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Australia's Queensland Reverses Policy, Pledges to Keep Using Coal Power US News, Oct. 10, 2025 Australia's Queensland state government said on Friday it would run coal power plants at least into the 2040s, reversing a previous plan to pivot rapidly to renewables and in turn making national emissions reduction targets harder to achieve. The centre-right Liberal National Party won last year's election in Queensland, a huge chunk of land in Australia's northeast where more than 60% of electricity comes from coal-fired plants that are mostly owned by the state. "The former Labor government's ideological decision to close coal units by 2035, regardless of their condition, is officially abolished," said Queensland Treasurer and Energy Minister David Janetzki, laying out a five-year energy plan. "Queensland's coal-fired fleet is the youngest in the country and state-owned coal generators will continue to operate for as long as they are needed in the system and supported by the market," he said.	Saving Lives As Heat Menaces Two Southwestern Counties NBC Newa, Oct. 11, 2025 As temperatures began to rise in Phoenix this spring, Dr. Jeffrey Johnston braced for the many hundreds of deaths that have become a grim summer trend. Johnston, the chief medical examiner for Maricopa County, Arizona, has seen extreme heat kill more and more people over the last decade: Heat-related fatalities there jumped from several dozen in 2014 to 645 in 2023. “The surges were so intense and long, so we really did approach it like a mass casualty event,” he said of recent summers. But Maricopa County — the most populous county in the desert Southwest — has invested heavily in heat preparedness planning and mitigation. Multiple cooling centers in Phoenix now stay open 24/7. The county boosted public messaging about heat safety and hired a full-time heat relief coordinator. As a result, it recorded fewer heat deaths last year than the year before, despite record-breaking heat — its first such dip in a decade. Now that summer is over, officials are evaluating this year’s progress, and preliminary data indicates the downward trend will continue: Maricopa County has confirmed 185 heat deaths so far, significantly less than the 284 at the same time last year.	Suspect Charged With Igniting Deadly Los Angeles Palisades Fire Reuters, Oct. 9, 2025 A man was arrested in Florida on charges of intentionally igniting what would become California's devastating Palisades Fire, which killed 12 people and wiped out a wealthy enclave of Los Angeles at the start of the year, the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday. According to prosecutors, Jonathan Rinderknecht started a fire near a hiking trail in the mountains near Pacific Palisades a few minutes after midnight on January 1 after he completed a shift driving an Uber car. Los Angeles firefighters had thought they had quickly extinguished that blaze, known as the Lachman Fire. But it erupted anew on January 7 after smoldering underground for a week, becoming the Palisades Fire, according to federal investigators. Rinderknecht, 29, repeatedly called 911 on January 1 before successfully connecting to report the blaze, according to a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. He also recorded videos on his phone of firefighters attempting to extinguish the blaze.