Norway hopes to unlock climate cash to fight tropical deforestation

Norway has announced $1bn in aid to protect forests in Indonesia and hopes to forge a partnership to fight climate change

Norway hopes to boost aid to fight tropical deforestation at a conference tomorrow, and to set in motion a partnership to unlock cash pledged at the Copenhagen summit to help slow climate change.

Norway says developed nations have promised $500m (£347m) to fight deforestation by 2012 on top of $3.5bn agreed at Copenhagen, and new pledges at the conference may bring the total aid closer to $5bn.

Fifty nations will take part in the Oslo meeting, to be attended by Britain's Prince Charles and the financier George Soros, to forge a "partnership" between donors and countries from the Amazon to Congo basins for protecting forests.

Plants soak up carbon dioxide as they grow, helping to curb the increasing rise in carbon levels.

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How Faith Blocks Reason

Horned dinosaurs 'island-hopped'

Horned dinosaurs previously considered native only to Asia and North America might also have roamed the lands of prehistoric Europe, say scientists.

Palaeontologists have announced the discovery of fossils belonging to a horned creature in the Bakony Mountains of western Hungary.

The find may give them a better understanding of the environment during the late period of dinosaur evolution.

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Bishop: 100 cases in 10 yrs for Italy priest abuse

ROME — Italy's bishops' conference provided the first ever statistics of clerical sex abuse in the country on Tuesday, saying there had been about 100 cases over the past 10 years that warranted church trials or other canonical procedures.

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