CALI, Colombia (AP) — At the United Nations biodiversity summit in Colombia, negotiators have struggled to find common ground on key issues.

These include how to finance protections for 30% of the world's plants and animals by 2030, how to establish a permanent body for Indigenous peoples and how to make payments for nature’s genetic data that's used to create commercial products.

The two-week conference, known as COP16, was due to wrap up Friday, although observers say negotiations could go into the weekend.

In 2022, the biodiversity summit in Montreal, COP15, established a framework for countries to go about saving plummeting global ecosystems. This year’s follow-up summit was to put plans into motion.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — It was the hottest September in more than a century in parts of South Florida, and Dwayne Wilson could hear his 81-year-old fellow inmate gasping for breath and crying out for help at the Dade Correctional Institution, 45 miles southwest of Miami on the edge of the Florida Everglades.

The elderly man was confined to a wheelchair and for weeks had been complaining of severe chest pain and difficulty breathing in the unventilated dorm where he was serving his sentence, according to a federal class action lawsuit filed this week on behalf of Wilson and two other inmates at the prison.

Early on the morning of Sept. 24, the wheelchair-bound inmate, who is identified in the lawsuit as J.B., was heard once again begging for help, according to the lawsuit. A prisoner wheeled him to the infirmary, where within 15 minutes medical staff ordered him to return to his cell, according to legal filings.

Soon after, J.B. was found unresponsive, his mouth gaping open, the lawsuit says.

ELKINSVILLE, La. (AP) — A dispute over a planned ammonia plant near a historic Black town in southeastern Louisiana ratcheted up a notch Friday with a challenge to the state's approval process.

The battle over the plant is occurring despite the fact that part of the impetus to build it is a provision in a key climate law signed by President Joe Biden. The company claims it will store underground almost all of the climate-damaging carbon dioxide emitted in the production of ammonia, commonly used for fertilizers. Environmental groups warn this is an unrealistic expectation.

The Tulane University Environmental Law Clinic is asking the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality to recuse itself from deciding on a permit for St. Charles Clean Fuels' ammonia plant next to the Elkinsville community. The agency appears to have already decided to grant the permit, the clinic said, before weighing all public comment, which would be illegal under Louisiana law.

The motion comes after a public hearing in September in St. Charles Parish was shut down when more than 150 people tried to fit into a room in a public library the state had reserved.