Anastasia Moloney

Amid all the bad climate news, the Amazon rainforest - the world's largest tropical forest - is finally teasing out some hope.

Fewer of its trees were felled this year in Brazil and governments are finally taking on some of its worst exploiters, helping preserve a key weapon in the fight against climate change.

Reproductive rights groups fear a second Donald Trump administration will step up efforts to curb abortion pills and even push for a nationwide abortion ban.

The Trump administration will "decimate" reproductive freedoms that face "unprecedented threats", according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group.

As Americans head to the polls in a razor-thin contest, both Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump have been courting Hispanic voters, the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. electorate.

Hispanics make up a record-high 14.7% of eligible voters this election, up from 7.4% in 2000, and the number eligible to cast their vote today totals 36.2 million - a potentially decisive demographic.

Women are often on the frontlines of protecting Latin America's crucial biodiversity, from guarding rivers against pollution to keeping illegal gold miners and oil companies at bay in the Amazon rainforest.

And at the United Nations COP16 nature summit this week in Cali, Colombia, women are well represented in political leadership, too. 

A few hours' drive from the Colombian city of Cali where a United Nations biodiversity summit is underway, environmentalists risk being ensnared in fighting between drug traffickers and armed groups in places where the state’s authority is fragile.

"To be an activist is to have a target on your back," said 27-year-old Daniela Soto, a community leader belonging to Colombia's Nasa Indigenous people.

Living on the banks of the Marañón River, Indigenous leader Mari Luz Canaquiri has seen nature die and fish stocks dwindle after frequent oil spills poisoned her ancestors' pristine land in Peru's Amazon rainforest.

But rather than focus on the cleanup, Canaquiri and other Kukama Indigenous women turned to the law, securing a landmark ruling in March that recognised the Marañón River as a living entity with inherent rights.

After years of being excluded from global agreements, representatives of people of African descent see the United Nations' biodiversity summit in Colombia as their best chance yet to be recognised for their role in protecting nature.

Colombia, host nation of the U.N. COP16 summit, wants a specific reference made to Afro-descendants, who number about 134 million people, or 21% of the total population across Latin America and the Caribbean, in any pledges, declarations and agreements reached at the summit.

The United Nations nature summit, COP16, kicks off in Colombia on Monday with the aim of halting the rapid destruction of nature and erosion of biodiversity worldwide.

Human life depends on biodiversity, including the widest mix of species on earth - from animals to plants to bacteria - along with broad genetic variety and a range of supporting ecosystems.

A year after Hurricane Otis ripped along Mexico's Pacific Coast, ghost resorts and dilapidation still dot the battered beaches.

Buildings stand empty. Breeze blocks strew the sands. And hotel bosses are busy clearing up last year's multi-billion-dollar mess even as they gear up for a new high season.

Haitian immigrants living in the Ohio city of Springfield have found themselves at the center of the heated debate around immigration, one of the key issues ahead of the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election.

Earlier this month during the U.S. presidential debate between Republican Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, Trump repeated false claims that Haitian arrivals were eating household pets in Springfield.