Climate Change & Environment
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Death toll in southwestern China landslide rises to 31 while more remain missing

Thirty-one people were confirmed dead while several remained missing Tuesday after a landslide in a remote, mountainous part of China's southwestern province of Yunnan, Chinese state media reported.

The disaster struck just before 6 a.m. on Monday in the village of Liangshui in the northeastern part of Yunnan.

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Storm Isha batters UK and Ireland, leaves tens of thousands without power

A motorist was killed, tens of thousands of people were without electricity and hundreds of trains were canceled Monday after the latest in a wave of winter storms lashed Britain and Ireland with heavy rain and wind gusts of almost 100 miles (160 kilometers) an hour.

The U.K.'s Met Office weather service issued an unusual blanket wind warning for the whole country before Storm Isha, which reached its peak overnight.

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Landslide in China buries 47 people in freezing temperatures and snow

A landslide buried 47 people in a remote village in mountainous southwestern China on Monday, state media said. Hours later, two survivors were rescued amid freezing temperatures and falling snow.

The disaster struck just before 6 a.m. in the village of Liangshui in the northeastern part of Yunnan province. By evening, nine bodies were retrieved and about 500 people were evacuated from the area.

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Pentagon to install rooftop solar panels as Biden pushes clean energy in federal buildings

The Defense Department will install solar panels on the Pentagon, part of the Biden administration's plan to promote clean energy and "reestablish the federal government as a sustainability leader."

The Pentagon is one of 31 government sites that are receiving $104 million in Energy Department grants that are expected to double the amount of carbon-free electricity at federal facilities and create 27 megawatts of clean-energy capacity while leveraging more than $361 million in private investment, the Energy Department said.

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Heavy snowfall and freezing rain disrupt transport in Scandinavia and Germany

Heavy snow and freezing rain hit parts of northern and central Europe on Wednesday, bringing transport to a halt in some Scandinavian regions and causing major disruption at airports in Frankfurt and Oslo.

At Frankfurt Airport, Germany's busiest, freezing rain forced a halt to takeoffs, German news agency dpa reported. The airport cited a danger of de-iced aircraft icing up again as they taxied toward the runway. Some departures resumed in the afternoon as the rain subsided. Hundreds of flights already had been canceled.

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Indigenous faith, reverence for land lead effort to conserve sacred forests in northeastern India

Tambor Lyngdoh made his way through the fern-covered woodland — naming plants, trees, flowers, even stones — as if he were paying older family members a visit.

The community leader and entrepreneur was a little boy when his uncle brought him here and said these words: "This forest is your mother."

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What are sacred forests?

Sacred forests and groves are primeval woodlands that different faith communities around the world have safeguarded for centuries as abodes of the spiritual or the divine.

Thousands of sacred forests have survived. They're the church forests in Ethiopia's highlands, hillside groves considered holy by Catholics in Italy, woodlands revered by Shinto practitioners in Japan and Indigenous people in Siberia, Australia, the Americas and India.

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Pacific Northwest hunkers down for ice and freezing rain, other US regions battle cold

Parts of the Pacific Northwest were under an ice storm warning through Wednesday morning, threatening to add to the damage brought by a powerful winter storm that hit the region over the weekend.

Area of southwest Washington and western Oregon — including that state's largest cities of Portland, Salem and Eugene — were expecting to see a quarter-inch to an inch (6 to 25 millimeters) of ice, while freezing rain was forecast in the Seattle area.

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Heavy snowfall and freezing rain cause flight, train cancellations across Germany

Heavy snowfall and freezing rain across Germany on Wednesday caused the cancellation of hundreds of flights and trains, crashes on icy roads and school closures.

At Frankfurt airport, Germany's biggest, more than 500 flights were canceled, while in Munich over 250 arrivals and departures were canceled. In western Germany, Saarbruecken airport closed for the day, and Duesseldorf and Cologne/Bonn airports were also affected by delays and cancellations.

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Dangerously cold temps blast much of US, keeping schools closed, flights grounded

Dangerously cold temperatures affected much of the Rockies, Great Plains and Midwest on Tuesday, with wind chills below minus 30 degrees (minus 34.4 Celsius) in many parts of the central U.S.

More than 85,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power early Tuesday, the bulk of them in Oregon after widespread outages that started Saturday. Portland General Electric warned that the threat of freezing rain Tuesday could delay restoration efforts. Transportation officials urged residents to avoid travel as roads were expected to be hazardously slick with ice that could weigh down trees and power lines, causing them to fall.

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