New York Times: When she moved to the United States from Germany seven years ago, Angela Neigl brought with her the energy-conscious sensibilities of life in Europe. You drove small cars. You recycled every can, lid and stray bit of household waste. You brought your own reusable bags or crate to the market rather than adding to the billions of plastic bags clogging landfills, killing aquatic creatures on the bottoms of oceans and lakes, and blowing in the wind. But, alas, there she was Friday …

Age: The last night parrot seen in the wild was a headless corpse. The remains, found last year in a Queensland national park, looked like an over-sized budgerigar: similar markings and shape but a stumpier tail. Of course, budgies live in cages whereas the night parrot - known as the Tasmanian tiger of the sky - has been flirting with oblivion on the harsh plains of inland Australia since the 1880s. It was first thought extinct in 1915. What makes the headless corpse all the more …

Associated Press: President George W. Bush’s appeal for a new fund to reduce global warming fell flat with Europeans and environmentalists who say U.N.-mandated cuts in greenhouse gases are what is needed. To show he meant business, Mr Bush designated his treasury secretary to talk to other nations about getting worldwide contributions to the fund. The money would pay for clean-energy projects in poor countries. "This here was a great step for the Americans and a small step for mankind," …

Agence France-Presse:  A key week in the chronicle of climate change has delivered a powerful kick for tackling the environmental crisis, even if many fundamental problems and deep-rooted skepticism remain. Diplomats gave an upbeat assessment of the UN climate summit in New York and a two-day meeting in Washington of the world’s biggest greenhouse-gas polluters. "It’s been a very important week," said a European delegate. "Climate change has now arrived on the agendas of head of …

International Herald Tribune: President George W. Bush’s two-day summit on global warming last week was not, as some of the European delegates complained privately, a total bust. Our own expectations weren’t high, but we can note several positive outcomes. The meeting brought together 17 nations - the Group of 8 industrialized countries, plus big developing nations like China, India and Brazil - that are responsible for four-fifths of the world’s global warming emissions. It displayed a more open-minded Bush, now …

Australian: A town that was once the heart of a thriving agricultural district is today a shadow of its former self: the water is gone and so are most of the people. Terowie grew up on the margins of viability in a heartbreak reach of rural Australia, straddling the railway and Goyder’s Line, which was what used to separate the country that people could make something of from that which would support little more than the odd bedraggled sheep, saltbush and weeds. The trains stopped …

Sydney Morning Herald: THE Prime Minister, John Howard, said yesterday he believed the continuing drought was an example of "climate shift", not climate change. "We are seeing what the experts call a climate shift and I do think we should keep our heads about it. I don’t think we should write off farming," Mr Howard told Southern Cross broadcasting. Mr Howard’s office told the Herald the Prime Minister had been influenced by the work of Shahbaz Khan, a professor of hydrology at …

San Francisco Chronicle: President Bush’s rallying cry for action on climate change at his summit of the world’s largest economies Friday marked a shift from a year ago when he said there was still debate over whether global warming was man-made or a natural phenomenon. But while many foreign leaders and Democrats in Congress applauded the president’s new rhetoric, they said it wasn’t matched by a shift in policy. Bush still adamantly opposes mandatory limits on greenhouse gases, favoring voluntary …

Herald Sun: WHO would have thought that the sight of blue skies in spring could be so depressing? But the sunshine that has bathed Victoria for the past month is the cause of a calamity descending on farming lands north of the Divide that is difficult to fully comprehend. Many farming communities are standing on the brink of financial disaster and the problem is heartachingly simple: there’s no rain. It’s just not raining when it should, and after another horribly dry year, crops …

Irish Examiner: The rising number of catastrophes has left 1.5 million people across Africa facing hunger, hardship and homelessness. Their plight was a direct result of climate change, said Irish Red Cross chairman David Andrews. "We need support from people in Ireland to pay for urgently-needed goods such as tents and clean water, as well as medical aid kits to help treat the injured and sick," he appealed. The number of floods in Africa jumped from five in 2004 to 32 in 2006. Already in …