Brussels - French car manufacturers are the closest to hitting proposed European Union targets for reducing their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, while Japanese makers are the furthest away, a study by a Brussels pressure group released Tuesday said.

But neither group managed to make substantial cuts in their new cars' emissions in 2007, leaving it open to question whether they would hit their targets, the study commissioned by Brussels-based environmental group Transport and Environment (T&E) said.

London, August 22 : Penguin guano has been accused of dumping arsenic in Antarctica soil by Chinese researchers.

A research team led by Zhouqing Xie of the Institute of Polar Environment at the University of Science and Technology of China studied at how much arsenic was found in the droppings of three bird species, and two seal species that live on Ardley Island, off the Antarctic peninsular.

Accra - The latest round of United Nations climate talks got underway in Ghanian capital Accra Thursday, with over a thousand delegates gathering for a week to iron out the technical details of a new climate change treaty.

Talks in Bangkok in April set up a work programme for a long-term international agreement to be concluded in Copenhagen by the end of 2009.

The Bangkok talks followed on from the landmark Bali Action Plan, which set plans to cut global carbon emissions by 2015 and slash them by 2050, thus reducing the chances of extreme weather events and a rise in sea level brought about by global warming.

Melbourne, Aug 19 : Rising temperatures can threaten the safety of blood used for life-saving transfusions, warn experts.

According to a new report by West Australian researchers, global warming will increase the prevalence of viruses, like dengue and Ross River, already circulating in the northern regions of the country.

The heat could potentially increase the range of organisms that can transmit the viruses and make them more infectious more quickly by accelerating life cycles, said Professor Robert Dunstan, a specialist in emerging infectious diseases at Curtin University in Perth.

Washington, August 13 : A new analysis of ice cores has determined that dramatic year-to-year temperature swings and a century-long warming trend across West Antarctica are linked to conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

The analysis was conducted by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Washington (UW) in the US.

The findings show the connection of the world''s coldest continent to global warming, as well as to periodic events such as El Nino.

El Nino is a periodic shift in air pressure accompanied by oceanic warming in the tropical Pacific.

Washington, Aug 13: Global warming will decrease hurricane activity, but if formed they would be of very high intensity, says a group of researchers.

In the study, scientists have developed a new method for evaluating the frequency of hurricane formation in present and future tropical climates.

In a study, Drs. David S. Nolan and Eric D. Rappin from the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science have described the new method that may out do the computer models used for such studies.