January 8, 2023

Climate activists pledged Sunday to defend a tiny village in western Germany from being bulldozed for the expansion of a nearby coal mine that has become a battleground between the government and environmental campaigners. Hundreds of people from across Germany gathered for protest training and a subsequent demonstration in the hamlet of Luetzerath, which lies west of Cologne next to the vast Garzweiler coal mine. The open-cast mine, which provides a large share of the lignite — a soft, brownish coal — burned at nearby power plants, is scheduled to close by 2030 under a deal agreed last year between

Military helicopters airlifted hundreds of people from communities cut off by “once in a century” floods in Australia’s northwest, an official leading relief efforts said on Sunday, noting water covered some places “as far as the eye could see.” The crisis in the Kimberley — a sparsely populated area in Western Australia state about the size of California — was sparked last week by severe weather system Ellie, a former tropical cyclone that brought heavy rain. “The water is everywhere,” Western Australia Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson told reporters in Perth. “People in the Kimberley are experiencing a one-in-100-year flood