Liu Xiao spends her weeks visiting sludge and organic waste treatment plants across China. The travel can be tiring but as a technical and policy adviser on waste management she must help implement President
Five years ago Russia's rapidly growing oil exports were seen as the cure for the US and Europe's addiction to Middle East oil, international oil companies' most exciting potential source of revenue and the only thing that could quench China's insatiable new thirst.
Alaska is seeking bids to conduct a comprehensive risk assessment of the state's oil and gas infrastructure to prevent a repeat of the corrosion and spills suffered in recent years at the Prudhoe Bay oilfield, the largest in the US. The engineering analysis, for which bids are due by April 28, is being conducted on the instructions of Governor Sarah Palin. She ordered the audit - to take two years and cost $5m - after the biggest spill at the BP-operated Prudhoe Bay in 2006 revealed corrosion in the pipelines and forced the closure of half the oilfield.
The sceptical literature on global warming is tiny and, to put it generously, of variable quality. Dissent from the received wisdom that climate change is a global emergency that calls for drastic remedies has been overwhelmed. The climate-science establishment is on board; so is the larger scientific community; and so, lately, are most governments, with Britain's leading the way.
Could record food prices be their own cure, spurring farmers around the world to lift production? A recent fact-finding trip to Kenya by Josette Sheeran, director of the United Nations World Food Programme, provided little evidence to support this view.
The European Union has broken through in efforts to lessen its dependence on Russian natural gas with a concrete offer of extra supplies from Turkmenistan. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU external relations commissioner, said the Turkmen president had last week guaranteed that 10bn cubic metres of gas a year would be available for the EU. President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov's pledge comes amid intense competition for access to Turkmenistan's huge gas reserves since the death last year of Saparmurat Niyazov, its isolationist former leader.
Toyotais set to invest $340m in a second plant on the outskirts of Bangalore that will produce its planned low-cost car. The move will improve the Japanese carmaker's position as it jockeys for business in one of the global industry's fastest-growing and most strategically important markets. India, with its large pool of first-time carbuyers and cheap engineering and manufacturing skills, is emerging as the car industry's biggest new centre of low-cost production. Renault, General Motors, and Suzuki all produce low-priced vehicles in the country.
In the UK, political debate over stem cells continues to focus on whether scientists should be allowed to create hybrid humananimal embryos. This futuristic research may eventually lead to rewarding discoveries about incur-able diseases - and emotive arguments by some religious groups trying to ban it should be resisted. At the same time, some scientists and patient advocates have been unable to resist hyping hybrid embryo research, by implying that it could produce cures in the near future. Sir Martin Evans, the stem cell pioneer and Nobel prizewinner, acknowledged that this week.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has quietly begun to reduce its oil production despite calls from the US and Europe for the group to pump more so that prices fall. Output from the core countries of the 13-member cartel last month fell to 27.3m barrels a day, down from the 27.6m b/d they produced in February and 27.8m b/d in January, the International Energy Agency, the western countries' watchdog, said yesterday in its monthly report. Production from Saudi Arabia, Opec's largest member, dropped marginally from January and was the same as February at 9.2m b/d.
China has passed Germany and Japan to become the world's second-largest economy, the World Bank confirmed yesterday, as it unveiled a new report examining the purchasing power of global economies. The report also found that developing countries' share of the $58,600bn (
The Japanese auto industry took a step towards consolidation yesterday with the agreement by Toyota, Fuji Heavy Industries and Daihatsu to extend their co-operation in research, development and product supply. Under the agreement, Toyota and FHI will jointly develop a compact sports car, which is set to hit the market by the end of 2011 and will be powered by an engine using FHI's core technology. To cement the strengthened alliance, Toyota will increase its stake in FHI from 8.7 per cent to 16.5 per cent.
