Chinese President Hu Jintao called for bolstered trust and cooperation with Japan as he arrived in the country Tuesday for the first visit by a Chinese head of state in a decade. Hu, who arrived on a special Air China flight, is scheduled to hold summit talks with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on Wednesday, after a meeting with Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko earlier that day.

A new international accord to fight global warming must extend greenhouse-gas limits to poorer nations that have fought caps for years, British economist Nicholas Stern said. All countries must pitch into reduce emissions by a combined 50%and help avoid dangerous temperature increases, Stern said in a report released in the UK. Currently a professor at the London School of Economics, Stern published a widely cited study of climate-change economics in 2006.

Building more and smaller ethanol plants could help overcome concerns that production of the biofuel consumes more in energy than it provides, Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said on Friday. One of the reasons so much energy is used to make ethanol is that trucks travel long distances carrying corn, chaff or other plant material to ethanol plants. "Smaller and locally owned I think are the right way to go," Ritz said as he kicked off debate in the House of Commons on the final stage of a bill that would ensure that gasoline contains 5 percent ethanol by 2010.

Bill Clinton's philanthropic summit has spurred nearly 1,000 commitments in the past three years from business, non-profit and government leaders that aim to improve the lives of 200 million of the world's poor. In a mid-year update of his Clinton Global Initiative summit held each September, Clinton gave a progress report of the commitments, including one by Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN's climate science panel.

The world can reach a significant new climate change pact by the end of 2009 if current talks keep up their momentum, the head of the United Nations climate panel said on Sunday. The United Nations began negotiations on a sweeping new pact in March after governments agreed last year to work out a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol by the end of next year.

At this vital juncture in the earth's history, it's clear that the American people are looking for a presidential candidate who will take climate change "very seriously." One who favors "unbiased research" into the problem and promises to support regulations that are "based on science." Someone, perhaps, like George W.

China is expected to express support for Japan's sector-by-sector approach to setting goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Friday. The announcement, to be made in a joint statement on environmental issues Tokyo and Beijing are working on, is likely to follow the bilateral summit Wednesday between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in Tokyo.

OECD environment ministers on Tuesday stood by efforts to tackle climate change, despite arguments in some quarters that at a time of economic uncertainty, spending on green issues could damage competitiveness. In an

The United States' agenda for the upcoming Group of Eight summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, emphasizes health and development issues, making sure previous agreements are carried out in a publicly accountable way and guaranteeing that developing nations are part of a post-Kyoto Protocol treaty, said the top U.S. official coordinating Washington's role at the G8.