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Europe's top human rights court said Tuesday that the Swiss government violated the human rights of its citizens by not doing enough to stop climate change, a landmark ruling that experts say could strengthen activists hoping to use the climate change law. human rights to hold governments to account.In the case, brought by a group called KlimaSeniorinnen, or Older Women for Climate Protection, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, said Switzerland had failed to meet its climate reduction target. carbon emissions and must take action to address this problem. discordance.The women, aged 64 and older, said their health was at risk during heat waves linked to global warming. They argued that the Swiss government had violated their rights by not doing enough to mitigat...

Zwickau, a city in eastern Germany, may not be as famous as Detroit, but its economy has revolved around internal combustion engines since August Horch founded Audi here in the early 20th century.So when Volkswagen announced in 2018 that it would convert its Zwickau factory, the area's largest private employer, to produce exclusively electric vehicles, it was a big deal.“A lot of people were skeptical,” said Michael Fuchs, who has worked at the factory for more than a quarter century. They wondered, “What will happen?” He said.Volkswagen has closed the assembly lines of its popular Golf hatchbacks and converted the factory, which has its own motorway exit, to produce six electric models. The renovated plant can produce one car per minute, shipping it via train.This was a rare case o...

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III told a Senate committee Tuesday that the Pentagon had no evidence that Israel was carrying out genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.Mr. Austin made the comments in testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that was interrupted several times by demonstrators protesting U.S. support for Israel's assault on Hamas. More than 33,000 people have died in Israel's bombing of Gaza, according to Gaza health officials, and severe hunger is spreading across the Palestinian enclave.Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a Republican, asked Mr. Austin to address the protesters' concerns.“Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?” asked Mr. Cotton.“We have no evidence that genocide was created,” Mr. Austin responded."So that's a no?" ...

New Yorkers, beware: If you encounter a sick, dead, or strangely behaving bird or animal, keep yourself and your pets a safe distance away. The avian influenza virus, H5N1, is present in at least a small fraction of New York City's birds, according to a new study.The finding is not entirely surprising, given that H5N1 has been shown to affect migratory birds, a wide range of wildlife, poultry and, as of last month, dairy cows. However, its discovery in the city is an unpleasant reminder that urban spaces are not exempt.People generally associate zoonotic diseases with rural environments, farms or wilderness, said Florian Krammer, an influenza expert at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York who led the study, published online last week.But New York City has many gree...

For just over a week, Etna, one of the most active volcanoes in Europe, has been emitting circular, mostly white smoke rings in the skies of Sicily.It is not the first time that Etna enchants spectators with its puffs (he has been nicknamed the Gandalf of volcanoes, after the wizard who puffs his pipe in "The Lord of the Rings"). But experts say that this month Etna "broke all previous records" with the frequency of the rings, according to Boris Behncke, a volcanologist at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Catania, who posted the phenomenon on Facebook.The rings, known as volcanic vortex rings, appeared earlier this month after a small vent opened on the northwestern edge of the southeastern crater. The phenomenon occurs when enough pressure builds up for the magma ...

For nearly 14 years, an online message board called Memegen has served as a virtual water cooler for Google employees.Memegen was a place where employees could offer blunt criticism of their bosses, share dark humor about job cuts or joke about receiving notes from their parents to excuse them from returning to the office after the pandemic.But Google executives, after watching employees criticize the war in Gaza in recent months, are making big changes to lower the temperature on their company's beloved forum, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.One of the most significant changes to Memegen will be the removal of the virtual thumbs down. The most liked memes rise to the top of Memegen based on these votes. The unpopular ones quickly disappear from sight. Another ...

Iran is operating a clandestine smuggling route through the Middle East, employing intelligence agents, militants and criminal gangs, to deliver weapons to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to officials from the United States, Israel and Iran.The goal, as described by three Iranian officials, is to foment unrest against Israel by flooding the enclave with as many weapons as possible.The covert operation is now raising concerns that Tehran is seeking to turn the West Bank into the next flashpoint in the long-simmering shadow war between Israel and Iran. That conflict took on new urgency this month, risking broader conflict in the Middle East, as Iran vowed to retaliate for an Israeli attack on an embassy that killed seven Iranian military commanders.Many weapons smu...

They are found in makeup, dental floss, and menstrual products. They're in nonstick pans and takeout food wrappers. The same goes for rain jackets and firefighting equipment, as well as pesticides and artificial turf on sports fields.They are PFAS: a class of man-made chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They are also called "forever chemicals" because the bonds in their chemical compounds are so strong that they do not break for hundreds or thousands of years, if at all.They are also in our water.A new study of more than 45,000 water samples worldwide found that about 31% of groundwater samples analyzed that were not near any obvious source of contamination had levels of PFAS considered harmful to human health by Environmental Protection Agency. About 16% of the su...

Two and a half years ago, bankers and investors attended the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, an annual event normally dominated by activists and politicians. It was considered a milestone as the financial sector agreed to commit to the fight against climate change.Hundreds of banks, insurers and asset managers have pledged to invest $130 trillion of capital to reduce carbon emissions and finance the energy transition by introducing the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. But a recent study, published by the European Central Bank, has cast doubt on the effectiveness of such promises.“Our findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of voluntary climate commitments to reduce financed emissions, whether through divestment or commitment,” wrote economists from the central bank, th...

Tesla on Monday settled a lawsuit that blamed the automaker's driver-assist software for the 2018 death of a California man, averting a trial that would have focused attention on the company's technology several months before it planned to unveil a self-driving taxi.The trial stemming from the death of Wei Lun Huang, an Apple software engineer known as Walter, was expected to begin Monday with jury selection. The case was one of the most high-profile ones involving Tesla's Autopilot software, attracting considerable public attention and spurring an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.The terms of the settlement with Mr. Huang's children and other members of his family were not disclosed, and Tesla filed court documents seeking to prevent them from bei...