Victims of Hungary's worst ever toxic spill, which killed 10 people and injured 150 in 2010, voiced outrage after the boss of the alumina plant that caused the disaster was cleared of any wrongdoing on Thursday.
Zoltan Bakonyi, the former director of the MAL alumina plant in Ajka, and 14 employees were acquitted of charges of negligence, waste management violations and damages to the environment.

Bolivia’s second largest lake has disappeared, displacing hundreds if not thousands of people who depend on it for their livelihoods.
Lake Poopo was officially declared “evaporated” last month in what scientists have said serves as a warning about climate change.

Going green by switching to renewable sources of electricity could be good business for the U.S., according to new research.
A report by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California says that cutting greenhouse gas emissions meant that the U.S. as a whole was $2.2 billion better off in 2013.

One person was killed on Tuesday in a mudslide at a laboratory of France's national nuclear waste management agency in the northeast of the country, the emergency services said.
Another person suffered minor injuries in the incident at Bure near Nancy.

Tens of millions of trees in California are now at risk because of sustained drought, according to new research.
And a different study in a different journal foresees a parched future for the evergreen forests not just in the Golden State but in the entire U.S. southwest.

Denmark produced 42% of its electricity from wind turbines last year according to official data, the highest figure yet recorded worldwide.
The new year-end figures showed a 3% rise on 2014, which was itself a record year for Danish wind energy generation.

Climate scientists are predicting that 2015 will be the hottest year on record “by a mile”, with the increase in worldwide average temperatures dramatically undermining the idea that global warming has stopped – as some climate-change skeptics claim.
Even though there are still several months left in the year to gather temperature readings from around the world, climate researchers believe nothing short of a Krakatoa-sized volcanic eruption that cuts out sunlight for months on end can now stop last year’s record being beaten.

It is the first major meeting of politicians and business leaders since 195 nations struck a landmark deal to limit carbon emissions in Paris in December.
Thousands of luminaries have come to a Swiss ski resort to unpack the opportunities and challenges of the future. ‘Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ is the theme meant to guide high-powered panel sessions.

A cold snap gripped Hong Kong on Sunday, with residents shivering as temperatures plunged to the lowest point in nearly 60 years and frost dusted the mountaintops of a city accustomed to a subtropical climate.
Weather officials issued a frost warning saying an "intense cold surge" was in place, coupled with chilling monsoon winds.

The world will need to spend more than $16trn (£10.55trn) over the next 15 years to leave it with any chance of meeting the hugely ambitious climate change targets agreed in Paris over the weekend, according to new figures.
The sheer enormity of the task ahead began to emerge as analysts started to translate what the new global warming and carbon emissions goals would mean in reality.
