International

• Thursday, October 30th 2008 - 20:00 UTC

  Rise of methane gas in atmosphere puzzles scientists

  

  The amount of methane in Earth's atmosphere shot up in 2007, bringing to an end a period of about a decade in which atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas were essentially stable, according to a team led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers.

• Thursday, October 30th 2008 - 20:00 UTC

  EU business and consumer confidence falls to 15-year low

  

  Business and consumer confidence in the 15 nations of the Euro zone fell to a 15-year low in October, the European Commission said Thursday, as a credit crunch hits consumer spending and forces companies to shed jobs.

• Wednesday, October 29th 2008 - 20:00 UTC

  Companies sign code of conduct committed to online free speech

  

  Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have signed a global code of conduct promising to offer better protection for online free speech and against official intrusion. The Global Network Initiative follows criticism that companies were assisting governments in countries like China to censor the Internet.

• Wednesday, October 29th 2008 - 20:00 UTC

  WWW warns about incoming “ecological credit crunch”

  

  Human demands on the world's resources are nearly a third more than what the earth can sustain, setting the stage for an “ecological credit crunch,” says a new report. The WWF's 2008 Living Planet Report, which offers a summery of the planet's health, says future generations will face a “crunch” if humans continue to amass an ecological deficit.

• Tuesday, October 28th 2008 - 20:00 UTC

  Arctic icecap thinning faster than expected even in

  British researchers have found that the Arctic icecap is now shrinking at an unprecedented rate even in winter, a development that could mean that the summer icecap may vanish within a decade.

• Tuesday, October 28th 2008 - 20:00 UTC

  Chile asks G8 liquidity support for development banks

  

  Chile called for a quick response from the international community in face of the global financial crisis and emphasized that country members from the G-8 should increase contributions to the Inter American Development Bank (BID) and to the Andean Promotion Corporation (CAF) thus helping with more liquidity for the region.

• Tuesday, October 28th 2008 - 20:00 UTC

  Karl Marx was never so right, says Nobel laureate Saramago

  

  “Karl Marx was never so right as now” about the current crisis of the capitalist system said Nobel Prize in Literature Jose Saramago during the presentation in Lisbon of the film “Blindness”, partly filmed in Montevideo, with a script based on his novel.

• Tuesday, October 28th 2008 - 20:00 UTC

  UK calls on China and Gulf states to boost IMF resources

  British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on Tuesday for an increase in funding of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cut the risk of “financial contagion” and said China and oil-rich Gulf states should make the bulk of the contributions.

• Tuesday, October 28th 2008 - 20:00 UTC

  Income inequality since 2000 has risen in US and Germany

  

  The gap between rich and poor in most wealthy nations has widened, revealed the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Across the 24 OECD countries where data was available, the cumulative rise in inequality was 7% over the past 20 years, the Paris-based group said. But this was not as large a rise as had been expected, it said.

• Tuesday, October 28th 2008 - 20:00 UTC

  German misgivings about Antarctic visitors' number

  

  The Antarctic wilderness is attracting a growing number of tourists keen to experience the icy landscape yet their presence is posing new risks to this unique marine environment.