For a man who loves hunting, fishing and shooting, Prince Philip may sound like an unlikely host for a vegan lunch.

But with more than 200 religious leaders representing nearly a dozen of the world's faiths coming for lunch at Windsor Castle, the Duke of Edinburgh had to be careful what he offered his guests.

Beef, pork and indeed meat of any sort would have been unacceptable for many of those attending the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) event.

And given that his visitors were there for a conference on religion and the environment, the chefs had to be careful that the food was local and sustainable.

The menu started with a salad of roasted English pear, celeriac and cobnuts (a type of hazelnut grown in Kent).

For the main course, guests had mushrooms stuffed with artichoke, red onion and thyme, served on pearl barley and butternut squash risotto.

Instead of fine French wines, there were non-alcoholic cranberry and orange cocktails.

Lunch was served after a morning of speeches introduced by Prince Philip, who founded ARC in 1995 to help religions to develop environmental programmes.

In a speech that cited Dante and T.S. Eliot, the Bishop of London Richard Chartres said humanity was living out a sort of "cosmic drama" in five acts, with the final scenes about to unfold.

"Act 5...is just beginning," he said. "It will decide whether humanity is just a dead-end in the unfolding story of life."

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's message to delegates in the vast Waterloo Chamber, built to mark the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, was just as stark: Mankind has only one home, planet Earth, and action must be taken immediately to save it.

"We may have to have nine more planets if you continue to emit greenhouse gas emissions like you have been doing," he said.

The Church of England body reviewing the law on women bishops, the Revision Committee, has voted to change the rules to remove certain powers from female bishops in dioceses where they face opposition from traditionalists. Specially-appointed male bishops would assume those powers and the new system would be written into British law, the committee said in a statement.

(Photo: Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the U.S. Episcopal Church, 4 Nov 2006/Jonathan Ernst)

While Anglicans in the United States, Canada and Australia already have women bishops, conservatives in many other parts of the Communion strongly oppose them. They say there is nothing in the Bible or church history to support women bishops. Liberals, who argue that women should be treated equally, said the latest proposals to allow women bishops, albeit with reduced powers in some areas, risked creating a two-tier church.

"Where there are parishes who don't recognize women bishops and want to look to another bishop, that diocesan bishop's duties and responsibilities to those parishes would be reduced automatically," a Church of England spokesman said. "Those duties would pass to this other bishop."

Read the whole story here.

Church of England statement "Revision Committee on Women in the Episcopate"

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When it comes to climate change, the environment and other weighty issues, what could the leaders of the world's biggest democracy possibly learn from the rural Indians who cobble together rickety cars out of scrap metal and old bits of wood?

One of India's best known businessmen says the improvised vehicles that carry crops and passengers along dusty village roads show how local people are often the best innovators, coming up with cheap and effective answers to tough problems.

Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of the technology company Infosys, thinks politicians would do well to remember the decentralized philosophy behind the "jugaad". Mechanics with little money and poor access to cheap parts use whatever is at hand to build them: water pumps replace normal engines; wooden blocks stand in for brakes and old planks of wood provide the floor.

"This 'car' is a brilliant improvisation, nailed together from whatever parts rural mechanics can get their hands on," Nilekani writes in a new book about the future of the world's second most populous country, "Imagining India". "Effective, innovative policies will depend on harnessing this ability of people at the local level to take charge and innovate.

"Our environment and energy solutions will have to rope in our tribal and village communities to be truly effective. I believe such approaches are uniquely suited to India, with its untapped pool of local, entrepreneurial and innovative talent."

Nilekani, often called the "Bill Gates of Bangalore", says India has come a long way since the historic days of 1947 when Britain's colonial rule ended. However, it must move further away from centralisation if it is to harness its economic potential.

While Nehru's "paternal, socialist state" that promised public sector wealth creation made sense at the time, few Indians believe in his policies now, Nilekani argues.

It is time, he says, for the country to move even further away from the old idea of "Mother India" looking after its one billion "children".

His book sets out a vision of a more equal and prosperous India where the state views the population as "human capital, not as a liability".

The new India would value entrepreneurs, improve its schools and universities, embrace globalisation and technology and build new infrastructure.  It would also accept English as a "language of aspiration" rather than a colonial relic.

The markets will play a crucial role in changing society, but politicians and the public sector must also do their bit, Nilekani says. Political parties have for too long exploited class, religion, caste or regional differences to make short-term gains at the expense of long-term planning, he adds.

"If you want to go beyond the politics of division to the politics of aspiration it will take some time because you will need a larger middle class," he told Reuters in an interview in London. "Markets and entrepreneurship are very important. They drive innovation, job creation. It is how people's standard of living goes up."

If India adopts the right measures it could see faster economic growth than China within a few years, helped by a huge pool of young working people, he adds.

"India is now going to have its demographic dividend in the next 30 years. China had its demographic dividend over the last 30 years," he told Reuters. "Being the only young country in an ageing world gives India some very special opportunities."

With polls suggesting that no party will secure an outright majority in this month's elections, Nilekani warns that future could be rocky.

"This election is momentous because there is no clear winner, no party that has a clear advantage," he says. "There is a risk of having instability."

However, like the humble "jugaad", the sheer scale of the election process and the effort that has gone into getting 700 million people to vote, is an immense source of pride for Nilekani.

"It is an extraordinarily uplifting moment," he says.

As a top-flight racing driver, Britain's Science Minister Paul Drayson may seem an unlikely critic of the auto industry.

The self-confessed "car nut" owns a motor racing team and competes in a 200mph Aston Martin in competitions around the world.

 But at a news conference in London, he attacked the "significant minority" of auto industry executives who he claims still deny the evidence for climate change.

 "It shocked me that those views were held by senior managers," he said. "I have been actually quite surprised...(by) how many of them just do not accept the scientific evidence around climate change. It really shocked me."

 Climate change is "the greatest challenge of our generation", he added, and the problem is bigger than the global economic crisis.

 Pressed by reporters to name the doubting managers and their companies, Drayson declined and said the sceptical attitude was not confined to the car industry.

 He had met industrialists in all sectors who have yet to be convinced that human activities contribute to climate change.

 Car makers around the world say they are committed to reducing emissions blamed for contributing to global warming and are working hard to make their products more environmentally friendly. Battered by the economic downturn, they say they need more state aid to switch to electric and hybrid cars.

 While Drayson accepted that many in the car industry do accept the evidence for climate change, he said it was crucial to persuade the rest of the grave threats that lie ahead.

 "What we need to do is present them with the evidence to say this can't wait," he told reporters at the Royal Institution, an independent charity devoted to scientific research.

 Part of that evidence will come, he hopes, from a new UK-based coalition that will use satellites to monitor the Earth's climate, sea levels and atmosphere.

 More than 100 scientists from 26 British universities will work for the National Centre for Earth Observation, studying some of the biggest environmental questions.

 Its director Alan O'Neill said it will be a "vital tool in measuring and managing the health of the planet". It could help see where earthquakes or volcanoes are likely to occur next, he added.

 "This research is of vital importance," Drayson said. "It is very hard to look at this data and still maintain the position that climate change isn't happening."

Would you give up your laptop, your iPod or even your mobile to help pay the bills?

Some devices that seemed like luxuries just a few years ago are now seen by many people as necessities.

With money scarce, jobs threatened and bills rising, it would be interesting to see if the trend for households to acquire more and more hi-tech goods starts to decline.

Common sense suggests that top-end electronic goods wouldn't be high on most people's shopping lists in the current climate.

Credit has dried up and borrowing cash to buy a new flatscreen TV doesn't appear to make much sense.

Undaunted by the financial crisis, Stuff magazine is hosting its annual gadget show this weekend at the vast ExCel conference centre in Docklands, east London.

Visitors can tour dozens of stands showing off everything from a pair of loudspeakers costing 70,000 pounds to a hovering chair worth nearly 6,000 pounds.

But the question is: Will people get the urge to buy anything?

Will you be tightening your purse strings or browsing online for a bigger TV to help while away those long nights at home now that you can't afford to go out?

The furore over offensive phone calls made by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand to actor Andrew Sachs shows how society has forgotten how to behave itself, the Independent said in an editorial.

"Exactly what has happened to good manners and basic courtesy," it asked on its leader page. "And isn't it time they made a return?

The episode casts Britain in a "very shabby light" and raised the question: should a public service broadcaster employ such individuals, the paper added.

The incident was "ugly, cheap and nasty" and highlights a wider issue of falling standards in modern broadcasting, wrote John Harris in a column for the Guardian.

"Perhaps the spectral presence of Mary Whitehouse has hung around our discourse on broadcasting for too long," he wrote. "Agreeing that too much TV is getting ever more coarse and idiotic doesn't strike me as a sop to the authoritarian right."

The Times used its august leader columns to discuss the incident under the headline "A Sorry Affair", the same headline used by its sister paper The Sun in its "Sun Says" column.

"Some will say that humour that doesn't offend isn't humour," the Times said. "Cutting humour is designed to draw blood. Lenny Bruce drew plenty. But there is a wide gulf between comedy and malice."

The editors' failure to delete the offending section of Brand's pre-recorded show before it was broadcast "should mortify the BBC", it added.

"SACK THEM!" screamed the front page headline in the Daily Mail.

"Even by the standards of this puerile, smutty pair, this was a disgusting and gratuitously cruel way to a treat 78-year-old Andrew Sachs," the paper said in an editorial.

"Is there any reason why we should be expected to go on paying this vile man (Brand) - or the executives who judge his filth fit to broadcast?"

For those immune to the charms of the latest gadgets, they are expensive, infuriating and fragile devices that are destined to be lost or stolen or end up languishing in the back of a drawer.

But for gadget-lovers there is nothing better than getting their hands on a covetable new toy that promises to make life easier or more fun.

Readers of Stuff magazine, who are more likely to fall into the second category, are voting for their favourite gadget of the last 12 months.

Here's the shortlist: Apple's iPhone, Sony's PlayStation 3, Nintendo's Wii Fit, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Asus Eee PC and the B&W Zeppelin.

Nominees in the other categories include the BlackBerry Bold, Nokia N96, Creative Zen X-Fi and TomTom GO 730.

Do you constantly upgrade your mobile/iPod/television in a quest for the latest features? Or are you quite happy still using your basic phone and full-size TV?

What was your favourite gadget of the last year and why do you love it so much?

*Click here for full story*

She made a bet that she could defy the credit crunch and live on just one pound a day for a year.

After paying her landlord 3,000 pounds in advance for rent and bills, the teacher from Bristol radically changed her way of life.

Out went her mobile phone and clothes shopping, replaced by trips to jumble sales and foraging for berries in hedgerows.

She visited book launches and lectures that had free buffets and scoured supermarkets for discounted food close to its sell-by date.

Shampoo at 27p a litre and bars of soap for 6p each took the place of designer toiletries. 

She rode a bike instead of getting the bus and had a holiday in France by hitchhiking across the Channel.

By walking more and keeping her eyes on the ground, she even picked up 117 pounds in loose change.

Kelly knew that, despite her tight budget, she still had far more than millions of people around the world. But her experiment still changed her view of money and possessions.

She reflected on how she used to waste 25 pounds a week on coffee and once yearned for new shoes and bags which seldom brought her the happiness she expected.

"The experience has changed my philosophy on life," she told the Scotsman. 

At the end of the year, she had saved enough money to buy her brother a 1,300 pounds wedding present -- life membership of the National Trust.

Have you cut back on spending to help meet soaring household bills? Do you think you could emulate Kelly and live on just one pound a day?