Curbing greenhouse gas emissions from ships, possibly by including the sector for the first time in an emissions trading scheme, tops the agenda at a meeting of the industry's top regulatory body in London this week.

Negotiations seeking a global pact to tackle global warming are troubled and could end in disastrous failure, China's top climate change envoy warned on Monday, saying rich countries are failing to deliver on promises.

All businesses should appoint an environmental expert to their board to help safeguard the planet, the president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said on Sunday.

Wall Street

A wall of heat and sulphur from a towering furnace stoked to 1,500 degrees Celsius hits onlookers at POSCO's Pohang plant in South Korea amid the din of coal and iron ore rattling into vats of molten metal.

Pohang's oldest furnace, with a 35-year history, helped POSCO grow into the world's No.4 steel giant.

A growing carbon offset market is trying to woo the public and companies with new ways and standards to cut their contribution to climate change, while dispelling continued doubts that such schemes do any real good.

Joe Biden and Sarah Palin agreed that climate change is real, but differed on whether human activity was its root cause in Thursday's US vice presidential debate.

Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska, acknowledged that human activities may play a role in heating up the planet, but also said natural cycles are part of the picture.

Ryanair shareholders attending the company's general meeting in Dublin in September were bemused by a sight not often associated with such gatherings, when a bare-chested young man wearing an oxygen mask approached the podium where Michael O'Leary, the chief executive, was speaking.

The slowing economy and financial crisis are testing Europe's goal of becoming a world leader in greenhouse gas reduction.

Industry has seized on the slowdown to lobby for delayed or watered down regulations, arguing that directives set out by the European Commission earlier this year would force them to cut jobs or relocate factories abroad.

Italy's biggest utility Enel will make considerable profits and cut costs under emissions trading schemes in Europe and the Kyoto Protocol, even while it boosts its coal plant fleet, its head of carbon strategy told Reuters.

The European Union's emissions trading scheme is the bloc's main policy to fight climate change and imposes caps on industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.