Death toll soared during Victoria’s heatwave. Health authorities believe Victoria's record-breaking heatwave might have contributed to the deaths of about 374 people. [News Source]

Obama pledges US lead on climate change. President Barack Obama said Sunday the United States was ready to take the lead in tackling climate change, as EU leaders pushed him to follow their ambitious targets to combat global warming. [News Source]

Warming climate leads to record number of rare birds breeding in Britain. Record numbers of rare birds are breeding in Britain because of the warming climate and improved habitats, new research suggests. [News Source]

Breakaway ice shelf will reshape map of Antarctic. A vast Antarctic ice shelf is in danger of collapsing after the ice bridge that pinned it to land shattered. [News Source]

Dealing with CO2. Dow Chemical and Air Products & Chemicals have signed agreements to test competing technologies for capturing carbon dioxide emitted by coal-fired power plants. [News Source]

Black carbon linked to half of Arctic warming. Black carbon is responsible for 50 percent of the temperature increases in the Arctic from 1890 to 2007, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience. Black carbon, a particulate air pollutant, is formed by-way of the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuels, and biomass. [News Source]

Canada still has no consensus on Alberta’s tar sands GHGs. The Alberta tar sands project is the largest energy project in the world, but Canada still has no actual consensus on how much greenhouse gas emissions are emitted there, leaving the country in a weak position to continue exporting oil to the United States. [News Source]

Green diamonds. Baseball stadiums take a swing at energy efficiency [News Source]

Call to reduce disaster risk. “The Arab and Islamic world faces many possible risks of disaster, the most dangerous are climate change and the increase in population,” said Prince Turki ibn Nasser, president of the Executive Bureau of Arab Environment Ministries yesterday. [News Source]

NZ combing archives for old weather records. Scientists from around the world met in Queensland last week to discuss the first stage of an international project to reconstruct more than 200 years of world weather. The project is expected to improve forecasts of how weather might change in response to global warming. [News Source]

Britain’s warmer climate is ‘encouraging rare birds to breed’. Britain's warming climate is helping rare birds to breed here in record numbers, research showed yesterday. [News Source]