Nearly three-quarters of Japanese companies support abandoning nuclear power after last year's Fukushima disaster, although a majority set the condition that alternative energy resources must be secured, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.

The poll offers fresh evidence of the deep public distrust of nuclear power, the role of which the government is reconsidering after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that wrecked the Fukushima nuclear plant, triggering a radiation crisis that caused mass evacuations and widespread contamination.

Record growth over the last year pushed the UK green goods and services market past the £122bn mark, according to new government figures that reveal the low carbon economy now employs almost one million people.

The sector grew 4.7 per cent against the 2009/10 figure of £116.8bn, providing an additional £5.4bn of economic activity as green industries continued to defy the sluggish progress made by the rest of the economy.

Countries risk delaying much-needed private sector investment in slowing deforestation by dodging tricky issues such as how to protect the rights of forest dwellers, green groups said Thursday.

Negotiators aim to finish work on how to measure the CO2 content of tropical forests by the year-end U.N. meeting in Qatar.

But, according to a draft U.N. document, nations will take another year to complete work on ensuring that any move to cut emissions by slowing down deforestation will not harm indigenous communities or the biodiversity of the forests.

Hopes are fading that climate talks in Qatar late this year will make even modest progress towards getting a new globally binding climate deal signed by 2015, as preliminary negotiations in Germany this week have left much work to be done.

The fear is that if work plans and agendas are not set by the end of this year at the latest it could have a knock-on effect, holding up the entire effort to avert potentially devastating global warming.

China spurred a jump in global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to their highest ever recorded level in 2011, offsetting falls in the United States and Europe, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday.

CO2 emissions rose by 3.2 percent last year to 31.6 billion metric tons (34.83 billion tons), preliminary estimates from the Paris-based IEA showed.

China, the world's biggest emitter of CO2, made the largest contribution to the global rise, its emissions increasing by 9.3 percent, the body said, driven mainly by higher coal use.

The radiation released in the first days of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was almost 2-1/2 times the amount first estimated by Japanese safety regulators, the operator of the crippled plant said in a report released on Thursday.

Tokyo Electric Power said its own analysis conducted over the past year put the amount of radiation released in the first three weeks of the accident at about one-sixth the radiation released during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

India has sought Japan's assistance in setting up more urban transport systems like monorail projects, intelligent transport networks and the Regional Rapid Transit Systems (RRTS). Japan has already been extending financial assistance for the construction of Delhi Metro.

Union Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath, now in Tokyo participating in the India-Japan Business Summit, has acknowledged Japan's assistance in the development of India's urban transportation, elicited more assistance and invited investors to the Indian markets.

New Delhi India has potential to make forest produce like wood and paper as major foreign exchange earner and UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) is ready to extend knowledge and technological assistance for the same, a top FAO official said on Thursday.

“India can turn wood and paper as its major export items by pursuing a sustainable forestry policy,” Eduardo Rojas Sriales, assistant director general, forestry department, FAO,

A strong earthquake has struck off the coast of northeastern Japan, but no tsunami is expected.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the magnitude-6.1 earthquake hit early Thursday and was centered about 107 kilometers northeast of Hachinohe at a depth of 40 kilometers.

Kyodo News agency says the quake shook Aomori Prefecture and other areas of northeastern Japan but no abnormalities were reported at nearby nuclear power plants. No tsunami warning was issued.

Spikes in radiation caused by the Fukushima nuclear disaster were below cancer-causing levels in almost all of Japan, but infants in one town appear to be at a higher risk of developing thyroid cancer, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

In a preliminary report, independent experts said that people in two locations in Fukushima Prefecture may have received a radiation dose of 10-50 millisieverts (mSv) in the year after the accident at the power station operated by TEPCO.