Hungarian disaster officials say an alumina plant behind a toxic sludge spill last week that ravaged local villages and rivers will reopen on Friday, as the death toll from the disaster climbed to nine late Wednesday.

The Hungarian government has since taken control of the plant for a period of two years, appointing Gyorgy Bakondi to head the plant and announcing it would resume operations.

"We have already switched on the industrial heating [at the plant]," Bakondi told a press conference with Sandor Pinter, Hungary's interior minister.

AFP - France faced the threat of fuel shortages on Wednesday as a wave of strikes against President Nicolas Sarkozy's pension reform plans shut down 70 percent of its oil refining capacity.
   
One day after a massive nationwide protest brought more than a million workers and students into the streets, dozens of follow-on strikes erupted around the country, disrupting transport, schooling and services.

AFP - A growing tussle for land between farmers and wild elephants in northeast India has resulted in the suspected poisoning deaths of four elephants in the past week, officials said Friday.

Officials in Assam state believe the four animals were deliberately poisoned by lacing home-made alcohol with toxic chemicals.

"We have taken the matter very seriously and already an enquiry by the chief wildlife warden is on and strict action will be taken against anyone found guilty of poisoning the elephants," state forest minister Rockybul Hussain told AFP.

(Reuters) - The U.N. panel of climate scientists agreed on Thursday to push ahead with reforms after errors in a 2007 report and chairman Rajendra Pachauri rejected suggestions he should step down.

The panel said after an October 11-14 meeting in Busan, South Korea, that it would tighten checks for errors and set up a "task force" to agree wider reforms by mid-2011 such as an overhaul of the panel's management.

"Change and improvement are vital to the IPCC," Pachauri told a telephone news conference.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been under pressure after errors in its 2007 report, including a projection that Himalayan glaciers could all melt by 2035 -- centuries before the worst-case thaw.

European environment ministers will meet in Brussels later today to debate whether the EU should increase its greenhouse gas emissions target for 2020 to a 30 per cent reduction against 1990 levels.

The meeting follows the release yesterday of a joint declaration by many of the largest businesses in Europe urging ministers to formally upgrade the EU target from the current 20 per cent cut.

The statement was signed by 29 European companies from across a wide range of sectors, including BNP Paribas, BSkyB, Capgemini, Centrica, Crédit Agricole, GE Energy, Johnson Controls Inc, Google, Marks and Spencer, Nike, Philips Lighting, Sony Europe, Swiss Re, Thames Water and Vodafone.

The Opec oil cartel agreed to maintain its current production level on Thursday, signalling the group's satisfaction with prices of around $70 to $85 a barrel.

The cartel, which controls 40 per cent of the world's oil production, said in a statement after a regular meeting in Vienna that whilst economic recovery was under way, "there is still considerable concern about the magnitude and pace of this recovery."
...
Wilson Pastor-Morris, the Ecuadorean natural resources minister and current president of the oil cartel, said the present quotas, agreed during a meeting in December 2008, had "served [their] purpose well" and "reduced volatility at a critical time for the world economy". The present agreement allows the 11 Opec members subject to quotas to produce 24.85m b/d. In practice, they pump some 26.8m b/d. Iraq, the 12th member of the cartel and not covered by quotas, produces another 2.4m b/d.

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The hard news is that there is no "Plan B." The future is likely to be more chaotic than you probably think. This was the primary conclusion that I came to after attending the most recent Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO) in Washington, DC in October, 2010.

The impact of Peak Oil on markets, lifestyles, and even national solvency deserves our very highest attention - but, it turns out, some important players seem to be paying no attention at all.

ASPO conferences tend to start early, end late, and be packed with more data and information than should be consumed in one sitting. Despite all this, I was riveted to my seat. This year's usual constellation of excellent region-by-region analyses confirmed what past participants already knew: Peak Conventional Oil arrived a few years ago, and new fields, enhanced recovery techniques, and unconventional oil plays are barely going to keep up with demand over the next few years.