1 of 2. An attendant stands inside a high-speed train during an organized experience trip from Beijing to Zhengzhou, as part of a new rail line, December 22, 2012. China will open the world's longest high-speed rail line next week when a link between Beijing and the southern metropolis of Guangzhou is inaugurated, officials said on Saturday.

BEIJING/ZHENGZHOU, China | Sat Dec 22, 2012 6:32am EST

BEIJING/ZHENGZHOU, China (Reuters) - China will open the world's longest high-speed rail line next week when a link between Beijing and the southern metropolis of Guangzhou is inaugurated, officials said on Saturday, underscoring its commitment to a trouble-plagued transport scheme.

The 2,298-km (1,428-mile) line, parts of which are already in operation, will begin full service on Wednesday, halving travel time to less than 10 hours on trains which will run at 300 kph (186 mph).

The new route offers a chance for China's railways ministry, which has been dogged by scandals and missteps, to redeem itself.

A July 2011 crash of a high-speed train killed 40 people and raised concerns about the safety of the fast-growing network and threatened plans to export high-speed technology.

"We have developed a full range of effective measures to manage safety," Zhou Li, head of the ministry's science and technology department, told reporters on a trial run from Beijing to the central city of Zhengzhou.

"We can control safety management," he added.

Last year's accident near the booming eastern coastal city of Wenzhou occurred when a high-speed train rammed into another stranded on the track after being hit by lightning.

Rail investment slowed sharply in the wake of that accident and state media reported earlier this year that the government had cut planned railway investment by 500 billion yuan ($80.27 billion) to 2.3 trillion yuan under a five-year plan to 2015.

But that may reflect cuts that have already taken place as the Ministry of Railways has raised its planned investment budget three times this year as part of government efforts to bolster a slowing economy.

The ministry plans to spend a total of 630 billion yuan in 2012 and has been given clearance to sell more bonds to finance the investments - one of the few outright spending commitments made by the central government in a slew of project approvals worth $157 billion which have not specified how they will be funded.

The approvals include 25 rail investments, state media say.

Despite its expanding network, the Ministry of Railways struggles to make money. It suffered an after-tax loss of 8.8 billion yuan in the first half of 2012 in the face of rising operating costs and mounting debts.

However, the government says it remained committed to building high-speed railways between its major cities, with China eventually planning to run them into Russia and down to Southeast Asia.

"High-speed railways are needed for national development, for the people and for regional communication. Many countries have boosted their economies by developing high-speed rail," Zhou said.

China said in May it would open up the railway industry to private investment on an unprecedented scale, but private investors have been skeptical.

The need for funding is acute. China still needs billions more in rail investment to remove bottlenecks in cargo transport, ease overcrowding in passenger transport and develop commuter lines in its sprawling megacities.

($1 = 6.2286 yuan)

(Reporting by Sabrina Mao and Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Nick Edwards; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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The Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft carrying the International Space Station (ISS) crew of U.S. astronaut Thomas Marshburn, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield blasts off from its launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome December 19, 2012.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Fri Dec 21, 2012 3:42pm EST

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying a multinational crew of three arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, setting the stage for a Canadian for the first time to take command of the orbital research base.

The spacecraft carrying Chris Hadfield from the Canadian Space Agency, NASA's Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko blasted off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday and parked at the station's Rassvet docking module at 9:09 a.m. EST as the ships sailed 255 miles above northern Kazakhstan.

"The Soyuz sleigh has pulled into port at the International Space Station with a holiday gift of three new crewmembers," said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias.

The trio joined station commander Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeni Tarelkin, who are two months into a planned six-month mission.

Ford is due to turn over command of the $100 billion research complex, a project of 15 nations, in mid-March to Hadfield, who will become the first Canadian to lead a space expedition.

"This is a big event for me personally," Hadfield said in a preflight interview. "It takes a lot of work, a lot of focus. It's something that I can look back on as an accomplishment and a threshold of my life."

Command of the station, which has been continuously occupied since November 2000, typically rotates between an American and a Russian crewmember.

In 2009, Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne broke that cycle to become the first European Space Agency commander. Japan's Koichi Wakata is training to lead the Expedition 39 crew in March 2014.

All three of the station's new residents have made previous spaceflights. Hadfield, 53, is a veteran of two space shuttle missions. Marshburn, 52, has one previous shuttle mission and Roman Romanenko, 41, a second-generation cosmonaut, served as a flight engineer aboard the space station in 2009.

The station crew will have some time off to celebrate several winter holidays in orbit - Christmas, the New Year and then Orthodox Christmas - before tackling a list of about 150 science experiments and station maintenance, including two spacewalks.

Among the studies will be medical research into how the human cardiovascular system changes in microgravity.

"When you live in an environment like that, the heart actually shrinks. Your blood vessel response changes. It actually sets us up to cardiovascular problems," Hadfield said. "We have a sequence of experiments that's taking blood samples and monitoring our body while we're exercising and doing different things to try and understand what's going on with our cardiovascular system," he said.

The research is expected to help doctors unravel the aging process on Earth, which is similar in many respects to what happens to the human body in weightlessness.

In addition to medical research, the space station serves as a laboratory for fluid physics and other microgravity sciences, a platform for several astronomical observatories and a testbed for robotics and other technologies.

(Edited by David Adams and Leslie Gevirtz)

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Snow blows across US Highway 218 as near whiteout conditions begin in Waterloo, Iowa, December 20, 2012.

CHICAGO | Fri Dec 21, 2012 9:04am EST

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The first major snow storm of winter did little to ease the worst drought in more than 50 years in the crop growing Central Plains and Midwest, while snarling traffic and hampering feeding and transportation of livestock.

MDA EarthSat Weather meteorologist Kyle Tapley said six to 12 inches or more snow fell from Nebraska into Wisconsin during the past two days, the equivalent of about 0.50 inch to 1.00 inch of rain, that will help ease but not eliminate drought worries.

Tapley said roughly 10 inches of moisture or rainfall would be needed in a large portion of the Plains and Midwest to break the drought of 2012 that trimmed crop production and sapped soil moisture reserves.

"The snow put a small dent in the drought and I don't see any moisture for next week," Tapley said.

Commodity Weather Group (CWG) said the snow favored Wisconsin, far eastern Iowa, far northwestern Illinois and west-central Michigan on Thursday with better than a foot of snow in Wisconsin.

"Another storm over the weekend into early next week will bring rain to the Delta and Southeast and a chance for snow near the Ohio River Valley," said CWG meteorologist Joel Widenor.

Widenor said prospects for more rain or snow in the southern Plains hard red winter wheat producing states were more limited on Friday.

But there could be some light rain or snow in the area on Tuesday but "this would provide only limited additional drought relief," Widenor said.

Winterkill threats for wheat and frost threats for Florida citrus are still limited, despite cooling the next two weeks, according to CWG's advisory on Friday.

(Reporting By Sam Nelson; Editing by Grant McCool)

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Russia's President Vladimir Putin gestures during a news conference after their meeting with Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul December 3, 2012.

BRUSSELS | Fri Dec 21, 2012 8:02am EST

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Russian anger at an EU energy law blocked progress at talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and European Union leaders on Friday.

Putin, on his first visit to Brussels since his re-election as president in May, was greeted by four topless women, protesting against civil rights curbs in Russia and shouting "Putin, go to hell". They were bundled away by police.

Relations between the 27-nation bloc and Russia, its main external supplier of energy and a key trading partner, have long been poisoned by rows over gas pipelines.

Europe relies on Russia to cover around a quarter of its natural gas needs, but over the past decade Moscow has had a series of disputes with its ex-Soviet neighbors - Ukraine and Belarus - that disrupted its gas exports to Europe.

Those disputes increased the EU's determination to diversify supply away from Russia.

Adding to the grievances are simmering trade disputes over everything from cars to pigs, and European leaders' condemnation of the jailing of members of the band Pussy Riot, seeing it as part of a trend of squashing personal freedoms.

For Russia, which sits on the world's largest natural gas reserves and supplies more than a quarter of the European Union's natural gas imports, energy is the major issue.

In opening comments, Putin referred to EU energy law as "uncivilized".

POTENTIAL

"Of course the EU has the right to take any decisions, but as I have mentioned ... we are stunned by the fact that this decision is given retroactive force," Putin told reporters on the sidelines of a Russia-EU summit in Brussels. "It is an absolutely uncivilized decision."

He was referring to EU legislation to create a single energy market and prevent those that control supply, such as Russia's Gazprom, also dominating distribution networks.

From the European Union side, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said there was "huge potential for cooperation" to the benefit of both sides.

"I think we should in fact be able to transform what is today an interdependence by necessity into an interdependence by choice, a political choice," he said. "That's what requires political leadership on both sides."

Expectations for Friday's talks have always been low, but Russian and EU sources both see the need for continued dialogue.

The EU's executive Commission added to tensions between Europe and Moscow in September when it opened an investigation into suspected anti-competitive market practices by Russia's state-dominated Gazprom.

Trade disputes are also high on the agenda. EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said this month time was running out for Russia to settle trade disputes with the EU on everything from pigs to cars and he threatened to take Moscow to the WTO.

Putin also complained about lack of agreement on travel visas, saying Russia was being unfairly treated compared with other nations.

"I have a long list of states here with me which have a visa-free regime with the EU. There is Venezuela, Honduras, Mauritius, Mexico, seems everyone else is there," Putin said.

(Additional reporting by Adrian Croft and Justyna Pawlak)

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska | Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:43pm EST

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Two species of far-north seals, victims of disappearing sea ice and dwindling snowpack in their Arctic habitat, will be granted protections under the Endangered Species Act, federal officials announced on Friday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ordered "threatened" listings for populations of ringed seals and bearded seals in the waters off northern Alaska, in parts of Russia and other regions of the Arctic.

Both types of seals depend on sea ice and snow, which is becoming scarce in the Arctic region during the non-winter months, NOAA officials said in a written statement.

"Our scientists undertook an extensive review of the best scientific and commercial data. They concluded that a significant decrease in sea ice is probable later this century and that these changes will likely cause these seal populations to decline," said Jon Kurland, protected resources director for the Alaska region of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service.

The listings will become effective 60 days after NOAA's notice is published in the Federal Register.

Ringed seals use snow caves to nurse and protect their pups, NOAA said. The warming climate has brought autumn rains instead of the snowfalls that used to be dominant, and the warming trend has caused an earlier spring melting that leaves snowpack too shallow for cave formation, NOAA said.

Bearded seals use sea ice for breeding, nursing and raising their young, NOAA said, and both types of seals depend on floating sea ice during their early summer molting period, when they shed old fur to make way for new fur.

Arctic sea ice coverage this year shrank to the lowest level since satellite records began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Ringed seals are the primary prey for polar bears, which in 2008 were listed as threatened because of similar problems with disappearing sea ice. Polar bears were the first animals granted Endangered Species Act protections because of climate change.

Now several other ice-dependent animals have been or are expected to be listed.

The decision covers bearded and ringed seals outside of U.S. territory as well as those off Alaska including a listing for a rare subspecies of ringed seal that lives in Ladoga Lake in Russia.

The listing decisions and studies have been prompted largely by petitions and litigation from an environmental organization, the Center for Biological Diversity. The center has also advocated for Endangered Species Act listings of the spotted and ribbon seal and the Pacific walrus.

A Center official said Friday's listing decision was a good step, but called on the Obama administration to do more.

"The Obama administration has to take decisive action, right now, against greenhouse gas pollution to preserve a world filled with ice seals, walruses and polar bears," Shaye Wolf, the center's climate science director, said in a statement.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Leslie Gevirtz)

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WASHINGTON | Fri Dec 21, 2012 4:11pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has softened rules to curb pollution from industrial boilers and large incinerators, revising earlier versions to target only the largest polluters and give them more time to comply.

The agency on Friday formalized standards it initially released in March 2011 for reducing toxic air pollution, including mercury and particle pollution, known as soot, from boilers, solid waste incinerators and cement kilns.

Boilers, typically fired by coal, oil, natural gas and biomass, are used to power heavy machinery and provide heat for industrial processes.

The new rules target roughly 2,300 boilers, or less than 1 percent of the 1.5 million units operating in the United States, requiring them to meet numerical limits on their release of air toxins.

The agency said it had analyzed new data provided by industry groups and "additional information about real-world performance and conditions under which affected boilers and incinerators operate" in order to adjust the rule and propose more "targeted revised emission limits".

Large-source boilers, found mainly at refineries, chemical plants and other industrial facilities, will have three years to comply instead of one and can be granted a fourth year if needed to install controls, the EPA said.

The rule also targets 106 industrial solid waste incinerators, which have five years to comply with the EPA standards.

"The adjusted standards require only the largest and highest-emitting units to add pollution controls or take steps to reduce air pollution, making the standards affordable, protective and practical," according to an EPA factsheet.

Some environmental groups said the EPA's handling of the long-delayed boiler rules signaled that the agency's upcoming regulation would be more flexible to industry concerns.

"These watered-down rules suggest the Obama administration will collaborate more with industry in the second term," said Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch.

The EPA first introduced the rule in 2005, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated it in 2007.

The rule was re-proposed in June 2010 but industry groups slammed that version, calling its set limits unachievable, prompting the EPA to relax and reintroduce the rule.

"After years of delays, the finalized Boiler MACT standard ends uncertainty and allows businesses to move forward with one standard that applies across the nation, leveling the playing field," said Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center.

MACT is an acronym for Maximum Achievable Control Technology.

Another environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, applauded the EPA's boiler rules for being stronger than previous versions but criticized the agency for going in the "wrong direction" in its standards for incinerators and cement kilns.

"The agency ... eased standards in their final rules for cement manufacturers, which is troubling and deserves further explanation."

Despite relaxing the rules, the EPA said the standards would prevent up to 8,100 premature deaths, 5,100 heart attacks and 52,000 asthma attacks.

The agency estimated that Americans would receive $13 to $29 in health benefits for every dollar spent to meet the final standards and that the rules would create a small net increase in jobs.

Some industry groups were still wary.

"Several billions of dollars in capital spending will be necessary to comply. This is a significant investment for an industry still recovering from the economic downturn, especially in light of the growing cumulative regulatory burden we face," the American Forest & Paper Association, the national lobby group of the forest products industry, said on Friday.

The National Association of Manufacturers, an opponent of EPA regulations, said in November that compliance costs for the agency's six air pollution rules, including the boiler rule, could total $111.2 billion by EPA estimates and up to $138.2 billion by industry estimates.

The lobby group said the boiler rule would cost covered sources $2.7 billion in annualized costs in 2013 and $14.3 billion in upfront capital spending - higher than EPA estimates of $1.9 billion in annualized costs in 2013 and $5.1 billion in capital spending.

Other groups that have opposed the rules include the Industrial Energy Consumers of America - representing the chemicals, cement, aluminum and other industries.

Bob Bessette, president of the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners, cautiously welcomed the revised rule but said it was still studying the economic impact.

"Hopefully, the changes EPA has made will decrease the economic and jobs impact on the still-struggling manufacturing, commercial, and institutional sectors and national economy," he said.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Nick Zieminski, David Gregorio and Dale Hudson)

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