By CHRIS KAHN
Oil prices dipped below $38 a barrel Tuesday on fresh evidence of weakness in the U.S. housing market and a shrinking gross domestic product that suggests the recession may be worsening.
A report by the Commerce Department showed that sales of new homes fell in November to the slowest pace in nearly 18 years, [...]

NIAMEY, Dec 20 (Reuters) - French nuclear power group Areva (CEPFi.PA) will press ahead with its plan to build a 1 billion euro ($1.40 billion) uranium mine in Niger despite falling world prices for the fuel, the firm said on Friday.
The Imouraren mine, due to begin commercial production of 5,000 tonnes per year in [...]

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Oil prices tumbled below $50 a barrel Monday as National Bureau of Economic Research reported that the U.S. economy has been in a recession since December 2007 and the Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 700 points.
A tandem of bleak economic reports led to an early decline even before the NBER report [...]

By Katarzyna Klimasinska
Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) — Poland, which generates 93 percent of its electricity from coal, is considering building its first nuclear plant by 2023 in the northern town of Zarnowiec, as it seeks to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from power generation.
“We will need nuclear energy if it turns out that renewable sources aren’t efficient enough, [...]

WARSAW (AFP) – The use of coal for energy production causes at least 360 billion euros worth of damage to human health and the environment every year, Greenpeace said in a new report published on Thursday.
“When taking into account about 90 percent of the global emissions and looking at these damages, we get a conservative [...]

VIENNA (Reuters) – A bid by Syria for aid in planning a nuclear power plant poses no proliferation risk and a Western move to block the project could discredit the U.N. nuclear watchdog, its chief said in remarks released on Tuesday.
Major Western nations want the project shelved because Syria is under International Atomic Energy Agency [...]

By RENEE SCHOOF - McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — With global warming melting the Arctic’s eons-old ice at an alarming rate, shipping and oil companies are looking ahead at how to exploit the new open waters.
For the past 30 years, the summer Arctic icepack has been shrinking. In 2007, the melt reached record levels. This past summer, [...]

BEIJING (AFP) – China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country’s largest oil producer, said Wednesday that it had signed a three-billion-dollar deal to develop an oil field in Iraq.
The contract, signed on Monday in Baghdad, allows CNPC and another Chinese company, Zhenhua Oil, to develop the Al-Ahdab oil field in the province of Wasit for [...]

LONDON (AFP) – The government has lifted a ban on exporting sensitive nuclear technology to India for civilian projects, it said Monday, after an international accord to relax rules in September.
Since 2002, Britain has refused all export licence applications for so-called “Trigger List” items to India, Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell said, referring to an [...]

* Delegate says IAEA should ensure equitable access to nuclear materials, technology and equipment for peaceful purposes
UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan on Tuesday called for evolving a universal and non-discriminatory criterion that would ensure every state’s right to peaceful nuclear energy use to meet the growing worldwide energy demand.
“In this regard, principles should be placed above expediency [...]