British Petroleum has been temporarily suspended from new contracts with the US government, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said. While it is unclear how long the ban will last, it follows BP's record fine earlier this month over the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
By Lord Hunt & Terry Townshend - We have learnt to expect surprises at UN climate change summits. At Durban, a year ago, there was the unexpected, but welcome, agreement to begin negotiations on a new legally binding instrument involving all major emitters of greenhouse gases, to be finalised by 2015, and to take effect in 2020.
A South Pacific island identified on Google Earth and world maps does not exist, according to Australian scientists who went searching for the mystery landmass during a geological expedition.
BP Plc agreed on Thursday to plead guilty to a raft of charges in the deadly Gulf of Mexico spill and pay a record 4.5 billion dollars including the biggest criminal fine in United States history. Three BP employees were also charged, two of them with manslaughter.
The Royal Navy ice patrol ship HMS Protector on her route to the Falklands and Antarctica, has visited the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha to conduct the first systematic survey of the British Overseas Territory since the 1970s.
A heat wave which reached 36 Celsius caused on Wednesday a massive blackout in Argentina’s capital with an estimated three million people suffering lack of power plus such emblematic sites as Government House (Casa Rosada), Congress and the posh district of Puerto Madero.
A powerful earthquake off the Pacific coast of Guatemala on Wednesday sent debris crashing down onto cars, collapsed roads and killed dozens in the Central American nation, officials said.
An Argentine judge has embargoed up to 19 billion dollars in Chevron assets in connection with an environmental lawsuit by Ecuadorean villagers, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said on Wednesday.
New Zealand scientists have made a world first discovery when they identified two skeletons belonging to the spade-toothed beaked whale, which is so rare that nobody has seen one alive. A 17-foot whale mother and her calf beached themselves in New Zealand in 2010 and were buried misidentified for a much more common type of whale that occasionally strands on NZ beaches.
Peru slashed its commercial fishing quota as warmer water temperatures and controversial practices deplete stocks of anchovy in one of the world’s richest fisheries. The government cut its quota for this summer’s anchovy season by 68% to 810.000 tons, the smallest allowance in 25 years.