The EU Commission Wednesday said six genetically modified corn varieties may now be imported into the EU. The unilateral decision was taken after member states failed to reach agreement among themselves. The approvals, valid for 10 years, cover imports for food and animal feed, not for cultivation.

Italian FM Franco Frattini told his EU counterparts Monday that the Union of the Mediterranean should discuss any plans by BP to drill off the coast of Libya, the FT reports. "All of us are paying close attention to what BP is doing after the worrying example in the Gulf of Mexico," he said.

REUTERS - The French government said state-owned electricity giant EDF and nuclear reactor maker Areva would sign a wide-ranging partnership to help the country regain its leadership in nuclear energy.   After a report on the health of France's nuclear sector was published on Tuesday, President Nicolas Sarkozy's government called for closer coordination between the companies to offset recent losses of contracts to Asian rivals.   The government will study the possibility of EDF taking a stake in Areva, according to a statement released by Sarkozy's office. The government confirmed that Areva would sell about 15 percent of itself by the end of the year, and said discussions with potential partners were underway.

A demonstration in a Moscow suburb turned violent Wednesday night as 100 people threw stones and smoke bombs at the local town hall to protest against the razing of the local forest, Moscow regional police said Thursday.

Russian television reports showed the administration building in Khimki surrounded by smoke and broken glass after a permitted rally in which hundreds of people denounced plans to put a new highway through the local forest. Police say a gang of 90 unidentified suspects met up there after the rally.

"They shouted slogans in support of the Khimki forest. Shots were fired and glass bottles were thrown," Yevgeny Gildeyev, spokesman for the Moscow police, told Echo of Moscow radio.

The snow cover on the mountainside above the settlement of Longyearbyen, around 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) from the North Pole, melts to a large extent in summer. But much of the earth below remains frozen. The permafrost is one of the main reasons why this spot, 130 meters above sea level, was chosen to house the planet's "deep freezer" for crop seeds.

 

In 2008, the bunker in the frosty interior of this Arctic mountain, christened the "Global Seed Vault, initiated by the Norwegian government and now run by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, was officially opened. Since then, more than half a million seed samples have been stored in what the organizers consider to be the "safest place in the world."

Delaware (Reuters) - The tide of lawsuits unleashed by BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico breaks into an Idaho courtroom on Thursday, just as the company's rivals are counting the cost of a ban on offshore drilling.

Attorneys hoping to lead the legal fight against BP are set to descend on Boise, Idaho, to address a special judicial panel considering how to bring order to the hundreds of civil lawsuits spawned by the spill after a rig explosion on April 20.

"There will be more lawyers in that courtroom than exist in the entire city of Boise put together," Mark Lanier, a Houston-based lawyer who plans to attend the hearing, joked this week. "It's going to be a circus."

The vaults rose up as high as the city walls, bearing reeds richly bedded in bitumen and gypsum. The layered galleries peered each beyond its neighbour to reach the sunlight, and water drawn from the river was pumped through conduits up to the highest level. The topsoil was thick enough to root even the largest trees...

These were the renowned Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as described by the Greek historians Diodorus and Callisthenes, and the earliest example of vertical farming - at least according to Dan Caiger-Smith. His company, Valcent, is taking the concept into the 21st century, recently launching the first farm of its kind at Paignton Zoo in Devon.

It's a beguilingly simple idea: make maximum use of a small amount of space by filling glass houses with plant beds stacked high one above the other.

The amount of phytoplankton - tiny marine plants - in the top layers of the oceans has declined markedly over the last century, research suggests.

Writing in the journal Nature, scientists say the decline appears to be linked to rising water temperatures.

They made their finding by looking at records of the transparency of sea water, which is affected by the plants.

The decline - about 1% per year - could be ecologically significant as plankton sit at the base of marine food chains.

...According to Scientists in 48 Countries. Earth has been growing warmer for more than fifty years.

Figure 1: Source: NOAA.

The 2009 State of the Climate report released today draws on data for 10 key climate indicators that all point to the same finding: the scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable. More than 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries contributed to the report, which confirms that the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years.

Based on comprehensive data from multiple sources, the report defines 10 measurable planet-wide features used to gauge global temperature changes. The relative movement of each of these indicators proves consistent with a warming world. Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the "active-weather" layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth's surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere.

The entire document is here.

EPA determined in December 2009 that climate change caused by emissions of greenhouse gases threatens the public's health and the environment. Since then, EPA received ten petitions challenging this determination. On July 29, 2010, EPA denied these petitions.

The petitions to reconsider EPA's "Endangerment Finding" claimed that climate science can't be trusted, and asserted a conspiracy that calls into question the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , the U.S. National Academy of Sciences , and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. After months of serious consideration of the petitions and of the state of climate change science, EPA found no evidence to support these claims.

The scientific evidence supporting EPA's finding is robust, voluminous, and compelling. Climate change is happening now, and humans are contributing to it. Multiple lines of evidence show a global warming trend over the past 100 years. Beyond this, melting ice in the Arctic, melting glaciers around the world, increasing ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, altered precipitation patterns, and shifting patterns of ecosystems and wildlife habitats all confirm that our climate is changing.

(Reuters) - Japan's Sharp Corp is investing almost 4 billion yen (29.4 million pounds) at a plant in Britain to double production of solar cell modules to meet growing demand across Europe.

Sharp Solar UK, which began making cells at the plant in Wrexham, Wales in 2004, said it was also seeing increased demand from the British market following the introduction of subsidies for renewable energy installations in April.

"This time last year 99 percent of the modules that we manufactured at Wrexham were exported to Europe and that has already dropped to 90 percent," Andrew Lee, General Manager of Sharp Solar told Reuters.