Reuters - Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday she was confident her government's plans to extend the lifespans of Germany's nuclear power plants will not need the approval of the upper house of parliament.

AP - Oil prices slipped to near $74 a barrel Monday in Asia as traders weighed whether growing Chinese demand can offset weak U.S. fuel consumption amid high unemployment.

AFP - A Japanese court Monday sentenced two Greenpeace activists to suspended one-year jail terms for stealing a box of whale meat that the environmentalists said was proof of embezzlement in "research whaling".

AFP - Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Mark Hurd, who resigned last month following a sex scandal, is in talks to join US software giant Oracle, the Wall Street Journal said on its website.

AP - East Asia is the world's electronics factory, yet unless they are Japanese, producers are largely anonymous. Now HTC Corp., a Taiwanese maker of smart phones, is moving out of the shadows and trying to establish its own brand name as it competes with Apple's iPhone.

Reuters - Increasingly erratic rainfall patterns related to climate change pose a major threat to food security and economic growth, water experts said on Monday, arguing for greater investment in water storage.

AP - Craiglist's "adult services" section has been shut down in the U.S., but prostitution on the Internet is alive and well — even, quite possibly, on Craigslist.

AFP - Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez said winning the media watchdog IPI prize of World Press Freedom Hero is a "protective shield" that will help her break "the wall of censorship," she told AFP Sunday.

AFP - Bjoern Lomborg, the bad boy of the climate debate who has rejected for years "alarmist" prophecies from environmentalists, stresses in a new book the need to invest billions to fight global warming.

AP - Investigators looking into what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are a step closer to answers now that a key piece of evidence is secure aboard a ship.

AP - Investigators looking into what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are a step closer to answers now that a key piece of evidence is secure aboard a ship.

AFP - Oil giant BP has increased to nearly 25 billion pounds the amount it wants to raise from an asset sale programme in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.

AFP - The French yacht Tara left on Sunday on the second leg of a three-year expedition across the world's oceans to chart the effects of climate change on micro-organisms that produce half our oxygen.

AFP - Increasing water pollution and dwindling water quality around the globe will be the main focus as around 2,500 experts begin gathering in Stockholm Sunday for the 20th edition of the World Water Week.

AFP - The Macondo well, which spilled an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, has been secured and no longer constitutes "a threat," a senior US official said.

AFP - Prosecutors have called for French state energy giant EDF, accused of spying on environmental campaigners Greenpeace, to face criminal trial, EDF lawyer Alexis Gublin said Saturday.

AFP - China has ordered banks to stop new lending to companies that pollute excessively or consume too much energy, as part of a drive to make its economy more energy efficient, state media said Saturday.

AP - What now for the Gulf? News of another oil rig fire in the Gulf of Mexico, so soon after the BP oil spill, has set off a wave of anxiety along the Gulf Coast and prompted calls for the government to extend its six-month ban on deepwater drilling.

AP - What now for the Gulf? News of another oil rig fire in the Gulf of Mexico, so soon after the BP oil spill, has set off a wave of anxiety along the Gulf Coast and prompted calls for the government to extend its six-month ban on deepwater drilling.

AP - Google Inc.'s methods for recommending websites are being reviewed by Texas' attorney general in an investigation spurred by complaints that the company has abused its power as the Internet's dominant search engine.

AFP - Brazil's Petrobras unveiled one of the world's biggest share offerings Friday, a sale of up to 64 billion dollars in new stock to finance oil exploration aimed at turning Brazil into a leading oil exporter of the 21st century.

AP - Gasoline prices have been falling for weeks, and they could go even lower as autumn's leaves begin to drop.

AFP - Shipowners are showing growing interest in a fabled trade route to Asia which climate change is beginning to open up at last as polar ice recedes.

Reuters - The Obama Administration is likely to stay focused on toughening regulatory oversight of the U.S. offshore oil industry and may push back lifting a ban on deepwater drilling after the latest accident in the Gulf of Mexico, analysts said on Thursday.