Environment

(AP) - Powerful storms that killed at least two people continued to move across the South on Sunday after spawning suspected tornadoes that left several people injured and multiple homes and businesses damaged or without power.

National Weather Service meteorologist John Moore said a possible twister touched down Saturday in the Vicksburg, Mississippi, area. No injuries have been reported, but officials said several businesses and vehicles were damaged. Trees were down throughout the hilly city on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi.

(AP) - Blizzard warnings were posted from Colorado to Minnesota on Wednesday and wildfires were a concern in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma as the second so-called “bomb cyclone” storm in less than a month hit the central U.S., raising the prospect of renewed flooding in the already drenched Midwest.

Heavy snow disrupted ground and air travel Wednesday. Roads became impassable and visibility was down to a few feet in northeastern South Dakota due to heavy snowfall. About half of the daily flights at Denver International Airport were canceled.

9 Apr 2019; DW: Climate change is causing the world's glaciers to shrink five times faster than they were in the 1960s, losing 369 billion tons of snow and ice each year, according to a study in the journal Nature.

SYDNEY, April 8 (Xinhua) -- Dutchman Wiebe Wakker pulled into Sydney on Sunday having traveled 95,000 km over three years in his fully electric powered car.

In a journey which took him across 33 countries including Turkey, Iran, India and Malaysia, Wakker hoped to prove the viability of electric vehicles and spread a message of sustainability.

While not officially a world record, due to the car being modified for electric power, the 95,000-km distance is reportedly the longest ever driven in an electric vehicle.

SYDNEY, April 8 (Xinhua) -- An experimental facility launched in the Australian State of Queensland on Monday will test a new way to purify bore water, industrial wastewater and sea water for drinking.

For the past three years, researchers from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), along with Japanese chemical conglomerate Asahi Kasei, have worked to develop a method by which solar energy or industrial "waste heat" can be used to desalinate water samples.

5 Apr 2019; DW: Authorities in the southwestern German city of Heilbronn on Friday announced that a chemical spill at a local shipping company likely killed every living creature in a 16 kilometer (10 mile) stretch of the Schozach River, a tributary of the Neckar.

5 Apr 2019; DW: German car manufacturing giants Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW illegally colluded to hinder competition on emission cleaning technology, the European Commission said on Friday.

The initial findings from an investigation by the EU's antitrust regulators came nearly two years after authorities carried out raids on their headquarters.

What the Commission found:

KANPUR: Pollution has been a vital factor in rising of heart diseases, lungs cancer, lungs infection, asthma, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases. This city, being one of the most polluted cities in the country, remains badly in grip of the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It is a common lung disease. It becomes hard to breathe if one has COPD.

31 Mar 2019; AP: President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he reversed bans on offshore drilling in vast parts of the Arctic Ocean and dozens of canyons in the Atlantic Ocean, a U.S. judge said in a ruling that restored the Obama-era restrictions.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason in a decision late Friday threw out Trump’s executive order that overturned the bans that comprised a key part of Obama’s environmental legacy.

UNITED NATIONS, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Australia, on track to meet and beat the 2020 Kyoto commitments, is confident of meeting its 2030 target, which represents a halving of emissions per person, a senior Australian official said here Friday.