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Germany's No.2 utility RWE is preparing to sue for millions of euros of damages after a federal court confirmed that a state's decision to shut down the company's Biblis nuclear plant for three months in 2011 was illegal. _0"> A spokeswoman for RWE said it planned the lawsuit over Biblis, Germany's oldest nuclear plant, which the state of Hesse had ordered closed as a precaution following the disaster at Japan's Fukushima plant. The spokeswoman declined to comment on the potential size of the claims but industry analysts have estimated that RWE suffered about 187 million euros ($255 million) in damages as a consequence of the forced shut-down. Shares in RWE, Germany's second largest utility by market value after E.ON, rose after the news and were up 4.7 percent, topping the German benchmark DAX index. RWE had filed a complaint in April 2011 against the state of Hesse. Last February, the Hesse Administrative Court said the order had been illegal, a

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has raised a further 350 million euros ($477.9 million) on its Climate Awareness Bond (CAB), making it the largest ever "green bond" at 1.5 billion euros, the bank said on Tuesday. _0"> The EIB's latest issue, which has a maturity date of November 15, 2019, continues a remarkable spate of such bond sales. Corporate green bonds raised nearly $10 billion last year, with about half of that coming in November. Proceeds from green bonds are used on projects to cut greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to climate change or expand the use of renewable energy. Until recently, they were mainly the preserve of development banks, but interest has been growing among new buyers and corporate bond investors. (Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by David Goodman)

An endangered female leopard put in a cage to breed was killed by her potential mate, who a day later remained on public display at the Erie Zoo, wildlife officials said on Tuesday. _0"> The two Amur leopards, 5-year-old Edgar and 7-year-old Lina, were placed together in an enclosure at the western Pennsylvania zoo on Monday, said Erie Zoo president and CEO Scott Mitchell. Edgar attacked Lina, biting her throat. The leopards were separated and veterinarians were brought it, but Lina died of injuries to her trachea. Violence during mating is not unheard of but, Mitchell said, but in his 30-year career he has never lost another zoo animal in a breeding attack. "Many of these animals live their lives relatively solo, and they come together only to breed or mate, so it can be a kind of aggressive process," Mitchell said. Lina, who was on loan from the Minnesota Zoo, had been placed together with Edgar in the past without incident, Mitchell said. Edgar remains on d

West Africa's lions, which once prowled across the region in their tens of thousands, are close to extinction as farmland eats up their ancient habitats and human hunters kill the animals they feed on, a study has shown. Just around 400 of the animals were thought to have survived across 17 countries, according to the paper published in scientific journal PLOS ONE. "These lions are standing on a cliff looking at the chasm of extinction," Luke Hunter, one of the paper's authors and president of wild cat conservation group Panthera, told Reuters on Tuesday. "It would be very easy for small, isolated populations to be wiped out over the next 5-10 years." Fewer than 250 of the survivors were mature cats, capable of breeding, the study said. But even that ability to produce cubs was limited by the fact they were spread across wide areas in groups that often did not have enough lionesses to sustain a population. The study said there had been no comprehensiv

In an escalation of the auto industry's war of words over future green technologies, a senior Toyota Motor Corp executive singled out Elon Musk and other rival executives on Tuesday and made a bold prediction for its hydrogen car. _0"> Bob Carter, Toyota's senior vice president for automative operations, said in a speech that he believed a hydrogen fuel cell car it plans to launch next year could eventually be as successful as its pioneering Prius gasoline-electric hybrid. Carter said "naysayers" who have spoken out against the technology would be proven wrong and referred to Elon Musk, founder of electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc, Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan Motor Co, and former Volkswagen executive Jonathan Browning by name. "Personally I don't really care what Elon and Carlos and Jonathan have to say about fuel cells. It's very reminiscent of 1998, 1999 when we first introduced the Prius," Carter said at a conference held in conjunc

Danish pension funds and the government will invest in a state fund to finance projects to fight climate change in developing countries, one of the investors said in a statement. _0"> PensionDanmark said it had committed 200 million Danish crowns ($37 million) to the fund, while a further 1 billion crowns will come from pension funds PKA and PBU, private investment fund Dansk Vækstkapital, the Investment Fund for Developing Countries and the Danish government. The fund is expected to receive another 200 million crowns from private investors in a second investment round, giving it a total of 1.4 billion crowns at its disposal. The Danish Climate Investment Fund will run for four years and have an annual return of 12 percent, PensionDanmark said. It will invest in projects which reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as renewable energy, energy efficiency and transport schemes in emerging economies from Africa to Asia. It will also finance projects which help communities an

China's commercial capital, Shanghai, introduced emergency measures to tackle air pollution on Wednesday, allowing it to shut schools and order cars off the road in the case of severe smog, Xinhua state news agency said. _0"> Shanghai was blanketed with record levels of smog last month, while air in the usually more polluted capital, Beijing, was relatively clear. The government warned children and the elderly in Shanghai to stay at home on some days. Xinhua said that Shanghai reviewed and approved the "special emergency pollution plan" on Wednesday. China regularly issues directives to tackle pollution in major cities, but efforts so far to clean the air have failed. Air quality is of increasing concern to China's stability-obsessed leaders, anxious to douse potential unrest as a more affluent urban population turns against a growth-at-all-costs economic model that has poisoned much of the country's air, water and soil. Authorities have invested i