Aug. 27: Tata Steel is planning to acquire iron ore and coal mines in Africa, Brazil and Canada, which could contribute 50 per cent captive raw material by 2015.

African zoologists are in Colombia to advise local authorities on what to do with dozens of hippos roaming around the abandoned zoo of late drug lord Pablo Escobar in the north of the country.

Colombia was shocked last month at news that one of the giant beasts, who had escaped from Escobar's Hacienda Napoles, had been hunted down and shot on order of the government.

Illegal fishing is depleting the seas and robbing poor nations in Africa and Asia of resources, but a lack of global cooperation is undermining efforts to track rogue vessels, an environmental group said on Tuesday.

A 400 billion euro ($774 billion) plan to power Europe with Sahara sunlight is gaining momentum, even as critics see high risks in a large corporate project using young technology in north African countries with weak rule of law.

As global populations and food prices rise and environmental degradation intensifies, transnational corporations and some governments are buying up vast tracts of farmland where it is still available

Among the acres of forests in the outskirts of Athens reduced to cinders by a three-day inferno, expensive villas with pools have appeared.

"Every time there is a fire we discover new communities we never knew existed," Greenpeace Greece director Nikos Haralambides told Reuters. "We have a state that just keeps legalizing unauthorized development."

A 400 billion euro ($774 billion) plan to power Europe with Sahara sunlight is gaining momentum, even as critics see high risks in a large corporate project using young technology in north African countries with weak rule of law.

African leaders will ask rich nations for $67 billion per year to mitigate the impact of global warming on the world's poorest continent, according to a draft resolution seen by Reuters on Monday.

Ten leaders are holding talks at African Union (AU) headquarters in the Ethiopian capital to try to agree a common stance ahead of a U.N. summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December.

World Health Organisation (WHO) warned Bangladesh and other South East Asian countries about the pneumonic plague that had recently hit China.

As it is a public health emergency of international concern and China is not far from Bangladesh, WHO warned Bangladesh to take cautionary steps to control the spread of pneumonic plague, said the government officials.