Oceans have absorbed enough heat since the 2015 Paris Agreement was signed to match the energy of 1.7 billion atomic bomb explosions, scientists warned as the UN Ocean Conference got underway in Nice.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared to acknowledge that the Pentagon has developed plans to take over Greenland and Panama by force if necessary but refused to answer repeated questions at a hotly combative congressional hearing Thursday about his use of Signal chats to discuss military operations.

Police described the 21-year-old man who carried out Austria&s worst school shooting as an introvert who had largely withdrawn from the outside world before carefully planning the attack.

A unit of Gaza's Hamas-run police force says it has killed 12 members of an Israeli-backed Palestinian militia after detaining them, but an Israel-supported aid group said the dead were its workers.