OSLO (Reuters) – U.N. climate talks starting in Mexico this month will seek a complex set of interlocking deals to slow global warming but will fall well short of a new treaty, the U.N.’s climate chief said on Wednesday.

Christiana Figueres said that governments had lowered their sights for the November 29-December 10 talks in Cancun, Mexico, after the Copenhagen summit in December 2009 failed to reach a sweeping new U.N. pact to slow climate change.

OSLO (Reuters) – U.N. climate talks starting in Mexico this month will seek a complex set of interlocking deals to slow global warming but will fall well short of a new treaty, the U.N.’s climate chief said on Wednesday.

Christiana Figueres said that governments had lowered their sights for the November 29-December 10 talks in Cancun, Mexico, after the Copenhagen summit in December 2009 failed to reach a sweeping new U.N. pact to slow climate change.

OSLO (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s pessimism about passing U.S. climate legislation also dims chances for action to slow global warming both in U.N. talks and in other groups such as the G20, experts say.

A lack of U.S. legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions may also hit plans to raise a promised $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor nations cope with climate change. That plan partly hinges on curbs on emissions to push up carbon prices.

OSLO, Nov 2 (Reuters) – Russia and Norway agreed on Tuesday
to ease frontier controls and said they hoped for cooperation on
oil and gas exploration after a deal earlier this year ended a
four-decade dispute over Arctic seas.

Foreign ministers of the two nations signed a deal in Oslo
enabling people living less than 30 km (19 miles) from the
border to travel in the zone on either side for 15 days by
buying a 20 euro ($28) permit. Currently, visitors need a visa.

OSLO (Reuters) – Russia said on Tuesday President Dmitry Medvedev planned more trips to a group of islands seized by the Soviet Union from Japan at the end of World War Two, deepening a serious rift with Tokyo.

Japan said it was recalling its ambassador from Moscow temporarily after Medvedev this week became the first Russian leader to visit the desolate islands, known as the Southern Kuriles in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan.

OSLO (Reuters) – Ocean scientists urged governments on Sunday to invest billions of dollars by 2015 in a new system to monitor the seas and give alerts of everything from tsunamis to acidification linked to climate change.

They said better oversight would have huge economic benefits, helping to understand the impact of over-fishing or shifts in monsoons that can bring extreme weather such as the 2010 floods in Pakistan.

OSLO (Reuters) – Carbon markets and taxes on foreign exchange deals or plane tickets are among suggested sources for a promised $100 billion a year from 2020 to help poor nations fight climate change, a draft report by U.N. advisers said.

The draft, obtained by Reuters on Friday, showed that the group co-chaired by Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi reckoned that both the public and private sectors would have to be tapped for cash.

OSLO (Reuters) – Futuristic schemes for slowing climate change such as dimming sunlight are fraught with risks but will get a serious hearing from the U.N. panel of climate scientists, a leader of the panel said on Wednesday.

Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the panel’s working group examining climate science, said some so-called geo-engineering solutions could disrupt world rainfall and might backfire by causing abrupt temperature rises if they go wrong.

OSLO (Reuters) – A new type of snub-nosed monkey has been found in a remote forested region of northern Myanmar which is under threat from logging and a Chinese dam project, scientists said Wednesday.

They said hunters in Myanmar’s Kachin state said the long-tailed black monkey, with white-tufted ears and a white beard, could often be tracked in the rain because its upturned nostrils made it prone to sneezing when water dripped in.