As winter descends on Gaza's tent cities, emergency housing made from mushrooms could keep out the cold -- just one of several sustainable, home-grown innovations put forward by Arab designers at an expo in Dubai.

When Sara first arrived at her rescuers' home, she was sick, tired, and was covered in ringworms and signs of abuse all over her little furry body.

After spending two months in a small Beirut apartment with an animal rights group, the four-and-half-month-old lion cub arrived Friday at a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa after a long journey on a yacht and planes, escaping both Israeli airstrikes and abusive owners.

For the third straight year, efforts to fight climate change haven't lowered projections for how hot the world is likely to get — even as countries gather for another round of talks to curb warming, according to an analysis Thursday.

At the United Nations climate talks, hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan, nations are trying to set new targets to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases and figure out how much rich nations will pay to help the world with that task.

For the second year in a row, Earth will almost certainly be the hottest it's ever been. And for the first time, the globe this year reached more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming compared to the pre-industrial average, the European climate agency Copernicus said Thursday.

"It's this relentless nature of the warming that I think is is worrying," said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.

Cuba was left reeling Thursday after a fierce Category 3 hurricane ripped across the island and knocked out the country's power grid.

The magnitude of the impact remained unclear through the early hours of the day, but forecasters warned that Hurricane Rafael could bring "life-threatening" storm surges, winds and flash floods to Cuba after ravaging parts of the Cayman Islands and Jamaica.