Nine of the 10 US urban areas that release the most greenhouse gases per person lie east of the Mississippi River, a study showed on Thursday. "A north-south divide is also apparent," said the report issued by two think tanks, the New York-based Regional Plan Association and the Washington-based Brookings Institution. Seven of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases are in the south, including two cities each in Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky, it said.

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says. This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school's researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday. "We are all becoming heavier and it is a global responsibility," Edwards said in a telephone interview. "Obesity is a key part of the big picture."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel held talks here on Sunday with former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and expressed skepticism over a U.S. initiative to halt the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, Japanese officials said. Merkel was quoted as telling Abe that she is

A GLOBAL Biofuels Biopact between rich and poor countries can help alleviate poverty in the developing world while helping to solve the problems of global warming and energy security in the developed world, says a new paper in the journal Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining published by SCI and John Wiley & Sons. According to the paper's author, John Mathews, professor of Strategic Management at Macquarie University, Australia, a Biopact