A plan to fast-track the stalled Keystone XL oil pipeline was passed by a key committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, as Republicans made yet another attempt to spur approval of the project that has become a major issue in the 2012 elections.

The bill would wrest decision-making on the pipeline from the Obama administration and hand it to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which would be compelled to issue approval permits quickly on the Canada-to-Texas project.

Ethanol production has boosted the prices of grains that Canadian farmers buy to raise cattle and pigs, and Ottawa should curb or eliminate its support for the industry, an agriculture research organization said on Tuesday.

But a leading biofuels group said the report wildly overstated ethanol's impact on grain prices.

PANJIM: The campaign to save Goa from incessant mining has now got a global linkage with almost 40 Goan overseas associations joining hands against mining activity at the cost of environment.

The associations representing the Goan Diaspora in Australia, Canada, UK, Middle East, East Africa and Portugal have come under one umbrella called Save Goa Campaign UK, which on Friday submitted a petition to Goa Governor K Sankaranarayanan’s office and to Chief Minister Digamber Kamat.

India ranks a dismal 134 among 187 countries in terms of human development index in the UNDP's latest Human Development Report. BEGGING ON A busy street in Mumbai. According to the HDR, ending absolute deprivations could increase higher-order capabilities, expand people's choices and advance human development.

The North Atlantic Current -- popularly known as the Gulf Stream -- warms Norway and Northern Europe. It is the chaos of the seas that warms the country, researchers have discovered. If its waters flowed smoothly north along the Norwegian coastline, the current would deliver far less warmth.

Norway is situated at the same high northern latitude as Greenland, Northern Canada and Northern Siberia, but thanks to the Gulf Stream, its climate is significantly more temperate.

In 1990, China was responsible for only 10% of annual emissions. But in 2010, it contributed some 27%

In 1992, when the world met to discuss an agreement on climate change, equity was a simple concept: sharing the global commons – the atmosphere in this case – equally among all. It did not provoke much anxiety, for there were no real claimants on the horizon. However, this does not mean the concept was readily accepted.

Environmental opponents of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline aimed to deluge the White House and Congress with phone calls on Friday, slamming a Republican plan to speed approval of the project in exchange for extending a payroll tax cut.

"Red alert - call the White House and tell them not to back down to big oil on Keystone," environmental activist Bill McKibben said in a tweet. McKibben mobilized some 10,000 demonstrators outside the White House earlier this year to protest the pipeline.

Frustrated with the slow pace of work on the 32-km Charkop-Bandra-Mankhurd metro line, top Reliance Infrastructure officials have written to the chief minister detailing how delays by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) and the Central and Western railway authorities have begun to hurt the project. In their 13-page letter sent about a month ago, the officials have said if delays continue, the project will not be financially viable for the R-Infra-led consortium.