China and India are increasingly keen to be seen to be tackling climate change; though it is dirtier, China is making a more convincing show of action

- A goal to halve planet-warming carbon emissions by 2050, similar to an aim Japan is urging G8 leaders to agree next month, would add $45 trillion to global energy bills, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday. "It's a lot of money," IEA analyst Peter Taylor told a meeting on the fringes of a climate conference in Germany, previewing the agency's Energy Technology Perspectives report to be published in Japan on Friday. "It implies a completely different energy system," he said.

Lennart Bage, President, IFAD

even though the earth is heating up there could be some relief, say recent studies. And we have to thank the Atlantic Ocean for this respite. Researchers at Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences,

While studies indicate that global temperatures may not increase over the next decade, there is no respite for the Arctic sea ice, this year at least. There are very high chances, about 60 per cent,

More than 100,000 people, according to unofficial estimate, are feared dead after cyclone Nargis tore through Myanmar late May 2 night. Another 43,000 people were missing four days after the

Global temperature rises should be kept well below the European Union's target of 2 degrees Celsius to avoid costly damage to people and their lifestyles, according to a European Parliament report. European consumers must be given better information about the "carbon footprint" of goods they buy, including products imported from outside the 27-nation bloc, it added.

A new study suggesting a possible lull in manmade global warming has raised fears of a reduced urgency to battle climate change. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of hundreds of scientists, last year said global warming was "unequivocal" and that manmade greenhouse gas emissions were "very likely" part of the problem. And while the study published in the journal Nature last week did not dispute manmade global warming, it did predict a cooling from recent average temperatures through 2015, as a result of a natural and temporary shift in ocean currents.