"Political pressure is mounting to make businesses pay for the damage they cause to the environment, and the latest UN study assessing the impact of the world's biggest companies is almost certainly the first stage in a concerted campaign to calculate how much damage is caused, what it is worth and ultimately how it can be stopped. Another report due later this year, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, led by the economist and UN special adviser Pavan Sukhdev, will be another significant step towards th..."

"Every schoolboy knows that the American economy is the engine of the world economy. There is an ominous knocking sound coming from under the bonnet, and to those who can hear it, it sounds like a Big End. The facts are that the economy of the US in the position of one of its cartoon characters who has run off the edge of a cliff but does not yet realise that there is nothing between its feet and the ground except a thousand feet of thin air. Like an aircraft, the economy can keep airborne so long as it keeps mov..."

"Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow. Hunters from Wainwright first started noticing the stuff sometime probably early last week. It's thick and dark and "gooey" and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters, according to Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department. Brower and other borough officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright to investigate. The agencies found "globs" of the ..."

"We are in danger of passing an extremely dangerous tipping point, with the frightening discovery of massive deposits of sub-sea methane in the Arctic. Hey, ho, where's the cash flow? Wasn't the bailout supposed to get those streams of credit flowing again? But while the titans of trickle-down and the free-reign rainmakers pray for new rivers of revenue to float their boats, some venerable bodies of water beyond the canyons of Wall Street are in danger of literally evaporating -- and all the money in the world won'..."

"Earth is heating up lately, but so are Mars, Pluto and other worlds in our solar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in the sun’s activity is the common thread linking all these baking events. Others argue that such claims are misleading and create the false impression that rapid global warming, as Earth is experiencing, is a natural phenomenon. While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of climat..."

"The toll from a powerful earthquake that has struck southwest China has crossed the 9,000 mark in one province alone. Buildings collapsed and telephone links in several areas snapped after the magnitude 7.5 quake struck 92km northwest of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, at 2:48 local time (0628 GMT) on Monday. The quake was felt across a number of cities in Southeast Asia, including the Thai capital Bangkok, more than 1,800km from the epicentre in the county of Wenchuan...."

"But, he said, “the mechanism for change will be from within the junta itself. I don’t see how any civilian group or individual can influence the outcome given the extent of power and control the junta has.” The change could range from a coup at the top that might bring little change in policy, to a liberal opening that could even involve cooperation with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader who has spent 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest. In any case, the military would remain in charge. ..."