AFP

"In the photograph, 12-year-old Mohammed Tahir looks barely conscious. A bloodied rag covers his left hand, where the kidnappers hacked off his finger and sent it, along with the picture, to his family."

China's booming economic miracle is expanding at a highly unsustainable rate, creating tremendous pressures on resources while bankrupting the environment, a leading environmentalist warned Tuesday. By Robert J. Saiget

Swiss authorities are planning to wrap mountain glaciers with tin foil this summer in an effort to stop them melting.

Some 100,000 people are expected to march through central London to protest against the invasion of Iraq two years ago and other elements of the US-led war on terror, organisers said.

Women's groups were to embark on a global march for equal rights, International Women's Day, amid fresh reports which paint a fairly grim picture of their plight in many parts of the world.

Nearly one-third of the world's known amphibian species are threatened with extinction due to climate change and pollution, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a report released here.

A civilian nuclear fuels reprocessing plant in Cumberland cannot account for some 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of plutonium, enough for seven or eight nuclear bombs.

Scientists have discovered dramatic changes in the temperature and salinity of deep waters in the Southern Ocean that they warn could have a major impact on global climate.

Way back in 1968, US ecologist Garrett Hardin sketched the dilemma that today besets the Kyoto Protocol, the UN's global warming pact which takes effect on Wednesday.

A US-Europe rift threatened to torpedo a British-led initiative to tackle global poverty as finance ministers from the Group of Seven rich nations began formally meeting here.

Energy giant Royal Dutch/Shell, hit by deep crises last year after overstating its proved energy reserves, reported a record net profit for 2004, when oil prices shot to record highs.

Asia's tsunami disaster provided a "wonderful opportunity" for the United States to show compassion with relief efforts that reaped "great dividends" on the diplomatic front, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice said.

German scientists probing global warming said they had detected a major temperature rise this year in the Arctic Ocean and linked this to a progressive shrinking of the region's sea ice.

The United Nations was rocked by allegations from a former British minister that Britain spied on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

More than 300,000 people marched through the streets of downtown Barcelona in one of the biggest demonstrations ever to coincide with a summit of European Union leaders.