British capital, quacking ducks and gliding swans conjured a serene landscape.

But on closer inspection all manner of plastic objects have washed up ashore, including plastic bags hanging from trees.

It is this kind of regularly sullied scene that inspired several members of paddle-board association Active360 to launch cleaning sessions of the river and canals that run through London.

The founders -- Paul Hyman, Louise Nolan and James Roorda -- took to the water this week to inspect an island for detritus.

Within half an hour, they had discovered enough discarded waste to fill a large bucket.

The haul includes plastic bottles, ropes, sheeting, cups "and the most unpleasant plastic bags: dog poop bags which seem to get everywhere now," Nolan said.

Many of these products would take hundreds of years to downgrade.

- '1,000 Royal Albert Halls' -

Nolan noted their haul was relatively modest and -- depending on the tides -- it can be three or four times larger.

For her, this small gesture for the environment is "really gratifying", but Hyman, the founder of the association, struggles with its limitations.

"Cleaning it up, the danger is that we're just hiding the problem," he said.

"It's upstream measures that need to happen. There's no point just cleaning up after people, you need to stop it happening in the first place."

The association tries to raise awareness about its efforts on social networks and at a festival held in spring.

Their latest battle: attempting to convince coffee shops in the capital to abandon disposable cups, many of which fall into the river.

Their anti-plastics campaign is slowly starting to gather momentum, aided in part by the government of Prime Minister Theresa May, who last week announced a plan to fight "one of the great environmental scourges of our time."

"In the UK alone, the amount of single-use plastic wasted every year would fill 1,000 Royal Albert Halls," she said, referring to the famous London concert hall with more than 5,000 seats.

- 'Change in the air' -

May's environmental action plan includes extending a small charge for plastic carrier bags -- currently enforced at supermarkets -- to all retailers in England, as well as urging them to introduce plastic-free aisles.

The government will also call for evidence on changes to the tax system or charges on single-use plastic items, such as takeaway containers.

However environmental advocates have criticised the proposals as too modest, in particular the pledge to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste only by the end of 2042.

The European Union wants to phase out single-use plastics, aiming to make all packaging reusable or recyclable by 2030.

Corporations also appear to be responding to the growing climate of concern around plastics.

On Tuesday, budget supermarket chain Iceland, which specialises in frozen food, announced it would remove all plastic packaging from its own branded product lines within five years.

Coffee and convenience goods chains like Starbucks, Pret a Manger and Costa Coffee also increasingly compete in "green" proposals, offering discounts to customers who bring their own mugs and charging more for their disposable cups.

"This year there is definitely a change in the air," said Hyman, though he remains unconvinced by May's plans.

"What the government announced last week was interesting but it wasn't very tangible," he said.

As he plays his part in the evolving anti-plastics revolution, Hyman urged others "to think about their own lives and the plastic they use, and to think about what they don't really need to use.

"Just carrying a reusable coffee cup around with you is a really good example."