International

Fiji water is in fashion. Alleged to be pure. And a brutal military dictatorship threatens prison and rape for any journalist who may suggest otherwise.

"GUADALAJARA - The United States, Canada and Mexico said Monday they would put in place infrastructure to cooperate on greenhouse gas emissions trading as part of efforts to fight climate change."

"Two of China and the United States' largest electric utilities signed a memorandum of understanding in Beijing today to share information and explore potential initiatives to produce cleaner power from coal and renewable resources such as wind."

"About 180 nations met for U.N. climate talks on Monday amid warnings that time was running out for them to reach agreement on a hugely complex pact, due for completion at the end of the year."

"In a matter of years or decades, researchers believe, animals and plants already are adapting to life in a warmer world. Some species will be unable to change quickly enough and will go extinct, but others will evolve, as natural selection enables them to carry on in an altered environment."

"Companies on three continents continue to make and sell consumer paints that contain dangerous levels of lead despite the availability of technology to produce high-quality, low lead paint. A tougher lead paint standard takes effect in the United States later this month, but imported consumer goods may still contain hazardous amounts of lead paint."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won attention along with the Nobel Prize in 2007, now faces a challenge as climate policy and diplomacy lag behind climate science.

"Union Carbide is defending its former chief executive now wanted for arrest in India, saying that managers at the company’s plant in Bhopal could not have anticipated a gas leak that killed 10,000 people 25 years ago."

"The Obama administration is talking with allies and Congress about the possibility of imposing an extreme economic sanction against Iran if it fails to respond to President Obama’s offer to negotiate on its nuclear program: cutting off the country’s imports of gasoline and other refined oil products."

The World Bank is taking a renewed role in hydropower development, driven it part by estimates that the developing world has 1,333 GW of potential and unexploited hydro capacity. Some NGOs, however, don’t believe large scale hydropower is the answer for rural electrification and say the World Bank's number would be much lower if negative social and economic impacts were taken into consideration.