A new report from UK-based Changing Markets Foundation reveals how formula milk manufacturers add unnecessary ingredients with no proven benefits – all to ramp up the prices. PAT THOMAS reports.
New Scientist Live at London's ExCel Centre is described by its organisers as 'a festival of ideas and discovery'. But the popular magazine has had a particularly bad idea already – the festival's sponsors, argues CLAIRE JAMES
Thousands of protesters have occupied a coal mine near Cologne - the single largest emitter of CO2 in Europe. NICK MEYNEN argues that history is on their side, especially when politicians fail to take heed of climate science
Semi-wild 'Dartmoor Hillies' have a unique genetic signature which allows it to survive in challenging habitats. But the ponies are now under threat due to their human neighbours, reports GILLY SMITH
The development of meat-like foods is introducing GM and novel technology into our diets. This presents new risks to our health, but also to the complex development of behaviour to prevent environmental destruction, argues PAT THOMAS
Lord Lawson was invited onto the BBC Radio 4 Today programme to debate the risk of climate change. Scientists, former BBC journalists and politicians have all questioned the wisdom of this decision. BRENDAN MONTAGUE reports
Whether from environmentalists, media or politicians science and its values are often under attack. In response, the scientific community has started a global Pro-Science Movement. Key agendas of the movement include environmental awareness and action on climate change, writes LUCY EJ WOODS
In an open letter to the UK's political party leaders, Scientists for Global Responsibility urge those politicians to take the global threat of climate change seriously and to exploit science and technology to create jobs, tackle fuel poverty, and reduce local air pollution
A 2001 study that showed that glyphosate caused cancer in mice was ignored by the EFSA after the unsubstantiated allegation of a former US-EPA official that the mice used in the study were suffering from a viral infection that might have given them cancer, writes Claire Robinson. The EFSA failed to properly investigate the allegation, which appears to originate in a document linked to Monsanto, maker of the world's top-selling herbicide, glyphosate-based Roundup.
The UK government claim that fracking is a 'clean' energy source rests on the conclusions of a single scientific paper, writes Paul Mobbs. And now that paper has been conclusively invalidated: it uses misleading figures that understate the methane emissions from fracking, and subsequent findings have left it totally discredited. Yet the paper is still being quoted to justify fracking, and the fool the public on its climate change impacts.
Teresa May's promise to bring back foxhunting has proved one of the most unpopular items in the Tories' election platform. So we should not be surprised at the official silence over the TB-infected hounds in the Kimblewick hunt, writes Lesley Docksey. Nor, given the political power of foxhunting landowners, should we be surprised that officials are shrugging off any idea that bad biosecurity in hunt kennels could possibly have anything to do with TB in cattle.
A new study explains for the first time how nanoparticles like those in diesel exhaust fumes cause heart disease by lodging in inflamed blood vessels, writes Oliver Tickell. The study, published as the UK government is ordered before the High Court to justify its refusal to publish plans to tackle illegal air pollution which afflicts 38 million people, also raises wider fears about 'engineered nanoparticles' in the environment.
The world must drastically reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, writes Simon Redfern - and we can't do it by cutting emissions alone. But we could we do it 'nature's way', using volcanic rocks and mining wastes that naturally soak up CO2 from the atmosphere and ocean, and turn it into harmless forms like limestone and dissolved bicarbonate.
A new study in Pennsylvania, USA shows that fracking is strongly related to increased mortality in young babies. The effect is most pronounced in counties with many drinking water wells indicating that contamination by 'produced water' from fracking is a likely cause. Radioactive pollution with uranium, thorium and radium is a 'plausible explanation' for the excess deaths.
