Experts said the 1755 quake, one of the most powerful in history, and the 2004 South Asian tsunami underscored the need to incorporate scientific advances in building earthquake- resistant cities.

"The earthquake can’t be avoided, but the tragedy can be," Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio told an international conference on the quake.

Salvano Briceno, director of the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, said the devastation caused by the Asian tsunami, last month’s Pakistan earthquake and recent hurricanes that hit the United States could have been mitigated by better city planning and modern construction methods.

"Reducing disaster risk cannot only be a political and academic issue. It has to be part of our everyday concern," Briceno told the 200 engineers, scientists and historians at the conference.

Church bells began ringing across the Portuguese capital at 9:30 a.m. (0930 GMT), 250 years to the minute after the earthquake struck Lisbon. With an estimated magnitude of 8.75, the quake and its tsunami killed up to 70,000 people.

The Lisbon quake, which triggered a tsunami felt from Norway to North America, sent shockwaves through Enlightenment Europe and changed forever the way earthquakes were perceived and handled. It was the first quake for which a scientific explanation was sought.

The quake levelled churches filled with worshippers for All Saints Day, one of the major Catholic festivals, and devastated Morocco.

In one conference paper, Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at California’s Risk Management Solutions, estimated that if Lisbon’s earthquake took place today it would cause 100 billion euros ($120 billion) in economic damage.

As the bells tolled, Cardinal Jose Policarpo celebrated a memorial mass in Lisbon’s Carmo Convent, left roofless by the quake. The Christian life, he told about 200 worshippers, "is necessarily marked by suffering", Lusa news agency quoted him as saying.

"It is imperative that we find new ways to cooperate and develop a shared understanding of how the world can respond to climate change," Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Margaret Beckett said.

The summit brings the G8 group of industrialised nations alongside major developing countries including India and China.

It is the first meeting after an agreement at the G8 summit in Gleneagles in July which emphasised the importance of climate-friendly technologies such as clean coal and renewables rather than binding international treaties.

The United States did not sign up to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and the treaty does not cover developing countries such as India and China whose carbon dioxide emissions are soaring as their economies expand.

"What (British Prime Minister Tony Blair) is trying to achieve out of this…is a consensus about how we move beyond Kyoto," Blair’s spokesman said this week.

World carbon dioxide emissions are forecast to soar 60 percent by 2030, mainly due to a rise in pollution from developing countries.

Many scientists blame the rapid increase in greenhouse gas emissions, especially CO2, in the last century for causing global warming whose worst effects could include rising seas levels and flooding. The United States Gulf coast has been battered by a record number of hurricanes this year.

The International Energy Agency, the industrialised countries’ energy watchdog, has called for urgent measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions, 80 percent of which come from energy use.

The European Union this year launched a carbon dioxide emissions trading scheme under which companies have to reduce their pollution and can trade carbon credits in a new market.

The scheme, the world’s first international emissions market, is likely to be expanded to include the aviation industry.

Britain’s own CO2 emissions have risen in recent years after falling sharply in the 1990s when generators built new clean gas-fired power stations ?o replace more polluting coal ones.

The country will meet its Kyoto target on reducing CO2 pollution but is likely to miss more ambitious domestic goals.

Catches of minke whales were up from 543 in 2004 and were the second highest since Norway broke with a global moratorium by the International Whaling Commission in 1993 and resumed commercial hunts.

Oslo says minke whales, a relatively small species eaten as steaks, are plentiful in the North Atlantic and no longer need protection like the endangered blue whale.

The High North Alliance, which represents the interests of whalers, said hunters failed to fill the quota largely because they only caught five of a quota of 145 set for the area off the remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen in the North Atlantic.

"High fuel prices made it more expensive to travel to Jan Mayen," said Rune Froevik, secretary of the High North Alliance. He told Reuters that one boat had travelled to the region on two trips, each lasting about a month.

Rough weather also disrupted the hunts — waves make it hard for harpooners to spot the whales when they surface to breathe.

The Alliance said catches had tailed off after a record 250 minke whales were harpooned in the first month of the season. Hunts began in April and lasted until Oct. 31.

Animal welfare groups outside Norway widely denounce whaling as cruel and doubt that stocks have recovered. Norway, Japan and Iceland are the main whaling nations.

"We need to study all existing possibilities if we want to reach the 10 percent target," said a spokesman for oilseed growers’ group FOP, which, with its financial arm Sofiproteol, owns over half of Diester Industrie, France’s main biodiesel producer.

France plans to raise biofuels’ share of the market to 5.75 percent by end-2008, seven percent by end-2010 and 10 percent by 2015, becoming Europe’s top producer in the next five years.

Industry players have welcomed the targets, but say the long-term goals may be a struggle.

To reach the seven percent target, the grain and oilseed area devoted to biofuel output will have to increase tenfold to three million hectares.

Biodiesel makers, which mainly use rapeseed, say one way to meet the targets would be to use small amounts of used cooking oil and animal fat but warn that France lags other countries in developing the necessary technology.

"Their development has already started in Germany, Austria, Italy or Spain," said Etienne Poitrat, an engineer at the French Agency for Environment and Energy Management (ADEME).

"They are cheap raw materials we mustn?t disregard, but it is important to refine them properly," the FOP spokesman added.

Diester Industrie joined forces earlier this month with US- based multinational Bunge to create Diester Industrie International, grouping the companies’ biofuel assets elsewhere in Europe.

Bunge’s Italian subsidiary Novaol has experience in new oil processing techniques and has been turning 50 percent of cooking oil used in McDonald’s restaurants in France into biodiesel since 2003.

The other 50 percent is bought by Vital, a German biodiesel manufacturer specialising in blending.

NEW INITIATIVES

More biofuel projects involving such alternatives are starting to emerge in France.

"It’s a great time to get into that kind of business," said Jean Quentin, who has set up Gazoleo, a firm aiming to produce up to 100 million litres of a five percent ether derived from animal fat and 95 percent diesel mix, w?ich could keep 100,000 cars on the road for a year.

"Animal fats as well as animal by-products are wasted right now because they have been banned from animal feed since 1996 due to the mad cow crisis," he said.

"The second project is by French oil giant Total and has good chances of succeeding," Poitrat said, referring to the firm’s plans to build a 200,000-tonne biodiesel production unit using a mix of vegetable oils and animal fats.

"The unit should be built in France and should participate in the government’s aim to reach the 5.75 percent biofuel share in fuels by the end of 2008," he added.

"We will pursue ambitious targets for the further expansion of renewable energy," it said in a draft deal between the country’s two main parties obtained by Reuters on Friday.

That means Germany will stick to its target of ensuring renewable sources make up at least 20 percent of the country’s overall energy requirement by 2020, a goal outlined by the previous Social Democrat (SPD)-Greens government.

Germany’s two largest parties — the SPD, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and their sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) — are hoping to reach a power-sharing accord by Nov. 12 after a hung parliament in last month’s election.

However, under a draft coalition deal, changes to the promotion of wind, hydro or solar power co?ld only take effect from 2008. The idea of limiting the promotion of renewables has also been ruled out.

"Germany will continue to take a leading role in national and international climate protection," the draft document said.

The conservatives had been cool towards tight environmental targets, but the SPD is set to be in charge of the environment ministry under a "grand coalition" of the two parties.

The parties envisage increasing the level of support provided to make buildings more environmentally friendly to 1.5 billion euros ($1.82 billion) from 360 million euros per year.

The draft also outlines the likely next government’s hope of preventing German companies making windfall profits from trading carbon dioxide emission certificates from 2008.

Firms received pollution rights from the government for free this year. The rights, in the form of certificates, can be traded.

The draft says Germany will support the European Commission into its investigation of how air transport can be incorporated into emissions trading.

It also says the future German government will consider making it necessary for auto fuels to contain some more environmentally friendly ingredients, such as ethanol, and that the agriculture sector’s use of such fuel could be promoted.

The conservatives of chancellor-in-waiting Angela Merkel and the Social Democrats (SPD) are in talks to forge a power-sharing alliance that should be in place by the end of November.

The former election rivals have made steady progress on a series of issues, from budgetary policy to renewable energy, but the future of atomic power seems set to be a key battlefield in the coming weeks.

"The lifetime of nuclear power stations cannot be extended," SPD chairman Franz Muentefering told Bild am Sonntag newspaper in an interview to be published on Sunday.

The SPD and their former government partners, the Greens, pushed through a law in 2000 to phase out Germany’s 17 atomic energy plants by 2020.

However, the conservatives are keen to provide Germany, a large importer of oil and gas, greater energy security and allow industry to earn more by extending the life of their plants.

The conservative premier of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Guenther Oettinger, said in a guest commentary in Bild am Sonntag that energy firms would then have more time to boost renewables.

"At least in the next four years, no secure and economic nuclear power station should be taken off the network," he said, while acknowledging that nuclear-free energy was something to wish for.

SPD environment expert Hermann Scheer told Handelsblatt his party could not vote for any extension, arguing energy firms would simply seek further extensions later.

Working group talks are to resume next week.

Nuclear power, which became extremely unpopular in Europe after the 1986 Chernobyl accident, has been making a comeback. The first new nuclear plant on the continent in years is being built in Finland.

One of the reasons for its return to favour is the fact that nuclear reactors emit virtually no greenhouse gases.

The agency said the Agriculture Ministry announced that as a result all poultry trade restrictions on the islands of Chios and Oinousses, where the suspected case appeared, were now lifted.

"It is self-evident, that, if and when similar cases appear in the future, the exact same measures will be taken," the agency quoted the Ministry as saying.

Greece had banned the export of all live birds and their products from the area of Chios earlier in the month, when preliminary tests had showed the turkey on the islet of Oinousses was positive to the H5 avian flu strain.

News of the suspected cas? caused concern among the public which reduced poultry consumption dramatically.

Greece is on the path of migratory birds making their way to warmer southern climates this time of the year.

Neighbouring Turkey and Romania, which have confirmed bird flu cases, have culled thousands of poultry in recent weeks.

Earlier this month, Romania became the first European mainland country to detect H5N1 in birds in two villages in the Danube delta, in the southeast of the country.

Last week, a heron was diagnosed with anti-bodies for bird flu in the eastern county of Vaslui, 100 km (60 miles) north of the Danube delta, in an area not in the immediate vicinity of a any villages or towns.

"Yesterday, the laboratory in Britain confirmed the presence of the H5N1 virus in the heron found in Vaslui county, diagnosed with bird flu on October 21," the ministry said in a statement.

Authorities in Vaslui county told people to keep chickens indoors to avoid the virus spreading to domestic birds.

The ministry said more than 500 tests were conducted in the past two weeks on birds in the southeast of the country and all were negative for bird flu.

The deadly strain was first found in samples taken from two villages in the Danube delta, 40 km (25 miles) apart. More than 21,000 domestic birds in the two villages were killed and the villages were placed under quarantine.

Romania culled hundreds of birds and quarantined villages to try to halt the spread of bird flu after it was detected in poultry in its Danube delta.

Hungary’s ban comes after several other European Union countries, including Austria and Poland, implemented similar bans, MTI said.

Turkish and Romanian authorities culled thousands of birds and imposed quarantine zones on Sunday to try to stop the spread of avian disease.

Romania’s suspected outbreak was detected in poultry in the Danube delta on the Black Sea. The European Commission says the Romanian and Turkish cases are different but they have raised the spectre of the disease reaching European Union countries.

If the Romanian cases did turn out to be the deadly H5N1 virus, they would be the first evidence the strain has spread to Europe from Asia, where it has killed more than 60 people and millions of birds since 2003. Hungary’s health authorities have called for an emergency meeting for Monday to stop bird flu.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Cryosat satellite was launched from Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome on board a converted nuclear missile but a stage of the rocket’s booster system failed to fire.

"The confirmation we have is that there has been a failure and that … the satellite with part of the launcher has fallen into the sea," ESA spokesman Franco Bonacina told Reuters.

The satellite was launched at about 1500 GMT on Saturday on board a Rokot launcher, which is a converted inter- continental ballistic missile.

Equipment on board Cryosat is designed to allow it to take precise measurements of the polar ice caps, which some scientists believe are thinning as a result of global warming and could lead to higher sea levels.

The satellite is reported to have cost $165 million and was to have stayed in orbit gathering data for 3 years.

Russia’s Space Troops, a division of the military that runs Plesetsk, confirmed Cryosat had crashed.

"We believe the satellite … fell where the second rocket stage is supposed to fall, that is in the Lincoln Sea, near the North Pole," Itar-Tass news agency quoted space troops official Oleg Gromov as saying.

POLAR ICE

Existing date suggests that polar ice is melting, but scientists are seeking more definitive information to help them predict changes to the climate and they hoped Cryosat could provide that.

The polar ice caps act as cold stores for massive volumes of water which, if released into the oceans, could leave low- lying cities like New Orleans or London permanently underwater, scientists say.

The crash may deal a blow to Russia’s lucrative commercial space launch industry, a spinoff from its nuclear weapons programme which is now responsible for putting a large proportion of the world’s satellites in orbit.

Russian space agency ?oskosmos ordered a halt into all launches using the Rokot vehicle until an investigation is carried out into what went wrong, Interfax news reported.

That may affect the Dec. 27 launch of the Compsat-2 communications satellite, due to go into orbit on board a Rokot launcher from Plesetsk, reports said.

But Russia’s state-owned Khrunichev plant that makes the rockets defended their performance.

"This is the the seventh launch using a converted Rokot and six of them have been successful," said Khrunichev general director Alexander Medvedev, Itar-Tass reported.

Russia’s space industry suffered another setback on Saturday when search crews were unable to find an experimental space parachute — also developed jointly with the ESA — that floated to earth in the remote Kamchatka region.