The US-owned bottled water giant Fiji Water shut down operations in the military-ruled Pacific nation of Fiji Monday, after the nation raised the tax on pumping the water the firm exports.

"Almost 200 nations meet in Mexico beginning Monday to try to agree on modest steps to slow climate change, a U.N. gathering overshadowed by strains between the top two emitters, the United States and China."

"The global average temperature has increased over the past 160 years, but short-term trends in temperature and sea ice seem to be at odds with each other and need more research, the UK Met Office's Hadley Center said. In a report on long and short-term climate trends, the Hadley Center found several factors that indicate a warming world and said 2010 has been one of the warmest years on record."

"In the name of job creation and clean energy, the Obama administration has doled out billions of dollars in stimulus money to some of the nation’s biggest polluters and granted them sweeping exemptions from the most basic form of environmental oversight, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found."

Some transnational technology corporations see billions of dollars of business opportunity in China's rollout of a "smart grid" energy infrastructure in the next five years. No plans of comparable scale exist in the U.S.

"PARIS -- Government delegates from 48 fishing nations today failed to protect the spawning grounds of the vanishing Atlantic bluefin tuna, either in the Gulf of Mexico or the Mediterranean, although they did approve some protections for whitetip and hammerhead sharks."

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated more than 187,000 square miles of on-shore barrier islands, denning areas and offshore sea-ice as critical habitat for the threatened polar bear under the Endangered Species Act."