Environment

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has approved seven applications for U.S. companies to sell nuclear power technology and assistance to Saudi Arabia, the Energy Department said Thursday.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Energy Department has approved 37 nuclear applications since January 2017, including nine in the Middle East. Besides the seven to Saudi Arabia, two were approved for Jordan. Perry said in his testimony that six applications were approved to Saudi Arabia, but a spokeswoman later said he misspoke.

28 Mar 2019; AFP: European lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday for an EU-wide ban on single-use plastic products such as the straws, cutlery and cotton buds that are clogging the world's oceans.

The text had already been approved in negotiations with member states and EU officials and it will now be rapidly approved into law. The ban comes into effect from 2021.

BATON ROUGE, the United States, March 26 (Xinhua) -- Deep into St. James Parish, U.S. state of Louisiana, hundreds of construction workers are busy working on framed structures and installing giant equipment.

The 1,300-acre site on the west side of the Mississippi River will be home to a mega methanol production facility.

Yuhuang Chemical Industries Inc. (YCI), a subsidiary of China's Shandong Yuhuang Chemical, is constructing a 1.85-billion-dollar methanol plant here.

26 Mar 2019; DW: Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the production of energy reached a new record in 2018, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report on Tuesday.

CO2 emissions are the main driving force behind global warming, which scientists fear could spiral out of control unless drastic action is taken to reduce global emissions.

The IEA's key findings:

HOUSTON, March 25 (Xinhua) -- U.S. natural gas consumption increased by 10 percent in 2018, reaching a record high of 82.1 billion cubic feet (about 2.32 billion cubic meters) per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Monday.

HOUSTON (AP) — An emergency dike has been repaired and a fire-damaged petrochemical tank stabilized during cleanup of leaking oil products that closed part of the Houston Ship Channel, the operator of the complex said Sunday.

Authorities are still trying to determine what caused a March 17 fire at Intercontinental Terminals Company’s Deer Park facility, which left several petrochemical tanks damaged or destroyed.

A "very destructive" category 4 cyclone slammed into Australia's remote northern coast on Saturday, while a second, equally powerful storm bore down on the country's west.

Cyclone Trevor, pushing a big storm tide and packing winds of up to 250 kilometres per hour (150 mph), made landfall on the sparsely populated Northern Territory coast near the Gulf of Carpentaria town of Port McArthur, the Bureau of Meteorology reported.

Chimanimani, Mar 21; AP: A week after Cyclone Idai lashed southern Africa, flooding still raged Thursday as torrential rains caused a dam to overflow in Zimbabwe, threatening riverside populations. The confirmed death toll in Zimbabwe, neighboring Mozambique and Malawi surpassed 500, with hundreds more feared dead in towns and villages that were completely submerged.

Aid agencies and several governments continued to step up their deployments, with helicopters in short supply for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the cyclone.

22 Mar 2019; AFP: The five largest publicly listed oil and gas majors have spent $1 billion since the 2015 Paris climate deal on public relations or lobbying that is "overwhelmingly in conflict" with the landmark accord's goals, a watchdog said Friday.

WASHINGTON, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Nearly two-thirds of the lower 48 U.S. states face an elevated risk for flooding through May, with the potential for major or moderate flooding in 25 states, according to an outlook released Thursday by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The majority of the country is favored to experience above-average precipitation this spring, increasing the flood risk, said the outlook.