Climate change is largely to blame for a near doubling of natural disasters since year 2000, the United Nations said Monday, adding that disasters had killed 1.2 million people this century. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction said in a report that the period 2000 to 2019 had seen 7,348 major disaster events -- claiming 1.23 million lives and costing some $2.97 trillion -- nearly double the numbers for the previous 20-year-period. nl/vog/txw