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China successfully launched the final module of its Tiangong space station

China successfully launched the final module of its Tiangong space station on Monday, state media said, inching closer to  its completion by the end of the year and a landmark moment in the country’s space ambitions.

Tiangong is one of the crown jewels in Beijing’s well-funded programme — which has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon, and made the country only the third to put humans in orbit — as it looks to catch up with major spacefaring powers like the United States and Russia.

China has been excluded from the International Space Station (ISS) since 2011, when Washington banned NASA from engaging with Beijing.

Tiangong’s completion would signal “China is now an equal player in space with the United States, Russia and Europe”, analyst Chen Lan told AFP.

“In terms of scientific and commercial aspects, it is always good to see new players coming… Competition will always speed up innovation,” he added. 

The module, named Mengtian — or “dreaming of the heavens” — was launched on a Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang launch centre on China’s tropical island Hainan, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Amateur photographers and space enthusiasts watched the launch, which took place at 3:27 pm local time (0727 GMT), from a nearby beach.

About 10 minutes in, the event was declared a “complete success” by Deng Hongqin, commander of the Wenchang launch site.

“Based on the flight data from the Long March 5B… carrier rocket and the solid calculations of the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Centre, the Mengtian experimental module of the space station has accurately entered the predetermined orbit and the working conditions are normal,” Deng said.

“I now declare this launch a complete success,” he added, as mission staff stood up to congratulate each other. 

– Cold atomic clocks –

Over the past two years, China has successfully sent up the Tianhe core module, three manned spacecraft, the Wentian lab module and several cargo spacecraft to build Tiangong.

Mengtian is the third and final major component of the T-shaped space station, and is almost 18 metres (60 feet) long, weighing 23 metric tonnes (50,700 pounds).

It carries scientific equipment that will be used to study microgravity and carry out experiments in fluid physics, materials science, combustion science and fundamental physics, the China Manned Space Agency said.

It is also carrying “the world’s first space-based cold atomic clock system”, Xinhua reported.

“If successful, the cold atomic clocks will form the most precise time and frequency system in space, which should not lose one second in hundreds of millions of years,” Zhang Wei, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said.

The three-member crew of the Shenzhou-14 mission, who are currently living in the space station, will be joined by three more astronauts to complete construction of Tiangong by the end of this year, according to the space agency.

Once completed, the Tiangong space station is expected to have a mass of 90 tonnes — around a quarter of the ISS — or similar in size to the Soviet-built Mir station that orbited Earth from the 1980s until 2001. 

Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace”, will operate for around a decade and host a variety of experiments in near-zero gravity.

Next year, Beijing plans to launch the Xuntian space telescope with a field of view 350 times that of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Fresh off a huge victory party that capped a remarkable political comeback, Brazil's president-elect veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faces a messy, high-risk transition process

A tense Brazil awaited Jair Bolsonaro’s next move Monday, as the far-right incumbent remained silent after losing a razor-thin runoff presidential election to veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — who now faces a tough to-do list.

The country now faces two long months until inauguration day on January 1, after Bolsonaro’s defeat by Lula with a score of 51 percent to 49 percent — the tightest race since Brazil returned to democracy after its 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

Fresh off a huge victory party that capped a remarkable political comeback, ex-president Lula — now president-elect — faces the less-pleasant business of a messy, high-risk transition process.

Bolsonaro’s radio silence after the polarizing election Sunday left Brazilians on edge, after months of the ex-army captain alleging election fraud and a supposed conspiracy against him.

Lula criticized his nemesis for not acknowledging the result.

“Anyplace else in the world, the defeated president would have called me to recognize his defeat. He hasn’t called yet. I don’t know if he will,” he said in his victory speech to a euphoric sea of red-clad supporters in Sao Paulo.

The lights went out at the presidential residence in Brasilia Sunday night with no word from the leader, who is often compared to former US president Donald Trump.

“Lula will have to watch out… for any challenge Bolsonaro and his allies make to delegitimize his win and mobilize his supporters, like Trump in the United States” after his 2020 election loss, said political scientist Paulo Calmon of the University of Brasilia.

– Narrow win –

But with some key Bolsonaro allies — including the speaker of Congress Arthur Lira — acknowledging the incumbent’s defeat, the president did not look to have strong backing in the halls of power to challenge the result.

Lula said he would work to heal a nation wounded by a bitter campaign.

“We’ll have to dialogue with a lot of angry people… This country needs peace and unity. The Brazilian people don’t want to fight anymore,” the ex-metalworker said, his gravelly voice even raspier than usual at the close of a grueling campaign.

Easier said than done, according to political analysts.

“It was a very narrow victory… (that left) half the population unhappy. Lula will have to show a lot of political skill to pacify the country,” said political scientist Leandro Consentino of Insper university in Sao Paulo.

“The worst thing that could have happened Sunday was for Brazilians to go to sleep without the president saying anything. It casts doubt over whether he’s going to accept the result,” he told AFP.

– ‘Immense’ challenge –

The win was a stunning turnaround for Lula, who left office in 2010 as the most popular president in Brazilian history when he was imprisoned for 18 months on since-quashed corruption charges. 

But he is hated by many Brazilians for the economic crisis and massive corruption scandal that marked the end of 13 years in power for his Workers’ Party, which crashed to a close when hand-picked successor Dilma Rousseff was impeached in 2016.

Now Lula returns to office — an unprecedented third term at the age of 77 — facing a political and economic landscape that look far more hostile than in the 2000s.

Bolsonaro’s far-right allies scored big victories in legislative and governors’ races in the first-round election on October 2, and will be the largest force in Congress.

And the global economic situation looks nothing like the commodities “super-cycle” that allowed Lula to lead Latin America’s biggest economy through a watershed boom.

Lula has acknowledged his tough to-do list.

“The challenge is immense,” he said, citing a hunger crisis, weak economy, bitter political division and rampant destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Lula will face “strong” opposition, and possibly street protests, said political analyst Adriano Laureno of consulting firm Prospectiva.

“He’ll take office amid a possible global recession” and difficult economic decisions at home, Laureno told AFP.

“It will be very hard to remain popular,” he said.

– Hope for climate fight –

All eyes in Western capitals have been on the election’s impact on the future of the Amazon and the global climate emergency.

In his nearly four years in power, climate skeptic Bolsonaro became a frequent target of criticism from environmentalists over his support of lumber and mining companies blamed for destroying the rainforest, with Lula’s win raising hopes for change.

Norway, which halted Amazon protection subsidies to Brazil in 2019, will resume its collaboration with Brasilia following Lula’s victory, the Scandinavian country’s environment minister told AFP Monday.

“We note that during the campaign (Lula) emphasized the preservation of the Amazon forest and the protection of the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon,” Espen Barth Eide said, adding that the Amazon rainforest preservation fund currently has 5 billion Norwegian kroner (about $482 million).

Although Lula’s own environmental record is hardly spotless, activists say that under Bolsonaro, deforestation in the Amazon soared.

Protesters install fences and barricades in Sainte-Soline, western France

French protesters on Monday defied a massive police presence to try to stop an agriculture water storage project, as the government vowed to prevent any encampment and denounced “eco-terrorism”.

Violent clashes with security forces marked the launch of the protest Saturday near Sainte-Soline in the western Deux-Sevres department, where officials said 4,000 people had turned out against the project.

A group of 400 farmers is hoping to build a network of 16 giant retention basins for groundwater pumped out during the winter, which can then be used for irrigation in summers, which have experienced severe drought in recent years.

But climate activists and local opponents see a “water grab” by intensive agricultural producers that will deprive smaller farmers of access by disrupting natural groundwater recharge.

One farmer has allowed protesters to set up camp on his land, where watchtowers and fences are being built to create a “village of Gauls”, a reference to the popular “Asterix” comic books.

“We fully intend to use them, it will be a base for all types of harassment operations we’re going to carry out if the construction continues,” said Julien Le Guet, a spokesman for the protest collective.

Masked protesters also tore out a water pipe thought to be used to fill one of the basins, with video of the vandalism circulating widely on news reports and social media.

France has seen the emergence of several such camps in recent years — called Zones to Defend, or ZADs — by left-wing or anti-capitalist opponents of new airports, dams, nuclear power plants and other projects.

Such installations have often sparked clashes with police, who have been accused of using excessive force that has caused severe injuries and even the death of a protester in 2014.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Sunday that 1,000 police would remain on site so that “no ZAD is installed in the Deux-Sevres department nor anywhere else in France.”

He also condemned “eco-terrorism” by some of the protesters who used high-power fireworks and “blunt objects” to attack security forces on Saturday.

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A climate protester in Munich last month

Lauranne Gateau did not train as a tropical ecologist only to end up sitting on a busy shopping street in her lab coat with one hand glued to the ground.

But that was where the 34-year-old French scientist found herself after giving up her job last year to focus instead on campaigning for more action on climate change.

“I don’t want to be here, I’m afraid of the consequences… but we are desperate,” she told AFP at a protest in Munich staged by a group known as Scientist Rebellion.

“I was just counting dead trees, I was counting droughts, I was counting floodings. I don’t want to do that!” she said.

“As an ecologist, you just count deaths. You just count hectares of land burning. It is not possible, we need to stop it before our entire planet collapses.”

Founded in 2020, Scientist Rebellion is a loosely federated network of scientists in more than two dozen countries that coordinates acts of civil disobedience to highlight the climate crisis.

With the urgency of the environmental catastrophe growing, the group has also intensified their protest action in recent months.

– ‘Listen to the science!’ –

The group also targets universities, research institutes and major scientific journals, prodding them and their staff to speak out more forcefully on what they describe as the existential threat of global warming.

One major demand of the group is the cancellation of debt in developing countries, which it says is hampering the fight against climate change. 

In Germany, Scientist Rebellion is calling for a speed limit on motorways and the return of a super-cheap public transport ticket that was introduced this summer to help fight inflation but had a limited shelf life.

In Munich, Gateau and 14 other Scientist Rebellion activists in white lab coats glued themselves to a busy shopping street between the gleaming showrooms of automotive giants Mercedes-Benz and Cupra.

Chanting slogans such as “You can’t negotiate with physics!” and “Listen to the science!”, they brought traffic to a standstill for several hours on one of the city’s busiest streets.

Originally from countries including France, Spain and the United States as well as Germany, the protesters also risked the wrath of retailers to glue posters to shop windows in the area. 

Members of the group have also recently demonstrated in front of the finance ministry in Berlin, stormed asset management company Blackrock and glued themselves to cars in the Porsche showroom in Wolfsburg, a city in northern Germany.

Sylvain Kuppel, 36, a French expert in the water cycle, took time off from his work at a French research institute to join the Munich protest.

– ‘There is no time left’ –

Asked whether he was afraid of the consequences, he replied: “I’m much more afraid of what will happen to us.” 

“As a human being, I can only be terrified of what is going to happen to us and of what has already started to happen,” he said, holding back tears.

Members of Scientist Rebellion are among an increasing number of climate activists staging eye-catching stunts to draw attention to their cause.

Protesters recently threw tomato soup over a Van Gogh painting in London and mashed potatoes over a Monet work in the German city of Potsdam.

Such protests have drawn a barrage of criticism, but activists say the drastic actions are warranted.

“Everything I’ve studied tells me that there is no time left. We are all very desperate,” said American environmental science student Nate Rugh, 35.

Victor De Santos, a 34-year-old Spanish environmental scientist, quit working in academia a couple of years ago. 

“For me, it doesn’t make sense to keep studying — we have to act. We have people already doing science and saying it out loud, but nobody is listening,” he said.

The launch of a rocket carrying China's Chang'e-5 lunar probe underlined how much progress Beijing had made towards its 'space dream'

China successfully launched the final module of its Tiangong space station on Monday, inching closer to completion by the end of the year and a landmark moment in the country’s space ambitions.

The world’s second-largest economy has put billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of eventually sending humans to the Moon.

China has come a long way in catching up with the United States and Russia, whose astronauts and cosmonauts have decades of experience in space exploration.

Here is a look at the country’s space programme, and where it is headed:

– Mao’s vow –

Soon after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, Chairman Mao Zedong pronounced: “We too will make satellites.”

It took more than a decade, but in 1970, China launched its first satellite on a Long March rocket.

Human spaceflight took decades longer, with Yang Liwei becoming the first Chinese “taikonaut” in 2003.

As the launch approached, concerns over the viability of the mission caused Beijing to cancel a live television broadcast at the last minute.

But it went smoothly, with Yang orbiting the Earth 14 times during a 21-hour flight aboard the Shenzhou 5.

China has launched seven crewed missions since.

– Space station and ‘Jade Rabbit’ –

Following in the footsteps of the United States and Russia, China began planning to build its own space station circling the planet.

The Tiangong-1 lab was launched in 2011.

In 2013, the second Chinese woman in space, Wang Yaping, gave a video class from inside the space module to children across the world’s most populous country.

The craft was also used for medical experiments and, most importantly, tests intended to prepare for the construction of a space station.

That was followed by the “Jade Rabbit” lunar rover in 2013, which initially appeared a dud when it turned dormant and stopped sending signals back to Earth.

It made a dramatic recovery, however, ultimately surveying the Moon’s surface for 31 months — well beyond its expected lifespan.

In 2016, China launched its second orbital lab, the Tiangong-2. Astronauts who visited the station have run experiments on growing rice and other plants in space.

– ‘Space dream’ –

Under President Xi Jinping, plans for China’s “space dream” have been put into overdrive.

Beijing is looking to finally catch up with the United States and Russia after years of belatedly matching their milestones.

Besides a space station, China is also planning to build a base on the Moon, and the country’s National Space Administration said it aims to launch a crewed lunar mission by 2029.

But lunar work was dealt a setback in 2017 when the Long March-5 Y2, a powerful heavy-lift rocket, failed to launch on a mission to send communication satellites into orbit.

That forced the postponement of the Chang’e-5 launch, originally scheduled to collect Moon samples in the second half of 2017.

Another robot, the Chang’e-4, landed on the far side of the Moon in January 2019 — a historic first.

This was followed by one that landed on the near side of the Moon last year, raising a Chinese flag on the lunar surface.

The unmanned spacecraft returned to Earth in December with rocks and soil — the first lunar samples collected in four decades.

And in February 2021, the first images of Mars were sent back by the five-tonne Tianwen-1, which then landed a rover on the Martian surface in May that has since started to explore the surface of the Red Planet.

– Palace in the sky –

Tiangong — meaning “heavenly palace” — is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The Mengtian module launched Monday is the third and final major component of the T-shaped station.

It carries a number of pieces of cutting-edge science equipment, state news agency Xinhua reported, including “the world’s first space-based cold atomic clock system”.

Once finished, Tiangong is expected to remain in low Earth orbit at between 400 and 450 kilometres (250 and 280 miles) above the planet for at least 10 years — realising an ambition to maintain a long-term human presence in space.

It will be constantly crewed by rotating teams of three astronauts, who will conduct scientific experiments and help test new technologies.

While China does not plan to use its space station for global cooperation on the scale of the International Space Station, Beijing said it is open to foreign collaboration.

It is not yet clear how extensive that cooperation will be.

Rescuers in Mindanao search the deep mud for missing villagers after recovering 20 bodies in recent days

Philippine rescuers on Monday waded through thigh-deep mud using long pieces of wood to search for bodies buried by a landslide, as the death toll from a powerful storm rose to 98.

Just over half of the fatalities were from a series of flash floods and landslides unleashed by Tropical Storm Nalgae, which destroyed villages on the southern island of Mindanao on Friday.

Mindanao is rarely hit by the 20 or so typhoons that strike the Philippines each year, but storms that do reach the region tend to be deadlier than in Luzon and central parts of the country.

There is little hope of finding survivors in the worst-hit areas after the storm swept across the archipelago nation, inundating communities in and around the capital Manila over the weekend.

The national disaster agency has recorded 63 people still missing and scores of others injured.

Perfidia Seguendia, 71, and her family lost all their belongings except the clothes they were wearing when they fled to their neighbour’s two-storey house in Noveleta municipality, south of Manila.

“Everything was flooded — our fridge, washing machine, motorcycle, TV, everything,” Seguendia told AFP.

“All we managed to do was to cry because we can’t really do anything about it. We weren’t able to save anything, just our lives.”

The Philippine Coast Guard posted pictures on Facebook showing its personnel in devastated Kusiong village, in Maguindanao del Norte province of Mindanao, struggling through thick, thigh-deep mud and water as they searched for more bodies.

Kusiong was buried by a massive landslide, which created a huge mound of debris, just below several picturesque mountain peaks.

Rescuers poked long pieces of wood into the morass looking for five missing villagers, after recovering 20 bodies in recent days, the coast guard said.

“We have shifted our operation from search and rescue to retrieval because the chances of survival after two days are almost nil,” said Naguib Sinarimbo, civil defence chief of the Bangsamoro region in Mindanao.

Meanwhile, survivors faced the heartbreaking task of cleaning up their sodden homes.

Residents shovelled mud from their houses and shops after piling their furniture and other belongings in the streets of Noveleta.

“In my entire life living here, it’s the first time we experienced this kind of flooding,” said Joselito Ilano, 55, whose house was flooded by waist-high water.

“I am used to flooding here but this is just the worst, I was caught by surprise.”

– More rain on the way –

President Ferdinand Marcos began touring some of the hard-hit areas on Monday, including Noveleta, as aid agencies rushed food packs, drinking water and other relief to victims.

Marcos said preemptive evacuations in Noveleta had saved lives.

“While the calamity was huge, the number of casualties was not that high, although there’s a lot of damage to infrastructure,” he said.

Nalgae inundated villages, destroyed crops and knocked out power in many regions as it swept across the country.

It struck on an extended weekend for All Saints’ Day, which is on Tuesday, when millions of Filipinos travel to visit the graves of loved ones.

Scientists have warned that deadly and destructive storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.

The state weather forecaster warned that another tropical storm was heading towards the Philippines even as Nalgae moved across the South China Sea.

Starting Wednesday, the new weather system could bring more heavy rain and misery to southern and central regions badly affected by Nalgae.

Landslides and flash floods originating from largely deforested mountainsides have been among the deadliest hazards posed by storms in the Philippines in recent years. 

China successfully launched the final module of its Tiangong space station

China successfully launched the final module of its Tiangong space station on Monday, state media said, the latest step in Beijing’s ambitious space programme.

The space station is one of the crown jewels of Beijing’s ambitious space programme, which has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon and made China only the third nation to put humans in orbit.

The module named Mengtian, or “dreaming of the heavens,” was launched on a Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang launch centre on China’s tropical island Hainan, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Amateur photographers and space enthusiasts watched the launch — which took place at 3:27 pm (0727 GMT) — from a nearby beach.

The launch was declared a “complete success” by Deng Hongqin, commander of the Wenchang launch site.

“Based on the flight data from the Long March 5B… carrier rocket and the solid calculations of the Beijing Aersospace Flight Control Centre, the Mengtian experimental module of the space station has accurately entered the predetermined orbit and the working conditions are normal,” Deng said.

“I now declare this launch a complete success,” he added, as mission staff stood up to congratulate each other. 

Mengtian is the third and final major component of the T-shaped Tiangong space station and carries a number of cutting-edge science equipment into orbit, state news agency Xinhua reported, including “the world’s first space-based cold atomic clock system.”

“If successful, the cold atomic clocks will form the most precise time and frequency system in space, which should not lose one second in hundreds of millions of years,” Zhang Wei, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua.

Beijing plans to launch the Xuntian space telescope next year.

– Space ambitions –

China has invested heavily in its space programme as it looks to catch up with major spacefaring powers like the United States and Russia.

Previous missions have seen Beijing land a rover on Mars and send probes to the Moon.

China has been excluded from the International Space Station (ISS) since 2011, when the United States banned NASA from engaging with Beijing.

Once completed, the Tiangong space station will be constantly crewed by rotating teams of three astronauts, who will conduct scientific experiments and help test new technologies.

Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace”, will operate for around a decade and host a variety of experiments in near-zero gravity.

It is similar to the Soviet-built Mir station that orbited Earth from the 1980s until 2001.

The death toll from floods and landslides unleashed by a tropical storm in the Philippiones jumps sharply to 98

The death toll from a storm that battered the Philippines has jumped to 98, the national disaster agency said Monday, with little hope of finding survivors in the worst-hit areas.

Just over half of the fatalities were from a series of flash floods and landslides unleashed by Tropical Storm Nalgae, which destroyed villages on the southern island of Mindanao on Friday.

Mindanao is rarely hit by the 20 or so typhoons that strike the Philippines each year, but storms that do reach the region tend to be deadlier than in Luzon and central parts of the country.

“We have shifted our operation from search and rescue to retrieval because the chances of survival after two days are almost nil,” said Naguib Sinarimbo, civil defence chief of the Bangsamoro region in Mindanao.

The number of fatalities is likely to rise, with the national disaster agency recording 63 people still missing and scores of others injured.

The Philippine Coast Guard posted pictures on Facebook showing its personnel in devastated Kusiong village, in Maguindanao del Norte province of Mindanao, wading through thick, thigh-high mud and water, and using long pieces of timber in the search for more bodies.

Kusiong was buried by a massive landslide, which created a huge mound of debris, just below several picturesque mountain peaks.

Meanwhile, survivors faced the heartbreaking task of cleaning up their sodden homes.

Residents shovelled mud from their houses and shops after piling their furniture and other belongings in the streets of Noveleta municipality, south of the capital, Manila.

“In my entire life living here, it’s the first time we experienced this kind of flooding,” said Joselito Ilano, 55, whose house was flooded by waist-high water.

“I am used to flooding here but this is just the worst, I was caught by surprise.”

Perfidia Seguendia, 71, and her family lost all their belongings except the clothes they were wearing when they fled to their neighbour’s two-storey house.

“Everything was flooded — our fridge, washing machine, motorcycle, TV, everything,” Seguendia told AFP.

“All we managed to do was to cry because we can’t really do anything about it. We weren’t able to save anything, just our lives.”

– More rain on the way –

President Ferdinand Marcos began touring some of the hard-hit areas on Monday, including Noveleta, as aid agencies rushed food packs, drinking water and other relief to victims.

Marcos said preemptive evacuations in Noveleta had saved lives.

“While the calamity was huge, the number of casualties was not that high, although there’s a lot of damage to infrastructure,” he said.  

Nalgae inundated villages, destroyed crops and knocked out power in many regions as it swept across the country.

It struck on an extended weekend for All Saints’ Day, which is on Tuesday, when millions of Filipinos travel to visit the graves of loved ones.

Scientists have warned that deadly and destructive storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.

The state weather forecaster warned that another tropical storm was heading towards the Philippines even as Nalgae moved across the South China Sea.

Starting Wednesday, the new weather system could bring more heavy rain and misery to southern and central regions badly affected by Nalgae.

Landslides and flash floods originating from largely deforested mountainsides have been among the deadliest hazards posed by storms in the Philippines in recent years. 

Warm October weather has seen many flock to the beach — such as here at Hossegor, southwestern France — but environmentalists see more evidence of climate change

October morning temperatures topping 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) in Spain may have brought cheer to the tourists, but they are provoking concern among environmentalists. 

The mercury has been rising well above the norm across vast swathes of Europe, from Spain to as far north as Sweden.

After a summer marked by repeated heatwaves across much of the continent, Europe is experiencing exceptional temperatures even as it heads into the start of autumn — a sign of accelerating climate change.

“The month has not yet ended but we can already say practically without fear of contradiction that it will be the hottest (in Spain) since 1961,” when records began to be collated, said Ruben del Campo of Spain’s meteorological service Aemet.

If extrapolated data from historical reconstructions is taken into account, he added, this past month will have been Spain’s warmest October for fully a century.

“One, two days above 30 degrees is normal” for Spain, said del Campo. “But so many days, no. These are summer temperatures, whereas we are already heading into autumn.”

On Friday morning, the northern resort of San Sebastian saw the temperature hit 30.3 Celsius at 8:30  am (0630 GMT) — well above the seasonal average.

With forest fires declared in recent days in the Basque region, of which San Sebastian is a part, authorities have banned barbecues and fireworks to keep risks to a minimum.

The unseasonal warm spell has brought a new word into the Spanish lexicon — “verono” — an amalgam of verano (summer) and otono (autumn).

And it has left del Campo highlighting a “notable acceleration” in climate change over the past decade, exposing Spain to increasing creeping desertification.

According to the Climate Central think tank, the Spanish cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Zaragoza are all in the top 10 European cities most affected by global warming on the evidence of the past 12 months.

– Sizzling Spain to Sweden –

Neighbouring France has, like Spain, seen a hotter than normal October. But well to the north, Sweden has been sizzling too —  managing to see a record 19.5 degrees in the southern city of Kristianstad on Friday.

“This is the highest temperature ever recorded in Sweden this late in the year,” Erik Hojgard-Olsen, meteorologist at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), told AFP.

In southwestern France, which also suffered widespread forest fire damage in the summer during repeated heatwaves, Meteo France said Friday temperatures closed in on 30 degrees. 

In Belgium, the capital Brussels saw a maximum forecast of 24 Celsius — fully 10 degrees higher than the norm for late October.

Britain’s Met Office noted Wednesday had seen Londoners enjoy a balmy 20.5 Celsius, “closer to what we would normally see at the end of August rather than the end of October”.

A warm front coming up from the southwest of the continent has also benefited Germany, which has been enjoying temperatures more in keeping with summertime than the onset of November.

“Hard to believe it’s late October as large parts of Europe (and North Africa) see unusual heat,” tweeted the World Meteorological Organization on Friday.

– ‘Not normal’ –

For Ruben del Campo, some people may see an upside in being able to keep the central heating off for now — or even manage an out-of-season trip to the beach.

“But in reality, the consequences are not good,” he said, noting low water levels in reservoirs — bad news for Spain, whose intensive agriculture provides Europe with a hefty proportion of its fruit and vegetables.

Spanish reservoir levels were last week down to 31.8 percent of capacity compared with their decade seasonal average of 49.3 percent.

Residents and tourists alike enjoying the upside of a trip to Barcelona’s beaches said they were aware there was a downside. 

“We are really happy to have this heat — we like it. But it’s not normal,” said Alicia Pesquera, a 43-year-old beauty therapist.

“Of course it concerns us. Right now it should be raining or at least be a bit cool,” said Fernando Raibas, a tourist visiting from the northern region of Galicia.

The flightless kakapo — a twice previous winner — was barred from this year's bird of the year competition in New Zealand

A tiny mountain-dwelling wren was the surprise winner Monday of New Zealand’s controversial bird of the year competition, which even had Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in a flap.

The piwauwau rock wren punched above its 20-gram weight, flying under the radar to win the annual contest ahead of popular fellow native contenders, the little penguin and the kea.

Fans of the wren set up a Facebook page to help the outsider soar up the final rankings when the fortnight-long poll closed Monday.

“It’s not the size, it’s the underbird you vote for that counts,” wrote one supporter.

The annual competition ruffled voters’ feathers in years past after a native bat was allowed to enter, then won, the 2021 title.

There was also outcry this year after the flightless kakapo — a twice previous winner dubbed the world’s fattest parrot — was barred from running to give others a chance.

The annual avian beauty contest run by environmental group Forest and Bird is popular with New Zealanders, including the country’s top politicians.

The leader of the opposition, Christopher Luxon, took to Twitter  — where else? — over the weekend to endorse the wrybill, a river bird with a distinctive bent beak.

On Monday, New Zealand’s prime minister was momentarily ruffled live on air when asked if she had voted for her favourite bird.

“No I haven’t yet — you can’t just chuck a controversial question at me without a warning!,” Ardern said with a smile.

New Zealand’s leader revealed she will “always and forever” be loyal to the black petrel, which only breeds on the North Island but can fly as far as Ecuador, and she hopes the 2023 competition “will be its year”.