UN chief Ban Ki-moon yesterday warned that no country or city was immune from natural or man-made disasters, as a report underlined the soaring, trillion dollar, economic risks the world faces.

Ban told a four-day UN Conference on disaster risk that the devastating earthquake and tsunami in highly-prepared Japan and the ensuing nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant on March 11 gave the world "a grave warning for the future."

"As we have learned again and again no country or city - rich or poor - is immune," the UN Secretary General said.

A report says a third of Africans are now middle class. Their interests coincide with the interests of the poor and should help to bring about change

"Very radical" concept could be a game-changer for the solar industry.

Cambridge, MA, USA -- MIT researchers and their collaborators have come up with an unusual, high performance and possibly less expensive way of turning the sun's heat into electricity.

OSLO — Global sea levels will rise faster than expected this century, partly because of quickening climate change in the Arctic and a thaw of Greenland’s ice, an international report said Tuesday.

The rise would add to threats to coasts from Bangladesh to Florida, low-lying Pacific islands and cities from London to Shanghai. It would also raise the cost of building tsunami barriers in Japan.No