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Standing in the spotlight alongside her movie star husband, Livia Firth rejects big labels to wear reclaimed fabrics. Now she's turning her hand to design

She is seen as the world's most glamorous champion of "eco style" and has been dubbed "the queen of the green carpet". Now Livia Firth is moving into design: last week she revealed she is working on a line for the online retailer Yoox's eco brand Yooxygen, in partnership with Reclaim To Wear, which helps designers recycle textile surplus and waste.

Upcycling – or remaking cast-off items into something different and better – is something of a Firth speciality. She first drew attention to Reclaim to Wear when she wore one of its 1950s strapless cocktail dresses in silver satin to the Venice film festival. For the Paris premiere of The King's Speech, starring her husband Colin Firth, she famously wore an outfit made of one of his old suits.

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In November 2009, over 1,000 private emails between climate change scientists were stolen and published online. The uproar that followed briefly shook the public's faith in global warming science, and prompted investigations that debunked sceptics' allegations that the mails showed the planet wasn't warming. Yet still the scientists have questions to answer

It is the controversy over a set of over 1,000 private emails and many other documents that were stolen or leaked from the University of East Anglia's (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in November 2009. All the emails involved CRU staff, principally the CRU head Phil Jones, but in correspondence with many of the world's leading climate scientists, including the main researcher behind the "hockey stick" graph, Michael Mann. CRU's speciality was reconstructing records of the Earth's past temperatures from thermometer data and "proxy" such as tree-ring measurements.

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The chance to ride the course – as a bicycle escort for the wheelchair racers – proved an unforgettable experience

I was supposed to be running in this year's New York Marathon, but injury brought my training to a shuddering halt. To say I was disappointed to have to pull out (even if the many people in my position do get to defer their entry to next year) is typically-English understatement, so when the opportunity arose to ride the 26.2-mile runner's course on my bike on race day, I jumped at it.

I still had a smidgeon of envy for the runners, as New York dawned in perfect conditions, chilly but brilliant, on Sunday morning. But I couldn't be churlish about it for long: after all, how many people get to parade on their bike for the whole closed-road course, complete with cheering crowds?

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Use of relatively low-carbon, low-radioactivity thorium instead of uranium may be breakthrough in energy generation

India has announced plans for a prototype nuclear power plant that uses an innovative "safer" fuel.

Officials are currently selecting a site for the reactor, which would be the first of its kind, using thorium for the bulk of its fuel instead of uranium – the fuel for conventional reactors. They plan to have the plant up and running by the end of the decade.

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For how long can we realistically expect to have oil? And which dwindling element is essential to plant growth?

With 7 billion people on the planet – theoretically from today – there will be an inevitable increase in the demand on the world's natural resources. Here are six already under severe pressure from current rates of consumption:

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Plans to slow climate change by reflecting sunlight back into space could in fact raise temperatures, a new study concludes

Seemed like a cool idea: paint the world's roofs white to reflect more sunlight, and it could help cool down both cities and the planet. A new study, however, finds it's a lot more complicated – even as it dispels climate change deniers' claims that urban "heat islands" are a major cause of apparent temperature increases.

The land covered by urban areas more than doubled between 1992 and 2005, to about 0.128% of Earth's surface, Mark Z. Jacobson and John E. Ten Hoeve of Stanford University report in the Journal of Climate. Roofs and roads cover about half of that land, and help heat up urban areas by preventing evaporation of water and absorbing sunlight. Exactly how these urban heat islands affect global temperatures, however, has been unclear. But Jacobsen says some skeptics of climate science have argued that heat islands – and not the buildup of warming gases in the atmosphere – may be responsible for observed temperature increases, since some monitoring stations are near urban areas.

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The BBC will show a major new nature documentary next week, which it describes as the ultimate portrait of Earth's polar regions: the last great wilderness on the planet Continue reading...

Beijing threatens legal action as Burma halts dam because it is 'against the will of the people'

Burma's decision to suspend the country's biggest hydroelectric project has shocked and enraged China, the government's most influential backer on the international stage.

Senior officials in Beijing have castigated their south-east Asian ally and threatened legal action. It emerged that they were not consulted before President Thein Sien of Burma announced last Friday a halt to building the $3.6bn (£2.3bn) hydropower dam on the Irawaddy – known as the Myitsone project – because it was "against the will of the people".

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The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has abandoned its aim to remove all traces of contamination from the north coast seabed

Radioactive contamination that leaked for more than two decades from the Dounreay nuclear plant on the north coast of Scotland will never be completely cleaned up, a Scottish government agency has admitted.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has decided to give up on its aim of returning the seabed near the plant to a "pristine condition". To do so, it said, could cause "more harm than good".

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Al-Amniyr villagers in the West Bank face a catch-22: if they obey the law they cannot collect water. But if they fail to water the land, they lose it anyway

The South Hebron Hills, sweltering in 34C heat and in its second consecutive year of drought, is a landscape of brutal contrasts. There is enough water here to support lush greenhouses, big cattle sheds, even ornamental plants. It arrives in large, high-pressure lines. And there appears to be no limit to the bounty it can bring.

Cheek by jowl with the water towers and red roofs of the Israeli settlers in this area of the West Bank is a landscape of stone boulders, tents and caves. The Palestinian village of al-Amniyr looks from afar like a rubbish tip until you realise that the rubbish is people's dwellings, which have been destroyed in attacks targeting their water cisterns.

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One of London's longest running air pollution monitoring sites was at the heart of the rioting that began on Tottenham High Road on Saturday 6 August. The intensity of the fires meant that much of the smoke was lofted away from the immediate area; however, the monitoring site measured two hours of pollution that was around 10 times greater than average. Interestingly the air pollution was not just the small particles typical of smoke but it also contained many larger particles, presumably owing to dust from falling debris as fire damaged buildings began to crumble.

The fire at Reeves furniture store in West Croydon on the evening of Monday 8 August was shown live on news programmes. Flames leapt into the sky and could be clearly seen over 8kms away. Once again the heat from the fire lifted the smoke high. A gentle westerly wind carried smoke before it came to ground around 600 metres away in East Croydon at around 9pm. Here air pollution reaching around 20 times average levels was measured until early the following day. Although the fires caused large air pollution peaks the UK health guidelines, based on exposure averaged over the whole day, were not exceeded.

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Proposals for giant third airport could mean 120 million passengers pass through Chinese capital a year

Beijing is moving to overtake London as the world's busiest aviation hub with the construction of a third airport that could have as many as nine runways.

The new mega-project – part of a huge expansion of China's airline industry – has alarmed environmental groups, who warn aircraft will increasingly contribute to the country's already dire pollution problems and high greenhouse gas emissions.

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Scientists estimate the subterranean river may be 6,000km long and hundreds of times wider than the Amazon

Covering more than 7 million square kilometres in South America, the Amazon basin is one of the biggest and most impressive river systems in the world. But it turns out we have only known half the story until now.

Brazilian scientists have found a new river in the Amazon basin – around 4km underneath the Amazon river. The Rio Hamza, named after the head of the team of researchers who found the groundwater flow, appears to be as long as the Amazon river but up to hundreds of times wider.

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Latest bid to count and catalogue the living world is billed as the most accurate yet, but only a tiny proportion is known to science

• Damian Carrington: Counting the Earth's living riches is a landmark moment

Humans share the planet with as many as 8.7 million different forms of life, according to what is being billed as the most accurate estimate yet of life on Earth.

Researchers who have analysed the hierarchical categorisation of life on Earth to estimate how many undiscovered species exist say the diversity of life is not equally divided between land and ocean. Three-quarters of the 8.7m species – the majority of which are insects – are on land; only one-quarter, 2.2m, are in the deep, even though 70% of the Earth's surface is water.

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The government estimates oil leak could involve more than 1,300 barrels but claims it has been greatly reduced

The flow of oil from the worst spill in UK waters in the past decade, at one of Shell's North Sea platforms, has been "greatly reduced" but not yet stopped completely, the government said on Monday.

Conservationists warned that the leak could harm bird life in the area, at a delicate time in their development, as the oil company worked to minimise the damage.

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Car drivers assume the roads were built for them, but it was cyclists who first lobbied for flat roads more than 100 years ago

Wooden hobbyhorses evolved into velocipedes; velocipedes evolved into safety bicycles; safety bicycles evolved into automobiles.

It's well known that the automotive industry grew from seeds planted in the fertile soil that was the late 19th century bicycle market. And to many motorists it's back in the 19th century that bicycles belong. Cars are deemed to be modern; bicycles are Victorian.

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The leader of Burma's pro-democracy opposition joins chorus of alarm over China's plan to build dams on Irrawaddy river

Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma's pro-democracy opposition, has called for a halt to a massive Chinese hydropower project on the Irrawaddy river that has alarmed environmentalists and added to a long-running conflict between tribal militias and the government in Rangoon.

The Nobel laureate stepped into the fray on Thursday with a personal statement calling for greater protection for Burma's most important river, which is threatened by logging, pollution and the construction of a cascade of at least seven dams, a project managed by China Power Investment.

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Riding in an assertive position in the middle of the lane is recommended as safe practice in certain situations – but it can provoke hostile reactions from other road users

Ask any urban cyclist about "taking the lane", and even if they haven't heard of the term, they have probably done it. Although widely regarded as safe practice, this often gets negative responses from other road users. So who is right?

"Taking the lane" or taking "primary position" is essentially riding in the centre of the lane. Cyclists do it a) when passing parked cars whose doors may suddenly open; b) to prevent traffic overtaking dangerously in narrow roads and c) when manoeuvring or turning.

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Lakshmi Mittal's 'mega-mine' is believed to be the largest mineral extraction project in the region but threatens unique wildlife

Britain's richest man is planning a giant new opencast mine 300 miles inside the Arctic Circle in a bid to extract a potential $23bn (£14bn) worth of iron ore.

The "mega-mine" – which includes a 150km railway line and two new ports – is believed to be the largest mineral extraction project in the Arctic and highlights the huge commercial potential of the far north as global warming makes industrial development in the region easier.

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Email correspondence seen by the Guardian reveals prominent groups vehemently oppose returning Chagossians home

An American environment group with strong links to the US government is privately opposing proposals by leading British environmental scientists for some of the exiled inhabitants of the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean to be allowed to return home.

The islanders were ejected by Britain 40 years ago to make way for the giant US base at the Diego Garcia atoll. Last year, the British government announced the creation of the world's largest marine protected area round most of the Chagos islands – with the likely exception of Diego Garcia.

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