Since childhood, Loveness Bhitoni has collected fruit from the gigantic baobab trees surrounding her homestead in Zimbabwe to add variety to the family's staple corn and millet diet. The 50-year-old Bhitoni never saw them as a source of cash, until now.

Climate change-induced droughts have decimated her crops. Meanwhile, the world has a growing appetite for the fruit of the drought-resistant baobab as a natural health food.

Devastating floods through much of Central Europe and deadly wildfires in Portugal are joint proof of a "climate breakdown" that will become the norm unless drastic action is taken, the European Union's head office said Wednesday.

"Make no mistake. This tragedy is not an anomaly. This is fast becoming the norm for our shared future," said EU Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarcic.

Firefighters on Monday battled flames spreading through a national park in Brazil that is enveloping Brasilia in smoke. It's the latest wildfire in the country, which is experiencing an historic drought.

More than 490 firefighters were trying to extinguish blazes that have already burned through 2,000 hectares (4,942 acres) of the conservation area of Brasilia National Park. There are four main fire fronts, all concentrated in the eastern region of the park, according to a statement from ICMBio, the government agency that manages the park.

Two people died in China's eastern Jiangsu province as Typhoon Bebinca brought torrential rains and powerful winds before easing into a tropical storm, state media reported Tuesday.

Two residents of Zhoushi Town, about 80 kilometers (31 miles) northwest of Shanghai, were hit by a falling high-voltage power line and electrocuted on Monday, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Soldiers dropped sandbags from military helicopters to reinforce river embankments and evacuated residents as the worst flooding in years spread Tuesday to a broad swath of Central Europe, taking lives and destroying homes.

Heavy flooding has affected a large part of the region in recent days, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria. There have been at least 16 deaths reported in the flooding, which follow heavy rainfall across the region.

Five thousand firefighters struggled Tuesday to contain multiple wildfires raging across northern Portugal that are blamed for causing three deaths and forcing an unknown number of residents to flee their homes.

Some 100 fires reported by national authorities stretched the firefighting brigades. Authorities have yet to give figures on how many people have had to evacuate and how many homes have been lost.

The nations of Central Europe were bracing on Friday for severe flooding forecast to hit the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Germany, Slovakia and Hungary over the weekend.

Czech authorities were erecting metal barriers or protective walls from sandbags, while water was released from dams to make space in reservoirs. Residents have been warned to get ready for possible evacuations.

Even as she promoted her efforts to boost clean energy, Vice President Kamala Harris said in Tuesday's debate that the Biden-Harris administration has overseen "the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over rely on foreign oil."

The comment by Harris, a longtime climate hawk who backed the original Green New Deal, surprised supporters and opponents alike — and conflicted with frequent boasts by Harris and President Joe Biden that they are champions in the fight to slow global warming.

The death toll in the aftermath of a typhoon in Vietnam climbed to 233 on Friday as rescue workers recovered more bodies from areas hit by landslides and flash floods, state media reported.

Flood waters from the swollen Red River in the capital, Hanoi, were beginning to recede, but many neighborhoods remained inundated and farther north experts were predicting it could still be days before any relief is in sight.

In a visit to see the damage caused by drought and fire in the Amazon, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pledged to pave a road that environmentalists and some in his own government say threatens to vastly increase destruction of the world's largest tropical forest — and contribute to climate change.

The BR-319 roadway is a mostly dirt road through the rainforest that connects the states of Amazonas and Roraima to the rest of the country. It ends in Manaus, the Amazon's largest city with over 2 million people, and runs parallel to the Madeira River, a major tributary of the Amazon River. The Madeira is at its lowest recorded level, disrupting cargo navigation, with most of its riverbed now endless sand dunes under a sky thick with smoke.