Heartening news rang forth from the renewable energy sector this week as a UN-backed study reported that the building of new renewable energy plants has officially overtaken fossil fuel plants in Europe and the US. We also took a look at two brand new types of power plants -- the world's first hydrogen-driven power plant in Italy and the first hybrid coal-solar power plant in Colorado.

ENGADGET: Inhabitat's Week in Green: of mirror cubes and urban icebergs

The figures come from The Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2012 report, a UN Environment Program backed study that has tracked the finance flowing into green energy across the world since 2004.

CNN: Who's funding the green energy revolution?

Dr Kircher said that an important finding of the study was that vulnerable buildings - un-reinforced masonry, older reinforced concrete and "soft-storey" - made up less than 5% of all buildings in the region but would kill more than half the people.

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | San Francisco faces big shaker

Only a day after their study was published in the journal Nature, the UN's environment and biodiversity agencies warned that some of the great apes - chimps, gorillas, and orangutans - could be extinct in the wild within a human generation.

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Reading the chimp book of life

Professor Annique Un, from Northeastern University in Boston, for example, did a pointy study.

FORBES: Can countries benefit from having their domestic firms acquired by foreign companies?

The new report is a joint study from security firms Symantec, Kaspersky, the Crypto Labs in Budapest and the UN's International Telecommunications Union.

BBC: More malware targeting Iran could yet be discovered