- NEWS Desk Global
AS CLIMATE CRISIS WORSENS, EU PLANS TO BUY NEW FIREFIGHTING PLANES

The European Union wants to sign contracts this year for up to 12 firefighting planes, the first it would fully own, to improve its ability to fight blazes fuelled by climate change, the bloc's head of crisis management said. The EU doubled its existing reserve fleet of firefighting aircraft in the past year, after devastating fires last summer in southern Europe exhausted its previous 13-craft capacity.