Shanks & McEwan (Southern Waste Services) Ltd v Environment Agency; Queen's Bench Divisional Court (Lord Justice Auld and Mr Justice Brian Smedley) 14 October 1997.

Europe's flagship nuclear fusion programme has achieved a new record power output, taking the world another small but significant step down the long road to a virtually unlimited, environmentally friendly fuel source. Earlier this week the Joint European Torus (JET) in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, set a new record by generating more than 12 megawatts of fusion power - the same process that fuels the sun. This set a record for the ratio of power generated to power input: JET achieved an "efficiency" of 50 per cent, double that achieved before.

More than four million new households are likely to be formed by 2016, placing even more powerful pressures on the countryside, Jonathan Dimbleby, the president of the Council for Rural England, said yesterday.

Tony Blair suffered his first ministerial resignation yesterday, just four days after coming into office.

Scientists have developed a new process to help countries destroy huge stockpiles of chemical weapons. Nations which have ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, which comes into force tomorrow, will have 10 years to get rid of their arsenals, which is usually done by incineration. But this produces toxic pollutants and is potentially hazardous, and a British company has come up with a solution which is said to be both safe and environmentally friendly.

Sir: Sara Parkin ("Support goes to greenest candidate", 23 April) gave her reason for withdrawing from the Green Party as its failure to think strategically about how to work in the British electoral system.

Shares in RJB Mining, Britain's biggest coal producer, leapt 10 per cent yesterday as hopes grew that a future Labour government would support its plans for a new generation of environmentally-friendly clean coal power stations.

There aren't many operas about animals. Yet at the peak of his productive late phase, the 70-year-old Leos Janacek managed to compose The Cunning Little Vixen. Janacek based the libretto on a contemporary newspaper cartoon strip about a vixen who is captured by a gamekeeper and escapes back to the woods to find a mate and to raise a litter. Aside from the vixen and fox, Janacek also creates cameo roles for a host of other creatures - a bass-voiced badger, choruses of female hens and woodbirds, insects (sung by children), and a few humans as well. The result is probably the world's first ecological opera... The fast-moving libretto, a healthy smattering of choreographed interludes, and a glittering orchestral tapestry all contribute to what can be a mesmerising operatic experience.

Baffling bypass

Steve Spartak pushes for the ozone-friendly Olympics in a clean, green world

Sir: David Walker ("Whitehall's machinery needs an overhaul", 28 May) is right to highlight the inadequacies imposed by the structure of Government when it comes to addressing new challenges. This is nowhere more apparent than in the field of environmental protection where efforts to "green" the policy-making machinery have been frustrated by the failure of most Government departments to take environmental issues on board.

Successes of the past 25 years have been mere tactical victories in a long retreat for the environment, says Tom Burke

Better to be a mouse than a man

From Mr Colin Dewsnap