World News for Students of English

05-04-2023 07:00

Footage captured the moment climate activists poured a black liquid into a 17th-century Barcaccia fountain in Rome, Italy.

The activists from the Last Generation group ‘Ultima Generaziona’ said they had chosen a fountain to highlight the dangers that global warming poses to water supply and sea levels. They dyed the famous Spanish Steps fountain black with a vegetable-based liquid to protest against climate change inaction. In a tweet, the group said that it was absurd that such a gesture should shock people when the world was experiencing a drought emergency that was putting agriculture and energy production in crisis.

The three men and a woman were removed by the police, put into custody, and they are facing charges of defacing a public monument and entering the fountain. Rome’s mayor Roberto Gualtieri visited the fountain designed by Pietro Bernini in 1629, and he said that Rome was at the forefront of the fight against climate change and the protection of the artistic heritage.

Difficult words: absurd (unreasonable or illogical), deface (to spoil the surface of something, for example by drawing or writing on it), at the forefront (in a leading position).

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