Protestors who targeted Drax power station escape jail. A group of environmental protesters who ambushed a freight train as it took fuel to the largest coal-fired power station in Europe cheered in court as they escaped jail. [News Source]

Portland General Electric power plan includes keeping Boardman coal plant open. PGE announced plans late today to build two new natural gas power plants by 2015 and spend more than $500 million to keep its controversial Boardman coal-fired power plant burning for three more decades. [News Source]

Drought puts focus on a side of India left out of progress. The crisis has underscored the problems facing Indian agriculture as the population expands at the same time that water resources come under greater pressure. [News Source]

Try nature, not tech, to fix economic woes. The head of the U.N. Environment Programme told Reuters that governments had long placed too much faith in technology to fix problems such as global warming, water pollution or erosion, instead of looking to natural solutions. [News Source]

Widen global warming fight beyond CO2: U.N. The world should widen a fight against global warming by curbing a string of pollutants other than carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Friday. [News Source]

A clean break from coal for Duke Energy. Duke Energy is leaving a clean-coal lobbying group over a rift on climate change legislation. [News Source]

French carbon tax hotly debated. Paris is planning to introduce a carbon tax -- a controversial move that could significantly boost energy efficiency behavior in France. [News Source]

Is there a climate-change tipping point? Scientists worry about potential tipping points — triggers that, once reached, could lead to sudden and irrevocable changes in the climate, almost without warning. The trick is to identify the warning signs that indicate a tipping point are about to be reached and to take action to avoid them. [News Source]

French winemakers fear climate change. Heat waves like that of 2003 will occur with increasing frequency in coming decades, scientists predict, while average yearly temperatures will continue to rise. [News Source]

Climate change tool helps identify vulnerable farmers. The production of maize, South Africa's staple food, could drop by as much as 30 percent in another two decades as climate change brings more intense droughts, but little is known about how this will affect farmers. [News Source]

Not so fast: Japan climate pledge conditional on China, India. Japan’s new ruling party, the Democratic Party of Japan, now says that its ambitious promise to curb greenhouse-gas emissions “is based on the premise that there will be an international agreement including China and India,” Reuters reports. [News Source]