Dozens of families were left isolated after flash floods cut roads in El Loa Province in the region of Antofagasta, northern Chile, on 04 February 2023.

The local government reported heavy rain and flooding in several parts of the province. Around 50 families were left isolated in the town of Lasana after damaging floods washed away parts of the road network. Areas of the city of Calama were also affected and the important road connecting Calama to San Pedro de Atacama was blocked.

Videos shared on Social Media showed homes and streets inundated and water cascading down mountainsides.

Chile's government has declared a widened state of emergency amid wildfires that have killed at least 13 people and consumed about 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres), as the South American country endures a summer heatwave across southern and central swaths of the country.

The interior minister, Carolina Toha, said on Friday morning the government had declared a catastrophe in the region of Biobío, joining its neighbouring region Ñuble, which President Gabriel Boric announced on Thursday evening, allowing the deployment of soldiers and additional resources.

Eleven people, including a firefighter, had died in the Biobío town of Santa Juana, local authorities said.

The agriculture minister, Esteban Valenzuela, also reported an emergency-support helicopter in the southern region of La Araucanía had crashed, killing the pilot and a mechanic.

A heat wave that has hit Chile this week with record temperatures in some areas and a lack of rainfall has intensified forest fires that have already burned more than 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres)in the South American nation.

Dozens of people have had to evacuate their homes because of the fires and the capital Santiago is under a public health alert due to a cloud of smoke, officials said on Friday.

The state-owned National Forestry Corporation (Conaf) said firefighters were currently tackling 18 fires concentrated in the country's central regions, as well as a smaller number in the south.

Good news, everybody! A new report from the eggheads at Oxford University assures us that switching to renewables will actually save us trillions of dollars!

You heard that right. It won't cost us trillions of dollars to build out a completely new global energy grid infrastructure based on technology that is still under development and then to switch the entire global economy onto it. No, don't be silly! It's going to save us trillions of dollars. TRILLIONS, I tell you!

Now, I know what some of you skeptical Corbett Reporteers out there are thinking: how can that be? After all, as The Manhattan Contrarian blog points out in a recent post on the "Cost of the Green Energy Transition," the disruption to the European gas supply caused by the Ukraine kerfuffle is already wreaking havoc on Europe's economy, with Germans bracing for a 13% rise in their regulated consumer gas bills this year and UK residents facing a near tripling of their own energy bills. And that's before the Great Resetters start shutting off the pipes for real and forcing the hoi polloi on to the wind/solar/unicorn fart "green" energy grid.

But why believe the actual economic pain you're experiencing (heating your own home this winter) when your Oxfordian overlords have big, fat reports (that no one will read) telling you how much money will be saved by switching over to a green energy grid? After all, the BBC and MSN and Nature World News are tripping all over themselves to repeat these findings unquestioningly, so who are you to bring up any of the pesky "facts" that contradict this comforting fairy tale?

Oh, OK, I'll drop the act. The latest Oxford study — along with the many similar pronouncements made in recent years that the transition onto the green energy grid will be painless (or even profitable) — is easily debunkable propaganda. But it is pernicious propaganda. It's designed to get the plebes to actively embrace their own enslavement in the name of saving Mother Earth, and — up to this point — it has been remarkably effective in that goal.

In truth, the green energy sustainable enslavement grid is a scam from top to bottom. But it is not simply a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream being sold to a gullible and ignorant public. It's worse than that. It is a carefully crafted lie that is designed to lead us into our new role as serfs on the neofeudal plantation in the coming green dystopia.

Want to know the details? Let's dig in.

The wetlands of San Nicolas Eco Park in Argentina's San Nicolas de los Arroyos were in flames on Sunday with drone footage capturing the ongoing blaze.

The natural reserve of San Nicolas is only 80 kilometres away from Rosario where protesters earlier condemned what they described as intentional damage to the wetlands.

Hundreds of people have been evacuated in southwestern France as new wildfires rage amid record September temperatures.

Around 1,340 people in the Gironde region have been moved from their homes since blazes broke out on Monday.

The flames have destroyed four houses, several other buildings and 3,500 hectares of land, authorities say.

The largest fire is currently burning near the town of Saumos, while a smaller blaze has broken out south of Bordeaux, near Dax, where temperatures reached 39°C.

Firefighters in California are making progress against 11 major wildfires, including the Mosquito and Fairview fires, according to a statewide fire update published Sunday.

More than 8,300 firefighters are working to contain the fires across the state, but they are bracing for more potential significant wildfires because of coming critical fire weather. So far this year, 325,083 acres have burned in California, according to the fire summary.

Potential critical fire weather includes a high risk for lightning in Northern California "in eastern areas on Sunday combined with very flammable fuels," it said. Breezy west and southwest winds at 25 to 35 mph will also develop through the San Francisco Bay Area coastal gaps, and south to southeast winds of 15 to 25 mph will extend up to the Sacramento Valley.

The meteorite that wiped out Earth's dinosaurs instantly ignited forest wildfires up to thousands of kilometres from its impact zone, scientists have discovered.

The six-mile-wide meteorite struck the Yucatan peninsula in what is now Mexico at the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago, triggering a mass extinction that killed off more than 75 percent of living species.

Uncertainty and debate have surrounded the circumstances behind the devastating wildfires known to have been caused by the strike, with several theories as to how and when they started, and their full extent.

By analysing rocks dating to the time of the strike, a team of geoscientists from the UK, Mexico and Brazil has recently discovered that some of the fires broke out within minutes, at most, of the impact, in areas stretching up to 2500km or more from the impact crater.

Wildfires that broke out in coastal areas were short-lived, as the backwash from the mega-tsunami caused by the impact swept charred trees offshore.

Net Zero Watch has condemned the Government's green energy policies as "a national disaster."

This follows the announcement that a major offshore windfarm will not activate an agreement to sell power at a much lower cost to the grid.

The Times has reported that the Hornsea 2 windfarm, which had a contract to sell power at £73 per megawatt hour, will instead sell in the open market, where prices have averaged £200 per megawatt hour this year, and reached £508 last week.

Britain's struggling energy consumers are likely to end up paying a billion pounds extra for Hornsea's electricity over the next 12 months.

The new Prime Minister should urgently look into the legal options for cancelling or revoking these poorly written contracts, the spirit of which are being grotesquely abused to the huge disadvantage to British consumers.

A horror 'fire tornado' has killed at least 38 people in Algeria after it ripped through a wildlife park and incinerated 12 people trying to escape the flames in a bus.

Fanned by drought and a blistering heatwave, the blazes have left massive destruction in their wake, mostly in the El Tarf region near the eastern border with Tunisia that was baking in 48C heat.

A family of five was among the dead and at least 200 more people have suffered burns or respiratory problems from the smoke, according to various Algerian media.

A journalist in El Tarf described 'scenes of devastation' on the road to El Kala in the country's far northeast.

'A tornado of fire swept everything away in seconds,' he told AFP by telephone. 'Most of those who died were surrounded while visiting a wildlife park.'