Poisonous frogs, long-necked turtles, bears and chimpanzees may not be everyone’s idea of an animal companion, but experts warn that demand for exotic pets is pushing some species closer to extinction. With high price tags luring criminal gangs, conservationists are calling for increased efforts to crack down on the illegal trade, fuelled by the demands of collectors including in Europe, the Uni...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AFP) ―Emerging from the worst drought in 50 years, U.S. farmers are bracing for long-term challenges from climate change including blasting heat and more capricious rainfall. About 80 percent of the farmland in the world’s biggest soybean and corn (maize) producer was scorched by extreme heat and drought last summer, savaging crops and sending global prices for the key food com...

Delegations from some 140 countries have agreed to adopt a ground-breaking treaty limiting the use of health-hazardous mercury, the Swiss foreign ministry said Saturday. The world's first legally binding treaty on mercury, reached after a week of thorny talks, will aim to reduce global emission levels of the toxic heavy metal also known as quicksilver, which poses risks to human health and the e...

South Korea on Monday restarted one of three nuclear reactors shut down for safety reasons, easing fears of power shortages during the harsh winter. Half of the six reactors at Yeonggwang, one of the country's largest nuclear power complexes, were shut down in November, two of them to replace "non-core" parts that had been provided with forged quality and safety warranties. The Ministry of Know...

CHICAGO (AFP) ― Chicago’s skyline is going green, as property managers install energy efficient tools like motion-detectors on office lights, in a project officials hope will inspire changes across the United States. At the riverside Sheraton hotel, chief engineer Ryan Egan cannot get over what his new thermostats can do ― or the $136,000 a year in savings they are producing. First off, they’re...

Korea will embark on a 10-billion-won ($9.2 million) project to clean a polluted river in Jakarta, the Ministry of Environment said Monday. The project calls for the decontamination of a 300-meter section of the Ciliwung River, construction of a sewage treatment facility and ecological restoration development of river banks by 2015. Ciliwung, like the Han River of Seoul, runs right through the I...

With the Arctic sea ice melting to an all-time low, record high temperatures in East Asia, and debilitating droughts in the United States, we are now living with predicted effects of climate change. In a recent study, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute, and his co-authors found that the European heat wave in 2003, the Russian heat wave in 2010 and droughts in Texas and Oklahoma i...