"Royal Dutch Shell has agreed a $15.5 million out-of-court settlement in a case accusing it of complicity in human rights abuses in Nigeria."

The U.S. and China are engaged in bilateral negotiations over greenhouse gas reductions, and a deal may be the key to a global climate treaty.

An ambitious Chinese plan for a national smart grid could provide an opening for US-China technological cooperation.

AFP profiles Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"The El Nino weather pattern, which can bring global weather chaos such as droughts and floods, could develop within weeks, [NOAA's] Climate Prediction Center ...ssid."

"The Sierra Club, Greenpeace and 28 other North American environmental groups are calling on the United States and Canada to boost investments in clean energy, halt industrial fishing in the Arctic and freeze expansion of the Alberta's oil sands...."

"Oil prices on Thursday set a new high for the year, buoyed by a weaker dollar and the first drop in unemployment since January."

"President Obama may attend world climate talks in Copenhagen this December, marking the first visit to the annual U.N. conference by a sitting U.S. president since George H.W. Bush's 1992 trip to Rio de Janeiro."

"Most global industrial companies that emit a lot of greenhouse gases are not adequately detailing their climate strategies in U.S. financial filings, two studies by environmental and investment groups showed on Wednesday."

"The United States wants to forge a partnership with China, bringing the world's two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases together to address global warming, Washington's top climate diplomat said on Wednesday."

"A Mexican proposal to raise billions of dollars to fight climate change is winning backing in talks on a new U.N. treaty, paradoxically because no one really likes it, a Mexican official said on Wednesday."

"Small Pacific islands vulnerable to rising sea levels won a symbolic victory at the United Nations on Wednesday with the passage of a resolution recognizing climate change as a possible threat to security."

"It could save the rainforests of Borneo, slow climate change and the international community backs it. But a plan to pay tropical countries not to chop down trees risks being discredited by opportunists even before it starts."

Delegates in Bonn negotiating a post-Kyoto climate treaty grudgingly accepted a first draft text as a starting point -- despite many reservations.

"The increasing acidity of the world's oceans due to global warming must not be left off the agenda at the United Nations Copenhagen climate negotiations in December, 70 of the world's science academies warned today."