An international conference on trade in endangered species has opened in Doha to tackle issues such as a ban on export of the Atlantic bluefin tuna, sharks and polar bear skins.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or Cites that opened in the Qatari capital on Saturday will be discussing 42 proposals during the next two weeks.

Apart from issues like combating elephant poaching for ivory in Africa and banning trade in polar bear skins, those focusing on sharks and tuna are likely to be among the most contentious.

Cites is the only UN body with the power to ban trade in endangered animals and plants.

A two-thirds majority of nations must back measures for them to be adopted. They would then be enforced by laws passed in member nations.

Companies across Europe are hoarding permits to produce greenhouse gas emissions worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal.

The surplus credits have been amassed from over-allocation of permits to pollute from the European emissions trading scheme, and by buying cheap credits from carbon-cutting projects in developing countries and holding on to their more expensive official EU allowances.

The saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming and climate change without actually reducing pollution, or sold for a profit in the future.

Campaigners for tougher emissions reductions said the saved-up allowances discredited the argument of some industries that much deeper cuts in future would be "fatal" because they could no longer afford to compete against rivals outside the EU.

Is the world warming and are we causing it? The number of people confidently saying yes to that question has slipped sharply over recent weeks, if opinion polls on both sides of the Atlantic are to be believed. That looks like bad news for those arguing that major changes to how we travel, power our homes and feed ourselves are needed to avoid catastrophe.

Yet a longer-term take on the data shows that interpreting the results as a collapse in confidence in climate science due to the release of the University of East Anglia emails or mistakes by the UN's climate body is not sustainable - or at least a long way from the full story. The data shows just how overwhelmingly British people accept climate change is happening and how resolute those views have been - at least until now. And even in the more sceptical US 63% of people believe that global warming has already begun or will do so in their lifetime.

Loud hailer announcements by a water company and a leaflet advising what to do during a radiation leak caused fears of a nuclear catastrophe in Dorset.

Emergency services in Portland were inundated with calls when Wessex Water officials used a hailer to inform residents of a cut to services.

Meanwhile, leaflets had been delivered advising people what to do during a radiation emergency at the nearby port.

One 78-year-old resident said the loud hailer left her "frightened to death".

The leaflets were distributed as part of a Nuclear Accident Emergency Plan exercise at Portland Port on Wednesday evening.

One of the many crimes that climate scientists have been accused of lately is that they claim absolute certainty in a field of research fraught with uncertainty. Sure, the planet is warming, say skeptics, but that's happened throughout Earth's history, long before humans were burning fossil fuels. So, how can we be sure this isn't just a natural phenomenon?

Yet a search through the much vilified Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports shows that absolute certainty is notably absent. In the most recent document, for example, published in 2007, the authors write: "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG [that is, human-generated greenhouse gas] concentrations." (See pictures of the effects of global warming.)