By Darren Samuelsohn

E&E News: As the White House draws up plans for President Bush’s global warming summit, some officials are hopeful that the fall meeting might kick start international talks on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.

“The feeling I get is that there is a new sense of momentum,” Chris Dodwell, a top environmental official for the United Kingdom, said yesterday following meetings with senior Bush administration officials in Washington. “There does seem to be a shift in approach.”

By Darren Samuelsohn

E&E News: Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) may have become the latest convert to support efforts to adopt a mandatory cap-and-trade bill to deal with global warming.

A day after returning from Greenland with nine other senators, Corker told local reporters yesterday he is “leaning” toward supporting legislation that would set mandatory limits on heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

By Lucy Kafanov

E&E News: Voting well into the night, the House yesterday once again put off legislation that would designate several stretches of Connecticut’s Eightmile River and tributaries as part of the wild and scenic river system.

The delay follows a failed attempt to pass the bill under suspension of the rules earlier this month.

By Allison Winter

E&E News: Officials from the Bush administration will have to answer why the White House approved Klamath River irrigation flows that later led to the largest fish kill in the West at a hearing tomorrow in the House Natural Resources Committee.

By Debra Kahn

E&E News: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week takes up technological advances in clean coal, in an effort to spur commercialization of more efficient and environmentally friendly ways to generate electricity from the nation’s most abundant power source.

MANILA, Philippines: Philippine authorities urged the public to preserve water and electricity Thursday as a prolonged dry spell in the traditional rainy season caused blackouts.

“While the Egyptian media focusses on water shortages in Al-Daqahliya and Kafr Al-Sheikh in the northern Nile Delta region, southern rural areas are — as always — forgotten,” says Mustafa Mohsen Mohamed Taha, mayor of Al-Qodaby, a small village in the Upper Egypt governorate of Beni-Sweif.

The European Environmental Bureau and WWF criticised the initial policy options to tackle the threat of water scarcity and drought, presented by the European Commission today, for not adequately addressing agricultural water use, which is a major contributor to the problem.

By Allison Winter

E&E News: A panel of the House Natural Resources Committee yesterday approved legislation that would authorize a new grant program to help control invasive insects and weeds on wildlife refuges.

The bill, H.R. 767, from Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), would authorize “such sums as may be necessary” for state and private partnerships that help control nonnative species or enhance natural habitat.