France is to slap an annual green tax on high-emission cars, such as sports utility vehicles, and extend punitive taxes to more environmentally damaging products in an attempt to revolutionise consumer behaviour and combat climate change.

Disunity and recrimination marked the start of France's European Union presidency on Tuesday as Nicolas Sarkozy exchanged accusations with the European Commission over world trade talks. The French president denounced Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner, in a television interview on Monday evening for allegedly selling out EU farmers

The Group of Eight industrialised nations will jointly invest more than 10 billion dollars a year on research and development of technology to combat global warming, a report said Sunday. The plan, including research on underground storage of carbon dioxides, is included in a draft joint statement on economic policy to be adopted at the G8 summit scheduled for July 7-9 in Japan, the business daily Nikkei said.

Flip through a travel brochure, and you're likely to see pictures of sun and sand in Southeast Asia, of luxury lodges in the Serengeti, of scuba diving in the bejewelled coral reefs of the Caribbean, but what the brochure won't reveal is the environmental cost of your trip. That beach in Thailand may once have housed precious mangroves, which were ripped up to make way for your hotel.