AFP

Environment ministers from 13 major nations agreed Friday to assess the economic cost of Earth's rich biodiversity in a bid to stem species loss and sought common ground in the world's global warming crisis.

US President George W. Bush visited Colombia Sunday in a show of support of the turmoil-torn country he called "a strategic partner," as violent protests continued to rock his goodwill tour of Latin America. By Laurent Lozano

Global legislators met in snowbound Washington to debate a new pact against catastrophic climate change and find ways of luring laggards like the United States and China on board.

Last month was the world's hottest January on record, in further evidence that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming, Japanese scientists said on Friday.

The head of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, Phillip Asiodu, has warned that Nigeria may be left with no forests by 2010 due to ongoing deforestation, the News Agency of Nigeria reported on Thursday.

Climate change over the past two decades has caused Sweden's tree line to move north at a faster rate than at any time in the past 7,000 years, Swedish researchers have said.

Researchers from some 60 countries will try to better understand the Earth's poles in 2007 and the effect of climate change as part of the first "International Polar Year" since the 1950s. By Guillaume Lavallee

There is not quite the drama of a Florida hurricane, or the poignancy of stranded polar bears, but Moscow babushka Larisa Bilik is struggling to sell her wool socks -- and global warming, experts say, is also to blame.

The nine-member US Supreme Court appeared split as it took up the debate over global warming, with rival lawyers arguing whether some greenhouse gas emissions should be regulated. By Fanny Carrier

President George W. Bush could choose military action over diplomacy and bomb Iran's nuclear facilities next year, political analysts in Washington agree.

Oil-consuming giants the United States and China along with oil-producing behemoth Saudi Arabia rank among the world's worst countries in dealing with climate change, a report said.

The degradation of China's environment is reaching a critical point where health and social stability are under threat, China's top government official on the environment has said.

Hundreds of US soldiers have signed a petition calling for a troop withdrawal from Iraq and the document is to be formally presented to Congress in January, organizers said.

Muslim women from around the world took up the fight against a "macho" interpretation of Islam's Koran at the opening of an international conference on Islamic feminism.

The Pentagon has stepped up planning for attacks on North Korean nuclear facilities and is bolstering US nuclear forces in the region.

Greenhouse-gas emissions by the industrialised world are still rising, with the United States firmly entrenched as the biggest polluter, a UN report has said.

A meeting of Southeast Asian environment ministers is being planned to pressure Indonesia to take action on the haze crisis blighting parts of the region, Malaysia said.

A new classified US intelligence report has concluded that the war in Iraq has helped spawn a new wave of Islamic radicalism and made the overall terrorist threat worse, leading US newspapers have reported.

European and Asian leaders, eager to show that together they can produce results on the world stage, were set to make a declaration about confronting global warming after the Kyoto Protocol on climate change runs out in 2012. By Leigh Thomas

Newspapers across the world have strongly criticised the US response to September 11, accusing the Bush administration of bungling its "war on terror" and squandering global goodwill by invading Iraq.

The first mass exodus of people fleeing the disastrous effects of climate change is not happening in low-lying Pacific islands but in the world's richest country, a US study said. By Jitendra Joshi

Tropical storm Prapiroon swept across south China, leaving a trail of destruction with 77 people reported dead. By Peter Harmsen

Iraq's parliament speaker Mahmud Mashhadani bitterly criticized US forces in Iraq, accusing them of "butchery" and demanded that they pull out of the country.

US administration officials chose to ignore a CIA officer's warnings that an Iraqi defector's claims of purported biological labs made by Iraq for germ warfare were unproven.

Summer has still to make its official start in Europe, yet many countries are sweating - and it has less to do with the immediate temperature than out of worry for their water supplies.

A UN conference on curbing illegal global trade in small arms came under fire from US gun owners who fear losing their weapons, UN organizers said.

The growing number of people who migrate from developing countries to over-populated Western states in search of a better life is damaging the planet and could be avoided, a think-tank said on Tuesday. By Deborah Haynes

Former undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose outing sparked a major scandal rocking the White House, was working to track Iran's nuclear program before her name was revealed in 2003, according to US media.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev urged the world's biggest industrialized nations to set up a 50-billion-dollar (44-billion-euro) fund to support solar power, warning that oil or nuclear energy were not viable energy sources for the future. By Philip Thornton

North Korea's defense chief has warned that Pyongyang could also launch a preemptive attack against the United States, with state media saying soldiers were ready to be "human bombs."