NowMyNews

Tropical storm Cristina strengthened into a category 1 hurricane on Wednesday as it moved away from Mexico's Pacific coast, prompting authorities to warn of heavy rains in the Latin American nation. _0"> Cristina was located about 265 miles (425 kilometers) south of the port of Manzanillo with maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour (120 kilometers per hour) and higher gusts, the National Hurricane Center said early Wednesday. The hurricane was expected to gain strength, as it moved at a speed of 6 miles per hour westward, unlikely to make landfall. Mexican authorities warned of rising rivers and mudslides caused in Southern and Western Mexican states including Oaxaca, Guerrero, Michoacan, Colima and Jalisco.   true       Cristina could cause waves of up to four meters high in coastal areas, the National Weather Service said in a statement. Guerrero, home of beach resort Acapulco, last year was severely affected by dual storms Ingrid and Manuel, whose unpreceden

Swathes of north class="mandelbrot_refrag"> India are sweltering under the longest heatwave on record, triggering widespread breakdowns in the supply of electricity and increasingly angry protests over the government's failure to provide people with basic services. The power crisis and heatwave, which some activists say has caused dozens of deaths, is one of the first major challenges for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was elected three weeks ago partly on promises to provide reliable electricity supplies. In Delhi, where temperatures have hit 45 Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) for six days straight, residents marched through the streets in protests organized by opposition parties on Thursday. In the north of the city, people enraged by night-long outages clashed with police and torched a bus, media reported.   true       Delhi is suffering staggered cuts as power companies ration spikes in demand as people crank up air coolers to fight the heat. Modi has inherited

A compromise deal to give European Union states the option of banning genetically modified crops won approval from EU environment ministers on Thursday, bringing the EU closer to ending years of deadlock over GM cultivation. Widely grown in the Americas and Asia, GM crops in Europe have divided opinion, with strong opposition in many countries, including class="mandelbrot_refrag"> France and class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Germany , while Britain favors them. Thursday's compromise deal drew criticism from both opponents and supporters of growing GM food in Europe. Monsanto, maker of the only GM crop grown in the EU, said if the law were enacted as drafted, the company would continue to focus its investment in other parts of the world. The European Green Party, meanwhile, described the deal as "a Trojan horse" that would open the door to GM crops across Europe. At a meeting in Luxembourg, EU environment ministers from 26 of the 28 member state

Djibouti is suffering from a fourth straight year of drought, which has driven a huge exodus of people from rural areas to the capital and caused a surge in disease and malnutrition, the top U.N. official there said on Thursday. Robert Watkins, U.N. resident coordinator in Djibouti, was meeting officials from donor countries to seek funds for a U.N. appeal of $74 million for Djibouti this year, launched in May. The class="mandelbrot_refrag"> United Nations has received $9.5 million from donors so far. "The biggest issue facing Djibouti today is the lack of water. People depend on water for their livelihood, essentially their class="mandelbrot_refrag"> livestock ," Watkins told a news briefing in Geneva. Many cattle had perished from the water shortages, he said. "It's the reason why we are investing more and more and we trying to find longer-term alternatives for people - not solutions because we can't solve the drought problem

To grasp the difficulties Mexico faces in capitalizing on a North American shale boom, just wander into the dusty landscape due south of the U.S. border. On one side of the fence, thousands of wells work around the clock in Texas to produce record volumes of shale oil and gas, transforming towns like Carrizo Springs in a modern-day gold rush. On the other side, violent drug cartels roam above untapped shale riches, leaving behind a trail of blood. The relatively few conventional wells operated by state oil giant Pemex and its contractors close down overnight as a security precaution.   true       But surging crime, while dramatic, is just one of many obstacles thwarting a Mexican shale boom that is seen as years off at best. "Organized crime is an additional operating cost companies will be keeping a close eye on," said Alberto Islas, head of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Mexico City-based consultancy firm Risk Evaluation. Bullet-riddled corpses are piling

More than a quarter of all companies covered by Beijing's municipal carbon laws ignored a key reporting deadline, local media reported Friday, with some powerful companies questioning the local government trading body's authority to regulate them. Beijing's carbon trading market, one of six set up in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> China to rein in rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions, caps carbon dioxide from nearly 500 local enterprises. Most of them must hand over permits to the government to cover for their emissions, while some must only report their CO2 levels. But 140 of them missed an April deadline to submit a verified report of their 2013 emissions, local newspapers reported on Friday, a key to determining how many permits each firm must hand over to the government to cover for CO2 output. Some of the firms implied that Beijing's Development and Reform Commission (DRC), which operates the scheme, did not have the authority to issue orders.

EU energy ministers agreed on Friday to limit production of biofuels made from food crops, responding to criticism they stoke inflation and do more environmental harm than good. The ministers' endorsement of a compromise deal overcomes a stalemate hit late last year, when European Union governments failed to agree on a proposed 5 percent cap on the use of biofuels based on crops such as maize or rapeseed. Friday's agreement would set a 7 percent limit on food-based biofuels in transport fuel. It still needs the approval of the newly-elected European Parliament, expected to begin considering it later this year.   true       "We think this proposal is much better than nothing," European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told the Luxembourg meeting of ministers. "We need to support research and development in advanced biofuels so we can move forward from generation one into generation two and generation three," he added, referring to more sophistica