[posted on The Guardian, December 20th, 2017] France’s parliament has passed into law a ban on producing oil and gas by 2040, a largely symbolic gesture as the country is 99% dependent on hydrocarbon imports. In Tuesday’s vote by show of hands, only the rightwing Republicans party opposed, while leftwing lawmakers abstained. No new permits will be granted to extract fossil fuels and no existing licences will be renewed beyond 2040,...
[posted by Samudra Gupta Kashyap on The Indian Express, November 27th, 2017] Police on Monday here resorted to lathi-charge, tear-gas and firing of rubber bullets to disperse several hundred protestors in order to carry out an eviction drive in the Amchang Wildlife Sanctuary that shares boundary with Guwahati city, and demolised over 400 houses illegally constructed inside it. The eviction drive, which was carried out following a...
[Posted on The Guardian, December 12, 2017] A deadly explosion and fire that ripped through Austria’s main gas pipeline hub has caused Italy to declare a state of emergency due to a lack of supplies. One person was killed and 18 injured in the blast on Tuesday in Baumgarten, eastern Austria. A police spokesman said: “There was an explosion around 8:45am (0745 GMT) and a fire. A wide area has been sealed off and there are expected to...
[posted by Valerie Volcovici and Roberta Ramtpon on Reuters, December 4, 2017] President Donald Trump on Monday shrank two wilderness national monuments in Utah by at least half in the biggest rollback of public land protection in U.S. history, drawing praise from pro-development lawmakers and a lawsuit from environmentalists. Trump’s announcement followed months of review by the Interior Department after he ordered the agency in...
[posted by Jone Stone on the Independent, November 30th, 2017] Italian authorities are using a Mussolini-era law to put an entire town under lockdown while they force through a gas pipeline against the wishes of the local community, activists have said. A so-called “red zone” was declared around Melendugno by the central government’s military police force this month, after months of protests against the effect of the Trans Adriatic...
