How fake sites trick search engines to hit the top 
SAN FRANCISCO — Even search engines can get suckered by Internet scams.
With a little sleight of hand, con artists can dupe them into giving top billing to fraudulent Web sites that prey on consumers, making unwitting accomplices of companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
Online charlatans typically try to lure people into giving away their personal or financial information by posing as legitimate companies in "phishing" e-mails or through messages in forums such as Twitter and Facebook. But a new study by security researcher Jim Stickley shows how search engines also can turn into funnels for shady schemes.
No 'Pass' for Developing Countries in Next Climate Treaty, Says US Envoy
COPENHAGEN -- The top U.S. climate negotiator stressed today that the next international global warming agreement must include major commitments from a suite of fast-growing countries; otherwise, greenhouse gas emissions will go up too fast to solve the problem.
"If you care about the science -- and we do -- there's no way to solve this problem by giving the major developing countries a pass," State Department envoy Todd Stern told reporters during the third day of U.N. climate talks here. "We're not talking about the same kind of need for actions from the vast majority of developing countries. But the major ones, it's going to be absolutely essential."
Citing International Energy Agency data, Stern said U.S. emissions are peaking and will trend down over the next two decades, while 97 percent of the growth in greenhouse gases between now and 2030 will come from the developing world, with China contributing about half of that.
Google Adds Live Updates to Searches
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Unveiling significant changes to its dominant search engine on Monday, Google said it would begin supplementing its search results with the updates posted each second to sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.
As part of its much-anticipated entrance into the field known as real-time search, Google said that over the next few days its users would begin seeing brand-new Tweets, blog items, news stories and social networking updates in the results for certain topical searches.
Previously it took a few minutes for updates from social networks and blogs to filter into Google’s results.
Google Fully Embraces Realtime In Search Results
Today, at its Search Event in Mountain View, Google Fellow Amit Singhal took the stage to announce a big new feature for the search giant: Realtime. "It?s Google?s relevance technology meeting the realtime web," is how Singhal described it.
As we've learned over the past several months with Twitter Search, relevancy is perhaps the key to making realtime web search a pillar of the web. Google seems to believe it has cracked the code for this, and has been internally testing it for a while now. But starting today it's going live for everyone.
Singhal showed off the new feature by doing a query for "Obama." The results page shows results coming in in realtime. And yes, it works with Twitter. For example, Google's Matt Cutts tweeted something from the audience, and in popped in the results immediately. This is the first time any search engine has integrated realtime results into a standard page, Google says. Obviously, this is huge.
Facing Skeptics, Climate Experts Sure of Peril
Just two years ago, a United Nations panel that synthesizes the work of hundreds of climatologists around the world called the evidence for global warming “unequivocal.”
But as representatives of about 200 nations converge in Copenhagen on Monday to begin talks on a new international climate accord, they do so against a background of renewed attacks on the basic science of climate change.
The debate, set off by the circulation of several thousand files and e-mail messages stolen from one of the world’s foremost climate research institutes, has led some who oppose limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and at least one influential country, Saudi Arabia, to question the scientific basis for the Copenhagen talks.
UN says climate finale may have happy ending
COPENHAGEN — Delegates converged Sunday for the grand finale of two years of tough, sometimes bitter negotiations on a climate change treaty, as U.N. officials calculated that pledges offered in the last few weeks to reduce greenhouse gases put the world within reach of keeping global warming under control.
Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, said on the eve of the 192-nation conference that despite unprecedented unity and concessions, industrial countries and emerging nations need to dig deeper.
"Time is up," de Boer said. "Over the next two weeks governments have to deliver."
London Climate Change March Draws Tens of Thousands
Thousands of people marched through central London over the weekend, encircling the Houses of Parliament near the River Thames and calling for a deal on climate change at the Copenhagen conference.
The Metropolitan Police in London said that about 20,000 people had joined the Stop Climate Chaos march on Saturday. Organizers, which included groups like Oxfam, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and W.W.F., estimated the turnout to have been about 40,000.
“We wanted to make a positive statement,” said Pip Cartwright, a retired teacher from Witney, in southern England. “It’s for the future. It’s not my generation that’s going to have the problem to solve.”
UN climate chief: hacked e-mails are damaging
COPENHAGEN — The top U.N. climate official says hacked e-mails from climate scientists that appear to cast doubt on their research do look bad, but studies of global warming are solid.
Yvo de Boer says the review process by some 2,500 scientists of climate change research is thorough and credible.
He acknowledged the e-mails did serious damage by fueling skepticism among those who believe the science is manipulated to exaggerate global warming.
World Concerns About Climate Change Dwindle - Survey
Filed at 3:03 a.m. ET
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - World concern about climate change has fallen in the past two years, according to an opinion poll on Sunday, the eve of 190-nation talks in Copenhagen meant to agree a U.N. deal to fight global warming.
The Nielsen/Oxford University survey showed that 37 percent of more than 27,000 Internet users in 54 countries said they were "very concerned" about climate change, down from 41 percent in a similar poll two years ago.
Dutch approach to climate change: Adapt
AMSTERDAM -- With the Copenhagen summit starting Monday, chances remain uncertain for a historic breakthrough in the fight to prevent climate change, but the Netherlands is leading a fight of a different kind: How to live with global warming.
As sea levels swell and storms intensify, the Dutch are spending billions of euros on "floating communities" that can rise with surging flood waters, on cavernous garages that double as urban floodplains and on re-engineering parts of a coastline as long as North Carolina's. The government is engaging in "selective relocation" of farmers from flood-prone areas, and expanding rivers and canals to contain anticipated swells.
The measures are putting this waterworld of dikes, levies and pumps that have kept Dutch feet dry for centuries ahead of the rest of the globe in adapting to harsher climates ahead.
