Inter Press Service: The prime ministers of Norway and Britain have launched a 200 million dollar fund to tackle deforestation in the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest tropical forest. Launched in London last week, the Congo Basin Forest Fund will support initiatives from governments, civil society and the private sector that aim to reduce logging. The fund will sponsor livelihood projects that seek to make it more profitable for local communities to preserve the forest than to cut it down, …

Reuters: Tracking the amount of US corn and soybeans lost to the worst flooding in 15 years for the US Midwest, one of the world’s key food production areas, will be a daunting task, crop specialists said on Friday. "The key word is uncertainty. We’re getting close to the end of time to replant crops, but that leaves a lot of unknowns," said Bob Nielsen, extension agronomist with Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. "How severe is the crop damage in those areas that …

AFP: Regional officials on Monday praised Indonesia’s efforts to reduce a haze caused by forest fires which regularly choke Southeast Asia. ADVERTISEMENT The blazes, set by large plantations and farmers, send smoke into Indonesian skies and across boundaries into neighbouring countries each year during the May to October dry season."I wouldn’t say that there will be no haze," Yaacob Ibrahim, Singapore’s Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, told reporters after talks among regional …

Inter Press Service: The jatropha plant may be the key to addressing the problems of energy and food self-sufficiency in the Mekong region. Cultivating this hardy plant will not only provide biofuel but will also ensure that agricultural lands devoted to food production will not be diverted to fuel crops. "Planting jatropha is commercially viable. The main advantage of jatropha is that you can plant it even in idle lands," according to Mercedita A. Sombilla, who is conducting an Asian …

Associated Press: Wildfires were scattered Sunday around Northern California in the heart of wine country and in remote forests, the latest in what has become an unusually destructive year. State officials said lightning started more than 500 fires over the weekend. One had spread across 5.5 square miles by early Sunday, after starting Saturday afternoon in Napa County and quickly moving into a mostly rural area of Solano County. The fire threatened more than 100 buildings as it fed on …

Reuters: Shell Oil said on Friday it would delay its 2008 drilling plan in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea for a year because of an ongoing legal challenge filed by groups concerned about the potential impact on whales, walruses and other marine mammals. "This lack of decision has delayed drilling for another year - extending the timeline it will take to bring this much-needed US production on line," Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said in a press release. Shell had planned to begin …

Bloomberg: John McCain, calling for “a swift conversion of American vehicles away from oil,” says he will give consumers thousands of dollars in tax credits for buying vehicles that emit little or no carbon dioxide. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee today also will propose a $300 million prize for the development of a battery with sufficient capacity and power to “leapfrog” those that now fuel plug-in hybrids or electric cars. In remarks scheduled for delivery at a …

Environment News Service: A new NASA-French space agency oceanography satellite was lofted into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base early Friday morning on a three year mission to record sea level, a vital indicator of global climate change. The mission is expected to return a vast amount of new data that will allow greater precision in weather, climate and ocean forecasts. Jason-2, or the Ocean Surface Topography Mission, is a joint venture between NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the U.S. National …

Reuters: Daimler plans to roll out a Mercedes-Benz model that runs on electricity in 2010, its chief executive said in a newspaper interview. "We plan an electric Smart for 2010 and for the same year a Mercedes (electric) model as well," Dieter Zetsche told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in comments to be published in the Saturday edition. Daimler currently has in London a fleet of 100 first-generation Smart cars that run on electricity. Unlike General Motors Corp, …

AAP: Starving fish are killing sections of the Great Barrier Reef already weakened by climate change, an Australian scientist says. And some fish species also face extinction - with potentially serious consequences for commercial fisheries. Morgan Pratchett, of the James Cook University-based ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Townsville, has spent the last two months at Britain’s University of Newcastle using chemical markers, such as carbon 13, to study the feeding …