Australia & Oceania

"Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison doubled down on his government’s climate policy Monday amid a record-breaking heat wave and a devastating weekend of wildfires."

"Scientists fear climate change will drive a surge in the number of supersized and dangerous bushfires that become coupled with the atmosphere and create their own violent thunderstorms."

"A national heat wave pushed high temperatures across the country on Tuesday to an average of 105.6 degrees. Even more heat is in the forecast." "It is so hot, birds are abandoning the sky."

"In a world where warming seas, pollution, and predation are killing coral around the world, an extensive survey of French Polynesia has found a ray of hope. On some atolls there, live coral covers 70% of the reef’s surface; on others, big fish such as grouper and barracuda that have almost disappeared elsewhere are thriving."

"Firefighters in Australia warned on Tuesday they would not be able to contain some of the 100 fires still ablaze in the country before conditions are expected to deteriorate later this week."

"The level of alarm is already high in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, as the Pacific island nation struggles with rising sea levels and the after-effects of decades of U.S. nuclear testing on its atolls."

"Scorched by days of unrelenting wildfires, parts of southeast Australia are facing 'catastrophic fire danger.' On Monday, officials declared a state of emergency for all of New South Wales, the country's most populous state."

"Five thousand miles west of Los Angeles and 500 miles north of the equator, on a far-flung spit of white coral sand in the central Pacific, a massive, aging and weathered concrete dome bobs up and down with the tide. Here in the Marshall Islands, Runit Dome holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet — or 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools — of U.S.-produced radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium."

"Two Indonesian journalists who had reported on an illegal oil palm plantation in Sumatra while also allegedly trying to gain control of the crop have been found dead at the plantation."