This weekend, the United Nation's climate change conference COP27 kicks off in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Losses from climate-related disasters are on the rise, and the question of who will foot the bill is likely to dominate discussions. Developing nations, bearing the brunt of the crisis, won't shy away from demanding that richer countries pay up. In this special edition of Down to Earth, we take a closer look at the growing rift between the North and global South.

Pyongyang said it was not involved in arms dealings with Russia, and had no plans to do so. The US previously indicated North Korea was supplying Russia with artillery shells for its war in Ukraine.

Some analysts fear North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is building up to another nuclear test. That's prompted one South Korean to take civil protection into his own hands.

North Korea has fired a missile towards the Sea of Japan, the South Korean military has said. Pyongyang promised a "fiercer" response to the US presence in the region.

Luisa Neubauer, a prominent German activist with Fridays for Future, told DW that world leaders underestimate "the amount of mistrust" felt by vulnerable countries at this year's UN climate talks in Egypt.

At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, the US led condemnation of North Korea's recent missile tests. However, the council did not impose new sanctions or even give a formal statement.

German climate activist Luisa Neubauer says "the amount of mistrust" at the COP27 conference from the hardest-hit nations is being underestimated. "If this conference is supposed to mean anything, this is the moment where the Global North really has to pay up," she told DW, speaking in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Indonesian rescue workers were racing on Tuesday to reach people still trapped in rubble a day after an earthquake devastated a West Java town, killing at least 252 people and injuring hundreds, as officials warned the death toll may rise.

A network of women in Cameroon is helping survivors of sexual abuse. It is estimated that around half a million of the country's women and girls have experienced rape and other forms of sexual violence.

A blaze in a high-rise building has killed 10 people in the Xinjiang region of China. Nine others have been injured but are said to be stable.

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In 1977, 13-year-old Megumi Yokota vanished from the Japanese coastal city of Niigata on her way home from school. Twenty-five years later, North Korea admitted that its agents had snatched her away, along with 12 other Japanese citizens, in order to train its spies.