“Severe flooding in Germany and Belgium left at least 45 people dead on Thursday, with dozens of others missing and still more stranded on rooftops as violent storms lashed a swath of Western Europe. Swift-moving water from swollen rivers surged through cities and villages in three western German states, the hardest-hit region. In Belgium, where at least six people were killed, authorities ordered inhabitants of downtown Liège to evacuate as the Meuse River, which flows through its center, overflowed its banks. The storms and resulting high water also battered neighboring Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg as a slow-moving weather system threatened to dump even more rain on the inundated region overnight and into early Friday. The devastation caused by the severe weather came just days after the EU announced an ambitious blueprint to pivot away from fossil fuels over the next nine years, as part of plans to make the 27-country bloc carbon-neutral by 2050. And environmental activists and politicians were quick to draw parallels between the flooding and the effects of climate change” – New York Times.