However, he made no mention of mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions such as those contained in the Kyoto accord, which the US refused to sign.

Bush proposed that the US and other countries set "a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases" by the end of next year.

To develop the goal, the US will convene a series of meetings of the nations that produce the most greenhouse gas emission, including nations with rapidly growing economies like China and India, he said.

Each nation would also set "mid-term national targets and programmes that reflect their own mix of energy sources and future energy needs," Bush proposed.

But the Democrats who wrote and passed the global warming bill Schwarzenegger signed into law are not celebrating the governor's dealmaking.

While they appreciate the attention he is bringing to the issue, they say the deals are distracting from the hard work that must be done to put California's law into place.

Moreover, they worry that the governor is using the agreements to help shift the emphasis of the law from strict regulation to an emission trading system favored by businesses that could weaken it.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez recently warned Schwarzenegger in a letter that his push for a carbon trading market that could include other states and countries was "premature and unnecessary."

"Much of your administration's recent time and attention is singularly focused on establishing a cap-and-trade program," Nunez wrote, referring to a system that would allow businesses to reduce their contributions to global warming by purchasing credits from other firms. "This was not the intent of the Legislature."

Schwarzenegger will sign agreements this week with Ontario and British Columbia during a three-day visit to Canada that begins Tuesday and includes stops in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver. He also will promote California products and tourism with the state's second-largest trading partner.

Discussing ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be one of the main topics.

The state's global warming law requires industries, such as utilities, oil and gas refineries and cement manufacturers, to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions over the next 13 years to what they were in 1990.

Scientists say the gases, mostly carbon dioxide, are trapping heat that is melting the polar ice caps and could lead to coastal flooding, drought and other environmental calamities.

While Schwarzenegger acknowledges the dangers, he says companies need flexibility to meet their emissions targets to stay competitive. And he has favored carbon trading markets, like the one being developed in Europe, over the regulatory approach in California's law.

Under a cap-and-trade system, companies that cannot meet their reduction targets would be allowed to buy credits from firms that exceeded their goals.

California's law allows such an approach to be studied, but it says developing regulations to cap emissions takes precedence.

Administration officials say they can develop the new regulations while also fostering future carbon trading markets around the world.

Many environmentalists are suspicious of emissions trading, especially if it means companies are buying credits from faraway places where it is hard to know whether reductions have truly taken place.

"It's a little bit like going on a diet and buying calories from other people," said John White, director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies. "The question is who is going to start eating less?"

Because no other state has adopted California's emissions caps, the agreements are largely symbolic, and their effects, if any, are years away.

Administration officials acknowledge the deals are not legally binding. But they say Schwarzenegger is pushing other states and countries to act on behalf of the environment.

The previous agreement with British Columbia, for example, is part of a collaboration with Oregon and Washington to extend a hydrogen highway from British Columbia to Baja California. Fueling stations would be built along the way, so that by 2010 a hydrogen-powered vehicle could travel that route.

Governments also are agreeing in principle to work on climate emission caps, energy efficiency and greenhouse gas tailpipe emission standards.

"You're getting states to make these commitments they wouldn't otherwise make for the sake of sharing some of the limelight with California," said Dan Skopec, undersecretary for the state Environmental Protection Agency.

But the governor's tactics have created concern even among environmentalists who generally support what Schwarzenegger is doing.

"When the Democrats say, 'Hey, governor. Keep your eyes on the prize.' That's important," said Karen Douglas, California legislative director for Environmental Defense.

She said the first order of business must be implementing California's global warming law the way it was written.

"It's our most important job right now," she said.

The report, issued Friday, paints a bleak picture of Earth's future: hundreds of millions of people short of water, extreme food shortages in Africa, a landscape ravaged by floods and millions of species sentenced to extinction.

Despite its harsh vision outlining devastating effects that will strike all regions of the world and all levels of society, the report was quickly criticized by some scientists who said its findings were hijacked by some governments.

"The science got hijacked by the political bureaucrats at the late stage of the game," said John Walsh, a climate expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who helped write a chapter on the polar regions.

"It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit (by global warming)," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report is also, in a sense, a more pointed indictment of the world's biggest polluters -- the industrialized nations – and a more specific identification of those who will suffer, said the paper.

Thus, some nations lobbied for last-minute changes to the dire predictions. Negotiations led to deleting some timelines for events, as well as some forecasts on how many people would be affected on each continent as global temperatures rose, the paper noted.

The report said global warming, widely blamed on human activities, will cause species to extinct, seas to rise, water shortages to spread and droughts and floods to become more frequent. With poor countries to be worst hit, all regions from Africa to Pacific islands will suffer from the adverse effects of climate change.

"Approximately twenty to thirty percent of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5-2.5 degrees Celsius," said the report, drafted by experts from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC had said in its previous report issued in February that global average temperature had already increased by 0.74 degrees Celsius in the past century, while it could rise by another 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius this century.

According to Friday's report, many ecosystems are likely to be overburdened this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change and its associated disturbances like flooding, drought and wildfire. Other man-made consequences like land use change, pollution and over-exploitation of resources could make the situation even worse.

The overall picture drawn by the report showed that drought-affected areas will likely increase in extent, while frequent heavy rainfalls will augment flood risk. During this century, water supplies stored in glaciers and snow cover are projected to decline, leaving one-sixth of the world population at risk.

For the first time, the nearly 1,500-page report broke down its findings into regions.

Take Asia as an example. More than 1 billion people there will be affected by less freshwater by the 2050s.

"Freshwater availability in Central, South, East and Southeast Asia particularly in large river basins is projected to decrease due to climate change," the report said.

Ironically, some Asian areas will first be hit by flood ahead of drought due to the melting of glacier in the Himalayas, an obvious proof of climate change.

While 1 billion people are thirsty for water, the coastal areas throughout the continent will be at great risk due to increased flooding from the sea and in some mega-deltas flooding from the rivers, the report said.

Besides water shortage, Asia will also face the risk of hunger, particularly in Central and South Asia, by the middle of this century.

Experts estimated that crop yields could increase up to 20 percent in East and Southeast Asia while it could decrease up to 30 percent in Central and South Asia by 2050s.

However, the places that will be worst affected by global warming are poor countries.

"Poor people are the most vulnerable and will be the worst hit by the impacts of climate change. This becomes a global responsibility," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of IPCC.

Africa, a continent mainly composed of less developed countries, will be hardest hit by the adverse effects of climate change, according to the report.

"New studies confirm that Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate variability and change because of multiple stresses and low adaptive capacity," the report summary said.

By 2020, between 75 and 250 million people in Africa are projected to be exposed to an increase of water shortages. As a result of climate change, the area suitable for agriculture, the length of growing seasons and yield potential are expected to decrease, which will further adversely affect food production in the continent as it was already suffering from malnutrition.

In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020, the report warned.

The poverty-inflicted continent may also have to spend at least five to ten percent of gross domestic products to cover the cost of adaptation since sea-level rise will affect low-lying coastal areas with large populations towards the end of this century.

The report is part of the IPCC's first review since 2001 of the evidence for climate change resulting from human activities. It is the second of four reports from the IPCC this year. With the first report in February elaborating how global warming is happening, the second one is focused on what the effects of global warming will be.

As the summary for policymakers was unanimously adopted by government delegates, it may serve as a policy guide in future international negotiations on climate change.

Sinclair, and refinery managers Kapura and Connell, previously admitted to knowingly manipulating the refinery processes, wastewater flows, and wastewater discharges to result in unrepresentative wastewater samplings during mandatory testing required under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program. The manipulated samplings were intended to influence analytical testing results reported to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

"Companies and their employees have a legal obligation to abide by the laws that protect our rivers and waterways from the harmful effects of pollution," said Matthew J. McKeown, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division. "The Justice Department will continue to prosecute companies who fail to comply with the laws that protect our environment from illegal pollution."

"Accurate information is essential for EPA to assure compliance with environmental regulations," said Granta Nakayama, EPA's Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. "By falsifying wastewater sampling results, Sinclair undermined our efforts to protect the public and the environment."

"The investigation and prosecution of Sinclair Tulsa Refining Company should make it clear that corporations and their employees must play by the rules," Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said. "Today's sentences protect Oklahoma from future pollution, and it provides money for the Tulsa River Parks Authority. My hope is that the money will be used so we can enjoy this precious natural resource for generations to come."

According to the criminal information and plea agreement filed on December 13, 2006, between January 2000 and March 2004, the Sinclair refinery discharged an average of 1.1 million gallons of treated wastewater per day into the Arkansas River. Under the CWA, Sinclair was permitted to discharge treated wastewater into the Arkansas River, pursuant to certain limitations and conditions, which include scheduled monitoring and required sampling during weekdays. According to the information, on numerous occasions in 2002 and 2003, Sinclair directed employees to limit wastewater discharges in order to manipulate the result of required bio-testing. During monitoring periods, Sinclair, by way of its employees, reduced flow rates of wastewater discharges to the river, and diverted more heavily contaminated wastewater to holding impoundments, among other means of ensuring that they had passed the tests.

Sinclair Oil Corporation is a privately owned oil refinery located in Tulsa, Okla. Although the refinery is headquartered in Salt Lake City, it is incorporated in the state of Wyoming. Sinclair has owned and operated the Tulsa refinery since 1983.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Criminal Investigation Division and the Oklahoma Attorney General's Environmental Protection Unit. The case was prosecuted by the Environmental Crimes Section of the Justice Department's Environmental and Natural Resources Division and the Northern District of Oklahoma United States Attorney's Office.

The automakers argue in several pending cases that state regulation of greenhouse gases is illegal, because it amounts to regulating the fuel efficiency of cars, which only the EPA can do.

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that greenhouse gases can be regulated as air pollutants. For the EPA to regulate, it must first determine that science shows global warming is harmful to human health and welfare.

But even if the EPA decides greenhouse gases should be regulated to protect public health, the agency could still deny California's long-delayed request to implement its own law by saying that the problem is global and not unique to the state, the paper quoted Harvard University environmental law professor Jody Freeman as saying.

"Even if California prevails, Congress could end up passing weaker national legislation that would supersede the state's," the paper said.

"I think it's a very tough call right now," said Freeman. "I don't think the chances are great, because I think there's reason to believe Congress will act before EPA."

To get a waiver, California must show compelling and extraordinary conditions, Freeman said.

"California is special. It's the only state in the country that can set tailpipe standards separate from federal standards," she said. "Everything depends on that waiver."

California has mandated that its emissions standards for cars would begin in 2009 and pledged to cut global warming emissions nearly 30 percent by 2016.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who broke with President George W. Bush by endorsing California's Democratic-sponsored emissions law, wrote to the president and the EPA a year ago for asking them to grant the state's request to implement its own law.

Canada's controversial annual seal hunt opened Monday in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, where the worst ice conditions in more than two decades have nearly wiped out the herd.

Fisheries officials said they expect only a few boats from the Maritime provinces will take part in the first phase of the centuries-old hunt. About 40 boats from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are eligible, with most of the early hunting focused on the Cape Breton coast, said Fisheries Department spokesman Roger Simon.

"There are a few seals scattered from Sydney towards Canso but they are very sparse and the ice is broken and deteriorated," he said.

"What seals were in that area may be swimming back north and we know a higher proportion drowned this year. The bad ice contributed to a high rate of drowning," Fisheries Department spokesman Phil Jenkins said. "The mortality from bad ice is going to be fairly high."

The hunt is key to the livelihood of Canadian fishermen and aboriginal peoples. To protect the seal population in Canada — which now stands at about 5.5 million - fisheries officials announced a sharp reduction in the number that can be killed.