OSLO (Reuters) – Tiny algae and a whale native to the Pacific have crossed a thawing Arctic Ocean in what may portend a marine invasion threatening Atlantic fish stocks, scientists said on Sunday.

The Pacific algae, absent from the North Atlantic for 800,000 years according to fossil records, apparently returned after climate change thawed sea ice and currents carried the microscopic plants across the Arctic Ocean, they said.

OSLO (Reuters) – Norway backed Indonesia’s drive to slow deforestation on Thursday under a $1 billion deal with Oslo even though Jakarta said it faced a “maze” of reforms and lacks maps to pin down exact conservation areas.

“Any nation can do more. But they (Indonesia) are doing a lot,” Environment Minister Erik Solheim told Reuters during a conference in Oslo on ways to protect carbon-rich rainforests.

OSLO (Reuters) – The United States demanded on Wednesday that the European Union exempt U.S. airlines from an EU law widening carbon permits to aviation, hardening a standoff over a scheme due to start in 2012.

After talks in Oslo, the EU insisted it would not back down on its unilateral plan to penalize greenhouse gas emissions from planes taking off and landing in the European Union as part of efforts to slow climate change.

OSLO (Reuters) – Norway and Iceland joined a U.S. and European Union “open skies” deal on Tuesday amid a transatlantic dispute about Europe’s plans to impose carbon emissions permits on all flights from 2012.

Under the deal, airlines in non-EU members Norway and Iceland will be able to fly to the United States from anywhere in the 27-nation EU rather than just from domestic airports.

BONN, Germany (Reuters) – “Ask for a camel when you expect to get a goat,” runs a Somali saying that sums up the fading of ambitions for United Nations talks on slowing climate change — aim high, but settle for far less.

Developing nations publicly insist the rich must agree far deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, but increasingly believe that only a weaker deal can actually be achieved to keep the existing Kyoto Protocol, or parts of it, alive beyond 2012.

BONN, Germany (Reuters) – “Ask for a camel when you expect to get a goat,” runs a Somali saying that sums up the fading of ambitions for United Nations talks on slowing climate change — aim high, but settle for far less.

Developing nations publicly insist the rich must agree far deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, but increasingly believe that only a weaker deal can actually be achieved to keep the existing Kyoto Protocol, or parts of it, alive beyond 2012.

BONN (Reuters) – Negotiators made scant progress toward salvaging the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol for fighting climate change beyond 2012 at two weeks of talks ending on Friday, delegates said.

“When you look at the progress …it is very uneven,” said Adrian Macey of New Zealand, chairing a session of talks among 180 nations in Bonn about the Kyoto Protocol, which risks dying beyond 2012 due to lack of support.

BONN, Germany (Reuters) – A proposal by Mexico and Papua New Guinea to kick-start U.N. climate talks by shifting to voting on major decisions from an ill-defined need for consensus may face insurmountable hurdles, experts say.

“We want to break this process where the slowest is allowed to hold everyone else up,” Kevin Conrad, of Papua New Guinea, told Reuters of the proposal on the sidelines of U.N. negotiations in Bonn from June 6-17.

BONN/LONDON (Reuters) – More weather disasters and economic recovery could bring a “tipping point” that jolts governments into far tougher action to combat climate change, the U.N. climate chief said on Wednesday.

Christiana Figueres also told Reuters that government efforts so far to combat global warming were nowhere near enough to avert heatwaves, droughts, mudslides and rising sea levels projected by the U.N. panel of climate scientists.

BONN, Germany (Reuters) – Big economies should do more to phase out damaging subsidies on fossil fuels, farming and fisheries that are hindering a shift to a green economy, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Wednesday.

The Group of 20 leading economies agreed at a summit in 2009 to phase out damaging fossil fuel subsidies in the “medium term” — a step that would help cut greenhouse gas emissions and free up investments for cleaner energies to fight climate change.