Writing in the latest issue of Nature Medicine, a group of Japanese scientists described how they changed the fat composition in the livers of mutant mice and fed them exactly the same rich, fatty diet as other mice.

"Most of Deir al-Qamar is engulfed in thick, black smoke. There's not one wooded area left. Television footage showed several burned-out cars on roads in the Shouf region and smoke rising from charred woodland.

Vandana Shiva is a leading activist in India, and a member of the Policy Advisory Board of the Organic Consumers Association.

" Before I came here I was very fortunate to join the group of scientists and religious leaders who made a trip to the Arctic to witness the melting of the icecaps. An entire way of life is being destroyed. You've seen the polar bears losing their ecological space, but the highest mobility in that part of the world is the dog sledge. And they can't use it. They're locked into their villages because the ice is now too thin to travel on it. But it's still there and therefore not good enough for them to use boats."

"The point is it really needs to be in place by 2009 if we're going to have a process to operate from 2012," David King told Reuters.

The 27,400 hectare Apo Reef off the coast of Mindoro island was almost drained of life by heavy fishing, including by dynamite and cyanide, which left only a third of coral cover by the early 1990s.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly twice as many U.S. adults are obese compared to European, a key factor leading Americans to suffer more often from cancer, diabetes and other chronic ailments, a study released on Tuesday found.

Treatment of these and other chronic diseases adds between $100 billion and $150 billion to the annual health care tab in the United States, according to the report comparing U.S. and European health published online in the journal Health Affairs.

The United States spends significantly more per capita than any European country on health care, about $2 trillion annually, or 16 percent of the gross domestic product. While the big discrepancy has been linked to higher U.S. prices for medical treatment, the report said a sicker population may also be a factor.

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Global warming will produce stay-at-home tourists over the next few decades, radically altering travel patterns and threatening jobs and businesses in tourism-dependent countries, according to a stark assessment by U.N experts.

The U.N. Environment Program, the World Meteorological Organization and the World Tourism Organization said concerns about weather extremes and calls to reduce emissions-heavy air travel would make long-haul flights less attractive.

Holiday-makers from Europe, Canada, the United States and Japan were likely to spend more vacations in or near their home countries to take advantage of longer summers, they said.

Manufactured wood products—including plywood, oriented-strand board (OSB), laminated-strand lumber, particleboard, and medium-density fiberboard (MDF)—have the environmental advantage of being made from small-diameter or other low-quality trees or waste from wood-processing operations, conserving higher-quality timber.

With these products, the wood is peeled into thin veneers, chipped into small strands or flakes, or ground into wood flour; in each case, the pieces are then glued to produce a durable and stable panel or lumber product. Two glues, or binders as they are called in the industry, dominate the manufactured wood products industry: urea formaldehyde (UF) and phenol formaldehyde (PF).

MIAMI (Reuters) - The La Nina weather phenomenon in the eastern Pacific will likely extend the Atlantic hurricane season this year, with four more storms forming and two becoming hurricanes, a noted forecasting team said on Tuesday.

The Colorado State University hurricane research team boosted its season forecast from 15 to 17 storms, of which six would be hurricanes. Thirteen storms have already formed this year and four of those have become hurricane.

The CSU team, founded by forecasting pioneer Bill Gray and now led by researcher Phil Klotzbach, also said it expected Tropical Storm Karen to be raised to hurricane status in a post-season analysis, increasing the hurricane total to seven.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - China would soon follow the U.S. lead if Washington agrees to tackle its emissions in the next few years because China's government takes the threat of global warming more seriously than the United States does, a climate expert said on Tuesday.

"My impression is that the national government -- top level ministry officials -- in China regard the threats of global warming to their country with a much higher level of seriousness than their counterparts do here in the United States," said David Hawkins of the environmental group National Resources Defense Council.

Hawkins, head of the group's climate center, spoke by telephone to the Reuters Environment Summit in New York.

If the United States agrees to cut emissions deeply with a baseline that gets tougher over time, it would spur U.S. manufacturers to build low-emissions technologies like alternative energy and coal plants that store carbon dioxide underground.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Tuesday if elected president he would pursue a global ban on nuclear weapons as he sought to pick up ground on his front-running rival, Hillary Clinton.

"Here's what I'll say as president: America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons," Obama said.

Obama marked the five-year anniversary of a speech he gave as a U.S. Senate candidate outlining his opposition to the Iraq war, noting it came just 10 days before his top rival for the party nomination, New York Sen. Clinton, voted to back the invasion of Iraq.

"Let's be clear: without that vote, there would be no war," Obama told DePaul University students. "This is not just a matter of debating the past. It's about who has the best judgment to make the critical decisions of the future."

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's president will hold formal talks with reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on Wednesday, after the second summit of two states technically still at war got off to a cool start.

Roh Moo-hyun has said he wants the summit to ease tensions between the foes along the Cold War's last frontier and help the economy of his northern neighbor, which is in international talks to give up its ambition to be a nuclear weapons power in exchange for massive aid and an end to its pariah status.

Kim barely spoke to Roh on his arrival in Pyongyang on Tuesday as only the second South Korean leader to visit the communist state.

ROME (Reuters) - Police in Italy were investigating on Tuesday whether someone deliberately poisoned three rare bears found dead in a national park, a crime the park head called "an act of barbarity."

One of the dead animals was identified as "Bernardo," around 10-years-old, who was a familiar sight in the Abruzzo region where he would often scavenge for food from local farms and gardens. Another was thought to be his mate.

"The disappearance of Bernardo and his mate represents an incalculable loss for the nature and the culture of the park," said Giuseppe Rossi, head of the National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise. "It's an act of barbarity not worthy of civilized people."