China has acknowledged an alarming rise in birth defects, amid concern that heavy pollution is damaging the country’s children.
Babies born with conditions such as cleft palates and extra fingers and toes now account for up to 6 per cent of births each year, according to statistics published yesterday.

A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce biofuels as a replacement for petrol as a crime against humanity and called for a five-year ban on the practice.
The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he feared biofuels would bring more hunger and were “a recipe [...]

Poor old Shell. There it goes sponsoring the prestigious BBC “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London and 15 or so folk turned up and started singing “a new hymn of hope to an oil-free future”.
The protesters started singing inside the Natural History Museum, gradually being removed by security [...]

Britain should have a Cabinet rank climate change minister and a powerful new coordinating body to manage its somewhat haphazard and conflicting climate policies, an influential parliamentary committee has concluded.
The Environmental Audit Committee said the government’s climate change rhetoric was not being reflected in its actions, and noted that it was likely to miss its [...]

The speed at which mankind has used the Earth’s resources over the past 20 years has put “humanity’s very survival” at risk, a UN study involving 1,400 scientists has concluded.
The study found that each person in the world now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the Earth can supply.
The [...]