Philippines tests first electric minibuses.

The Philippines on Wednesday gave the first official test to electric minibuses, in an attempt to improve the urban environment, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.

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Malaysia air unhealthy after Indonesian forest fires. Air quality in a Malaysian state has plunged to unhealthy levels in recent days because of smog from forest fires in neighbouring Indonesia, officials said Wednesday. [News Source]

Officials discuss health, climate change (AP via Yahoo! News) Officials from more than a dozen Asian countries met Tuesday in Malaysia to outline health problems their populations are facing in relation to a rise in global temperatures. [News Source]

Beijing not coming clean on pollution. An upcoming World Bank report has found that pollution in China causes about 750,000 deaths a year. But don't look for that figure in the final report. The Chinese government has pressured the World Bank to leave it out. [News Source]

Pollution in China leads to 750,000 deaths each year. The figures, almost twice previous estimates, were calculated using a new statistical model. But they have been suppressed until now because the government feared they would cause social unrest, according to reports. [News Source]

Pollution kills 750,000 in China every year. Pollution kills three quarters of a million people in China every year, according to previously unreleased World Bank statistics. [News Source]

Pollution kills 460,000 Chinese a year: World Bank. About 460,000 Chinese die prematurely each year from breathing polluted air and drinking dirty water, according to a World Bank study. [News Source]

China ’suppressed report on pollution deaths.’ China's poisoned air rose higher on the political agenda yesterday after reports that it forced the World Bank to censor a study for fear that one of its findings - that 750,000 people die of pollution-related illness each year - might stoke social unrest. [News Source]

Officials discuss health, climate change (AP via Yahoo! News) Officials from more than a dozen Asian countries met Tuesday in Malaysia to outline health problems their populations are facing in relation to a rise in global temperatures. [News Source]

The heat is on.

Like all good scientists, Scudder Mackey was skeptical 15 years ago when he began hearing predictions that increasing amounts greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would lead to global warming. But that skepticism has crumbled with mounting evidence.

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750,000 a year killed by Chinese pollution. Beijing engineered the removal of nearly a third of a World Bank report on pollution in China because of concerns that findings on premature deaths could provoke “social unrest”. [News Source]