International

"It took farmer Ghulam Hussain almost a year to start re-building his house, destroyed last year in floods that left vast swathes of Pakistan underwater, and disrupted the lives of more than 18 million people. Now, his small, two-room mud and brick house -- just a few hundred meters from the Indus River -- is almost complete, but he is worried as to how long it will survive."

"The operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant met with angry shareholders on Tuesday, offering profuse apologies as hecklers shouted abuse from a rowdy floor. But a motion that would have forced the company to abandon its nuclear program was defeated."

"Near a nuclear power plant facing the Sea of Japan, a series of exhibitions in a large public relations building here extols the virtues of the energy source with some help from 'Alice in Wonderland.'"

"Global action to protect the nuclear industry against possible terrorist attacks is urgently needed, a leading expert said, as are safety steps to prevent any repeat of Japan's Fukushima accident."

"Agriculture ministers from the Group of 20 leading economies agreed Thursday on measures intended to lift global production and improve supplies of basic foods, while mitigating price swings."

"Wary of a new surge in gas prices, the Obama administration said Thursday it is selling off 30 million barrels of oil from the country’s emergency reserves as part of a broader international response to lost oil supplies caused by turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly Libya."

"The science behind a new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal is complicated, but the evidence is more precise than it has ever been: Sea levels are now rising at a faster rate than they were at any time in the past 2,000 years."

"Steps to boost atomic safety after Japan's Fukushima accident must be 'cost-effective,' an industry body said on Tuesday, a day after the UN nuclear chief suggested power firms could help pay for expanded safety checks."

"The state of the oceans is declining far more rapidly than most pessimists had expected, an international team of experts has concluded, increasing the risk that many marine species -- including those that make coral reefs -- could be extinct within a generation."

"The U.N. nuclear chief proposed international safety checks on reactors worldwide to help prevent any repeat of Japan's atomic crisis, a plan which may face resistance from nations worried about outside involvement."