HONG KONG (Reuters) - Roadside air pollution in Hong Kong hit record highs in the first six months of the year, hurting public health and economic competitiveness compared with Asian rivals, activists and lawmakers said on Tuesday. The city's air quality hit "unhealthy" levels about 10 percent of the time between January and June, the highest level in five years ...

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States reiterated on Friday that it was committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 even though the Senate has failed to pass legislation. "I am in no sense writing off legislation over time. And I'm quite sure the president isn't," U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern told a news conference during two days ...

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - U.S. government officials urged residents of a Wyoming farming community near natural gas drilling sites not to use private well water for drinking or cooking because of chemical contamination. "Sample results indicate that the presence of petroleum hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds in groundwater represents a drinking water concern," the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement ...

LOS ANGELES/HOUSTON (Reuters) - Julayna Smith has a problem. Over the years, she has accumulated eight cell phones in trying to keep up with the latest models. Her boyfriend has also started a small Blackberry pile of his own. "I don't know the first place to look to recycle a phone, I just have no idea where I would ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American farmers have been ridiculing a proposal by U.S. regulators to reduce the amount of dust floating in rural air. "If there's ever been rural America, that's what rural America is," said Nebraska hog farmer Danny Kluthe. "You know? It's dirt out here, and with dirt you've got dust." The Environmental Protection Agency ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - Thousands of tonnes of garbage washed down by recent torrential rain are threatening to jam the locks of China's massive Three Gorges Dam, and is in places so think people can stand on it, state media said on Monday. Chen Lei, a senior official at the China Three Gorges Corporation, told the China Daily that 3,000 ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday denied 10 petitions challenging EPA's 2009 finding that climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and the environment. The EPA had received the petitions from states such as Texas and Virginia and groups like the Ohio Coal Association. 81049012&bid=informcom" />

BEIJING (Reuters) - Almost a quarter of China's surface water remains so polluted that it is unfit even for industrial use, while less than half of total supplies are drinkable, data from the environment watchdog showed on Monday. Inspectors from China's Ministry of Environmental Protection tested water samples from the country's major rivers and lakes in the first ...

BANCO, Ivory Coast (Reuters) - They inhabit a polluted part of Ivory Coast's main city with few jobs and a swelling population, but residents of Abidjan's slums have a rare respite: a stretch of pristine rainforest. From their wooden shacks and unpainted concrete houses by motorways on the edge of Banco National Park, the millions who live in north ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators on Tuesday proposed rules to force coal-fired and other fossil fueled power plants in the eastern half of the country to cut emissions that cause smog. The Environmental Protection Agency rules would cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 71 percent from 2005 levels and nitrogen oxide emissions by 52 percent, according to an EPA document obtained ...