U.S. climate negotiators here gave the first broad hints of a new policy on global warming, but they provided few specifics, noting that a more detailed proposal would be submitted this month.

The Obama administration wants to reduce oil consumption, increase renewable energy supplies and cut carbon dioxide emissions in the most ambitious transformation of energy policy in a generation.

Most of the investments by oil companies go to traditional fossil-fuel resources, including carbon- intensive energy sources like tar sands, above, and natural gas from shale.

The death toll in the earthquake that struck central Italy on Monday rose to 179 people, of whom 40 had yet to be identified, officials told the ANSA news agency on Tuesday. Officials said 37 people were still missing and there was still hope of finding survivors.

Five countries that created a treaty nearly four decades ago to protect polar bears through controlled hunting issued a statement that called climate change "the most important long-term threat" to the bears.

EDWARDSPORT, Ind.: Near the middle of a dusty construction site here stands a patch of land, about the size of two football fields, notable because it is empty.

PARIS: Updating the waterwheel to generate electricity and compete with solar and wind

MADRID: El Bierzo, a mountainous region in Spain's northwest, is undergoing a remarkable makeover financed by the government, the European Union and private industry. Once the center of a major coal mining industry, and still sitting on some of the country's biggest reserves, the region went into economic decline, with mass unemployment, when the industry collapsed in the late 1980s.

Solar cells adorn the roofs of many homes and warehouses across Germany, while the bright white blades of wind turbines are a frequent sight against the sky in Spain.

The world's population will hit seven billion early in 2012 and top nine billion in 2050, with the vast majority of the increase coming in the developing countries of Asia and Africa, according to a new UN estimate, The Associated Press reported from the United Nations, New York.

Despite years of study and analysis, the world is unprepared for climate change and needs to rethink basic assumptions that govern things as varied as choosing cars and building bridges, the National Research Council reported Thursday.

Current building, land use and planning practices assume a continuation of climate as it has been known in the past.