Alberto Contador is handed a two-year ban for a doping offence - and is stripped of his 2010 Tour de France title.

US space agency officials let their European counterparts know that it is now highly unlikely that America will participate in joint missions to the Red Planet in 2016 and 2018.

A clan chief is accusing the Scottish government and SNH of not listening to islanders' concerns about a conservation area.

An 83-year-old woman is fitted with a jaw made by a 3D printer in what doctors say is the first operation of its kind.

Russian scientists are attempting to beat US and British rivals to be first to drill into an Antarctic sub-glacial lake.

Pictures reveal how charcoal keeps Liberia cooking

China tells its airlines not to pay charges to the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme, aimed at cutting carbon emissions.

The risk of birth defects increases four-fold if the pregnant mother has diabetes, a study of 400,000 pregnancies in England suggests.

Scientists find two species of colourful worms

More than 100 Conservatives are among MPs who have written to the prime minister calling on him to slash subsidies for onshore wind turbines.

Nearly a million migratory birds visit Kashmir's wetlands every year, but this time the severe winter has made it nearly impossible for them to find food.

More than 100 Conservative MPs have written to David Cameron calling on him to slash subsidies for onshore wind turbines.

About 100 people gather in Enniskillen to demonstrate against the use of fracking to extract gas from shale rock in County Fermanagh.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will visit China next week to discuss Canada's oil products, after the US blocked a key pipeline.

Prince Charles says there are reasons to be optimistic about the state of the world's oceans, but it is "critically urgent" to tackle overfishing.

Do the dead outnumber the living - or the living the dead?

A tour of Kew's Royal Botanic Gardens' exotic orchids

What Huhne’s departure means to 'the greenest government ever'

Astronomers at the Paranal observatory combine four telescope to create the world's largest virtual device with a 130m-mirror.

The Hubble space telescope captures an image of a "barred spiral" galaxy that could help us better understand our own Milky Way.