Grains gone wild What's behind the world food crisis? These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there's another world crisis under way - and it's hurting a lot more people. I'm talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans, but they're truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family's spending.

Fires Main Threat To Amazon In Drier Climate - Study NORWAY: April 8, 2008 OSLO - Fires set by people will be the biggest threat to the Amazon rainforest in coming decades linked to a drier climate caused by global warming, researchers said on Monday. They said swathes of the forest were more likely to be killed by blazes raging out of control than by a more gradual shift towards savannah caused by more frequent droughts predicted by the UN Climate Panel in a 2007 report.

Scientists at two UK universities have produced evidence to debunk a popular alternative theory to explain climate change. The scientists were unable to find a link between cosmic rays and cloud cover Following a year long study, emeritus professors Terry Sloan, of Lancaster University, and Arnold Wolfendale, of Durham University, said they could find no link between cosmic rays and global warming.

From his Cessna a mile above the southern Amazon, John Carter looks down on the destruction of the world's greatest ecological jewel. He watches men converting rain forest into cattle pastures and soybean fields with bulldozers and chains. He sees fires wiping out such gigantic swaths of jungle that scientists now debate the "savannization" of the Amazon.

The charged and complex debate over how to slow down global warming has become a lot more complicated. Most of the focus in the past few years has centered on imposing caps on greenhouse gas emissions to prod energy users to conserve or switch to nonpolluting technologies.

Nobel Scientist Issues Warning On Global Warming US: April 7, 2008 MIAMI - The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who rang the first alarm bells over the ozone hole issued a warming about climate change on Saturday, saying there could be "almost irreversible consequences" if the Earth warmed 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees F) above what it ought to be.

FEATURE - Iceland: Life On Global Warming's Front Line ICELAND: April 7, 2008 REYKJAVIK - If any country can claim to be pitched on the global warming front line, it may be the North Atlantic island nation of Iceland. On a purely physical level, this land of icecaps and volcanoes and home to 300,000 people is undergoing a rapid transformation as its glaciers melt and weather patterns change dramatically. But global warming is also having a profound effect on Iceland economically -- and in many ways the effects have actually been beneficial.

Al Gore is no longer known just as the former vp of the US. He's been creating waves as a campaigner for preventing global warming, a mission that won him the latest Nobel peace prize along with our own R K Pachauri, chairman of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. On a recent visit to India Gore launched the India Chapter of his ngo 'The Climate Project' along with Pachauri.

Iceland: life on global warming's front line By Adam Cox and Kristin Arna Bragadottir REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - If any country can claim to be pitched on the global warming front line, it may be the North Atlantic island nation of Iceland. On a purely physical level, this land of icecaps and volcanoes and home to 300,000 people is undergoing a rapid transformation as its glaciers melt and weather patterns change dramatically. But global warming is also having a profound effect on Iceland economically -- and in many ways the effects have actually been beneficial.

A potential new weapon in the battle against global warming - to remove carbon from the atmosphere by locking it up permanently in soil minerals - is being developed at Newcastle University in the UK. When plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, they use some of the carbon to grow. But most is pumped through the roots into the earth around them and then escapes back into the atmosphere or groundwater.