Officials say a large avalanche has slammed into a hotel in southern Germany, damaging the building but causing no injuries. The hotel's 100 guests were evacuated to other dwellings in the village of Balderschwang.

Thousands of students as part of the Youth for Climate movement took time off school Thursday to call for stronger action against climate change. Despite the rain and cold, the colorful protest march in Brussels was bigger than the initial one last week.

The German government approved a bill Wednesday that will codify the country's closure of coal-fired power stations, defending the plan against critics who say it's not ambitious enough. After signing off on the bill in Cabinet, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier called the plan to phase out the burning of coal by 2038 "a breakthrough" in efforts to combat climate change.

Germany's greenhouse gas emissions fell 4.2% in 2018, the first major decrease in Europe's biggest economy four years, thanks in large part to warm weather. Estimates published Tuesday by the Environment Ministry show Germany released the equivalent of 868.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year. That's 38 million tons less than 2017.

Dozens of environmentalists are blocking the entrance to a coal-fired power plant in the German city of Mannheim in protest over the burning of fossil fuels. Mannheim police said about 40-50 climate activists have been staging the protest since the early hours of Saturday.

Thousands of students skipped school for the third week in a row and more than 30,000 swamped the center of Brussels to demand better protection of the world's climate. What started out as a march of a few thousand high school students swelled to a vocal movement that Thursday also included many that skipped courses at university.

Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg led a march of thousands of Belgian students who are skipped classes for the seventh Thursday in a row to march through Brussels and draw more attention to fighting climate change. The 16-year-old Thunberg first addressed a European Union conference, chiding adults for their inaction in the face of such climatic global dangers. She said youngsters are being forced to skip school and protest because adults are not addressing climate issues quickly enough.

A senior German official says neighboring countries are closely watching Germany's political debate on phasing out the use of coal, saying "it's really important to create positive examples" of countries taking decisions to curb climate change.

The television personality said, "With this free(dom) of choice, choice of name, freeness of gender, I want to have my own age. I want to control myself."

A warm winter means that, for apparently the first time in the history of German winemaking, the country's fabled vineyards will produce no ice wine — a pricey, golden nectar made from grapes that have been left to freeze on the vine. The German Wine Institute said Sunday that none of the country's wine regions saw the necessary low temperature of minus 7 degrees Celsius, or 19 degrees Fahrenheit.