UNITED NATIONS, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - Leaders from 11 tropical nations, including Brazil and Indonesia, reaffirmed their commitment on the sidelines of a UN summit on climate change to conserve their forests but warned they faced a hard task.

The countries, which together control half of the world's tropical forests, vowed cooperation 'to slow, stop and reverse the loss of forest cover and to promote the rehabilitation of degraded forest lands, forest management and conservation.'

BRASILIA, Aug 14, 2007 (AFP) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva has welcomed figures showing the pace of deforestation in the Amazon has slowed over the past year.

'It's important that people be aware that preserving the environment now, doing things in a way that respects the law, is a basic condition for Brazil to win more credibility abroad,' Lula said Monday in his weekly radio address.

Lula spoke after a government report showed that the rate of deforestation had decreased by close to 30 percent in the 12-month period ending in July.

BUKKABRANY, Hungary, Aug 6, 2007 (AFP) - Archaeologists have found an eight-million-year old forest of cypresses, well preserved and not fossilised, in Bukkabrany in north eastern Hungary.

'The discovery is exceptional as the trees kept their wooden structure, they neither turned into coal nor were petrified,' Tamas Pusztai, the deputy director and head of the archaeological department at the local Otto Herman museum who oversaw the excavation, told AFP.

GEDE, Kenya, July 26, 2007 (AFP) - Beating the air with her homemade net, Aicha Ali chases a swirling black and turquoise butterfly. Far from indulging in a frivolous pastime, this Kenyan mother is earning crucial family income.

'I like capturing butterflies, it`s fun because I make some money,' she says, puffing as she wipes the sweat pearling on her nose after a frantic chase in the forest`s sandy trails.

SYDNEY, July 23, 2007 (AFP) - Australia said Monday it planned to lead the development of a global satellite system to monitor forest fires in a bid to help stop deforestation.

The plan involves a network of satellite receiving stations to monitor forest fires in the Asia-Pacific region and extending that network`s capacity to other parts of the world, the government said.