Reuters - Environment

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Environmental groups took the first step on Wednesday to convince a court to charge Canada's largest oil sands producer with the deaths of 500 ducks, an incident that brought worldwide attention to the ecological impact of the huge energy resource.

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Monsanto Co said Wednesday it filed for U.S. regulatory approval for what could be the world's first drought-tolerant corn, a product that agricultural companies around the globe are racing to roll out amid fears of global warming and the needs of a growing population.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York state should fight obesity, help more residents get health insurance and revive the upstate economy with a research consortium for hybrid car batteries and energy storage, Governor David Paterson proposed on Wednesday.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan aims to expand the "green business" market and create up to 1 million new jobs, the environment ministry said on Wednesday, to simultaneously fight climate change and boost the economy amid a global downturn.

PARIS (Reuters) - Temperatures plunged to record lows in Germany and heavy snow forced normally sunny Marseille to close its international airport as freezing winter weather gripped much of Europe on Wednesday.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's space agency will launch a satellite later this month to monitor greenhouse gases around the world, officials said Wednesday, hoping the data it collects helps global efforts to combat climate change.

PUNTA ARENAS, Chile (Reuters) - A yellow robot submarine will dive under an ice shelf in Antarctica to seek clues to world ocean level rises in one of the most inaccessible places on earth.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Japanese whalers accused hardline anti-whaling activists on Wednesday of disrupting a search for a missing sailor believed to have drowned after toppling overboard in stormy and frigid seas close to Antarctica.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Climate change and rising sea levels pose one of the biggest threats to security in the Pacific and may also spark a global conflict over energy reserves under melting Arctic ice, according to Australia's military.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will designate nearly 200,000 square miles (518,000 sq km) of the Pacific ocean on Tuesday as a protected region, White House officials said, making the areas hands-off for oil drilling or other extraction procedures.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush will designate nearly 200,000 square miles (518,000 sq km) of the Pacific ocean on Tuesday as a protected region, White House officials said, making the areas hands-off for oil drilling or other extraction procedures.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - A biodiversity researcher has found a huge basalt rock formation in the Taiwan Strait, resembling a city wall and rivaling similar monoliths on land.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tiny diamonds sprinkled across North America suggest a "swarm" of comets hit the Earth around 13,000 years ago, kicking up enough disruption to send the planet into a cold spell and drive mammoths and other creatures into extinction, scientists reported on Friday.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Oil from the seeds of a poisonous shrub helped power a New Zealand airliner in a test flight, at a time when airlines hit by high oil prices and pressured over the impact of planes on the environment seek greener fuels.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two Chinese companies on Friday announced plans to build a solar power plant in northwestern China that could one day be the largest photovoltaic solar project in the world.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Hardline anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd said it has been forced to temporarily abandon its pursuit of Japan's whaling fleet in the Antarctic while its ship refuels.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two Chinese companies on Friday announced plans to build a solar power plant in northwestern China that could one day be the largest photovoltaic solar project in the world.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Preliminary water tests from rivers near a huge coal ash spill in Tennessee show elevated levels of pollutants such as mercury and lead, a environmental group said on Friday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Coral growth since 1990 in Australia's Great Barrier Reef has fallen to its lowest rate for 400 years, in a troubling sign for the world's oceans, researchers said on Thursday.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Oil from the seeds of a poisonous shrub helped power a New Zealand airliner in a test flight, at a time when airlines hit by high oil prices and pressured over the impact of planes on the environment seek greener fuels.