“Environmentalists”

Five members of Letzte Generation, Germany’s equivalent to Just Stop Oil, have been charged with “forming a criminal organisation”, a move civil rights campaigners say could in effect criminalise future support for the climate campaign.

Mirjam Herrmann, 27, Henning Jeschke, 22, Edmund Schulz, 60, Lukas Popp, 25, and Jakob Beyer, 30, were charged under section 129 of the German criminal code. It is believed to be the first time the law has been applied to a non-violent protest group.

According to prosecutors in the state of Brandenburg, the charges relate to more than a dozen “attacks” against oil refineries, the Berlin-Brandenburg airport and the Museum Barberini, in Potsdam, between April 2022 and May 2023.

A British passenger has died from a heart attack following a bout of very severe air turbulence on a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore which had to divert to Bangkok. Over 30 people were injured mainly, it seems, because they were not wearing their seatbelts at the time of the terrifying and dangerous incident.

Aviation is always at risk of unexpected turbulence. Nevertheless, the BBC has the story and, unsurprisingly, according to its website the cause of all our woes – climate change – is the smoking gun…

A Cambridge climate scientist has called on his colleagues to step back from activism, arguing that they risk undermining the science to fit the politics.

Writing in the journal NPJ Climate Action, Ulf Büntgen, professor of environmental systems analysis, said that he was “concerned by climate scientists becoming climate activists.”

The Omnicause won’t bring down Western civilisation

Why is Greta Thunberg wearing a keffiyeh? The Swedish activist is the poster-girl for climate change. The keffiyeh, though, symbolises a wholly different cause: solidarity with Palestinians in the current conflict with Israel. What does that have to do with global warming?

It’s not just Greta who sees a link. When the current conflict in Gaza began, the climate activist group, Just Stop Oil, known for polarising, clickbait-friendly protests, such as blockading the M25 or throwing soup at Van Gogh paintings, promptly organised a sit-in at London’s Waterloo Station.

Every once in a while, you will see somebody commit a “Kinsley gaffe.” This is Named after Michael Kinsley, who rose to fame as a writer for The New Republic and as a TV commentator.

Protest groups like Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action should be proscribed in a similar way to terror organisations, a government-commissioned report will say.

John Woodcock, a crossbench peer and former Labour MP known as Lord Walney, is recommending that the government creates “extreme protests restriction orders”.

His report, which makes 40 recommendations, is set to be finalised and sent to No 10 as soon as Monday.

It’s safe to say that the gods of politics have not been favoring European green parties during this campaign period. Not only is the Greens group expected to lose the most seats in the European Parliament after the election, but member parties around Europe have been caught up in some of the most embarrassing scandals as well, from sexual harassment to Russian spying.

The latest episode is currently unfolding in Austria, where a comprehensive investigation undertaken by the local daily Der Standard shed light on the Greens’ number one EU candidate, Lena Schilling, and her problematic relationship with the truth. While the party tries to downplay the allegations to soften the blow of the growing scandal, the police and court documents, confidential chats, as well as dozens of interviews with the victims of Schilling’s intentionally harmful lies tell a different story.

Saudi authorities have permitted the use of lethal force to clear land for a futuristic desert city being built by dozens of Western companies, an ex-intelligence officer has told the BBC.

Col Rabih Alenezi says he was ordered to evict villagers from a tribe in the Gulf state to make way for The Line, part of the Neom eco-project.

One of them was subsequently shot and killed for protesting against eviction.