More than 10,000 protestors - including climate activist Greta Thunberg - marched through mud and rain to the German village of Luetzerath on Saturday, according to a police estimate, demonstrating against the expansion of an opencast lignite mine.
The clearing of the village in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia was agreed between RWE and the government in a deal that allowed the energy giant to demolish Lutzerath in exchange for its faster exit from coal and saving five villages originally slated for destruction.
There were clashes between some protesters and police, with hundreds defying an order to leave the cordoned off site, braving the mud, rain and later the darkness.
Police used water cannons against "violent" protesters, a police spokesman said. But by the early evening, the site was calm again as the protesters gradually left.
Ms Thunberg marched at the front of a procession of demonstrators who converged on the village, showing support for activists occupying it in protest.
"That the German government is making deals and compromises with fossil fuel companies such as RWE is shameful," she said from a podium.
"Germany, as one of the biggest polluters in the world, has an enormous responsibility," she added.
Earlier this week, police cleared out protesters from buildings they have occupied for almost two years in attempt to stop the nearby mine's expansion.
On Saturday, only few remained camping out in treehouses and an underground tunnel, but thousands turned up to protest against the mine, which activists say symbolises Berlin's failing climate policy.
The president of North Rhine-Westphalia told German radio Deutschlandfunk on Saturday that energy politics was "not always pretty" but that the coal was needed more than ever in light of the energy crisis confronting Europe's biggest economy.
Earlier Economy Minister Robert Habeck told Spiegel on Friday that Lutzerath was the "wrong symbol" to protest against.
"It is the last place where brown coal will be mined - not a symbol for more-of-the-same, but for the final frontier."
But activists have said Germany should not be mining any more lignite and focus on expanding renewable energy instead.
The Uefa Awards winners
Uefa Men's Player of the Year: Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool)
Uefa Women's Player of the Year: Lucy Bronze (Lyon)
Best players of the 2018/19 Uefa Champions League
Goalkeeper: Alisson (Liverpool)
Defender: Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool)
Midfielder: Frenkie de Jong (Ajax)
Forward: Lionel Messi (Barcelona)
Uefa President's Award: Eric Cantona
WOMAN AND CHILD
Director: Saeed Roustaee
Starring: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi
Rating: 4/5
Museum of the Future in numbers
- 78 metres is the height of the museum
- 30,000 square metres is its total area
- 17,000 square metres is the length of the stainless steel facade
- 14 kilometres is the length of LED lights used on the facade
- 1,024 individual pieces make up the exterior
- 7 floors in all, with one for administrative offices
- 2,400 diagonally intersecting steel members frame the torus shape
- 100 species of trees and plants dot the gardens
- Dh145 is the price of a ticket
Gertrude Bell's life in focus
A feature film
At one point, two feature films were in the works, but only German director Werner Herzog’s project starring Nicole Kidman would be made. While there were high hopes he would do a worthy job of directing the biopic, when Queen of the Desert arrived in 2015 it was a disappointment. Critics panned the film, in which Herzog largely glossed over Bell’s political work in favour of her ill-fated romances.
A documentary
A project that did do justice to Bell arrived the next year: Sabine Krayenbuhl and Zeva Oelbaum’s Letters from Baghdad: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Gertrude Bell. Drawing on more than 1,000 pieces of archival footage, 1,700 documents and 1,600 letters, the filmmakers painstakingly pieced together a compelling narrative that managed to convey both the depth of Bell’s experience and her tortured love life.
Books, letters and archives
Two biographies have been written about Bell, and both are worth reading: Georgina Howell’s 2006 book Queen of the Desert and Janet Wallach’s 1996 effort Desert Queen. Bell published several books documenting her travels and there are also several volumes of her letters, although they are hard to find in print. Original documents are housed at the Gertrude Bell Archive at the University of Newcastle, which has an online catalogue.
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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UAE
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Japan
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5
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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