New Scientist

Yvo de Boer has announced he will be stepping down from his post as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on 1 July.

SCRATCH the surface of free-market capitalism and you discover something close to visceral fear.

Susan George is known for her critiques of corporate-driven globalisation and hard-hitting books on hunger, development and debt. Now, she argues, we can borrow lessons from the early 1940s to transform our shattered economies and halt runaway climate change before it's too late

Special Report

Four decades after their hunting was banned in 1966, the humpback whale seems to have finally swum clear of the danger zone.

Don't believe anything you see in a TV documentary made in the UK. Documentary makers here have no obligation to be accurate, though factual programmes should present a wide range of views

Some Martian dirt has the same basic chemistry as garden soil, a new analysis from the Phoenix lander suggests. The find widens the range of organisms that might be able to live on Mars.

A crackly analogue recording made in 1951 is the earliest known example of a digital computer making music, say UK historians.

NASA's Mars Phoenix lander has unfurled its solar panels and transmitted its first images of the planet's northern plains back to Earth, revealing a remarkably flat and strangely patterned landscape.

The looting of Iraq's cultural treasures made headlines around the world in the wake of the invasion by the US and its allies in March 2003. Now the extent of the harm to archaeological sites in southern Iraq has been quantified, thanks to commercial satellite images.

Governments around the world are rushing to develop military robots capable of killing autonomously without considering the legal and moral implications, warns a leading roboticist. But another robotics expert argues that robotic soldiers could perhaps be made more ethical than human ones.

What does it take to bring on a new geological age?

Young chimps can beat adult humans in a task involving remembering numbers, reveals a new study. It is the first time chimps – and young ones, at that – have outperformed humans at a cognitive task.

Tiny cameras attached to New Caledonian crows' tail feathers are offering new insights into the birds' behaviour in the wild. By Nora Schultz

Starvation may be impeding the recovery of the Pacific Gray whale population, say researchers.

People in countries across the world, from China to India and Sudan to Indonesia, are coping with severe wet weather, highlighting the position of flooding as the most deadly of all natural disasters. / New Scientist

The building blocks for a community-driven internet search engine that will compete with the likes of as Google and Yahoo are being put in place according to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. / New Scientist

"Climate change has triggered three major shifts in the number of tropical storms that rise up in the North Atlantic, according to a new analysis of 20th century records." by Jeff Hetch; New Scientist

Ice melt from small glaciers and ice caps will be the dominant cause of sea-level rise this century, according to new research.

A kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home. / New Scientist Environment

Vast areas of snow in Antarctica melted in 2005, when temperatures warmed up for a week in the summer. Snow melts such as this may have ramifications for larger scale melting of the ice sheets if they are severe or sustained over time, NASA said on Tuesday. By Catherine Brahic

Far from slowing down, global carbon dioxide emissions are rising faster than before, said a gathering of scientists in Beijing on Friday. By Catherine Brahic

The Newscientist: Mixing antimatter and matter usually has predictably violent consequences – the two annihilate one another in a fierce burst of energy.

Algal growth in remote Arctic lakes is confirming what ecologists suspected all along - that entire freshwater ecosystems are altering in response to climate change.

The world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region. By Fred Pearce

Lured by hot, sunny beaches or pristine, snow-topped mountains, tourists are drawn to the climate of certain resorts. But will global warming drive them to new tourist hotspots? By Anna Gosline

The worst fears about Antarctica's melting glaciers have been confirmed. The first comprehensive survey of glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula shows a widespread retreat that may be more evidence of global warming.

"We can't shout about global warming and then shout even louder about the 'dangers' of windmills". By David Suzuki