Homes and businesses were flooded, tens of thousands of pounds of damage caused by high winds, and journeys by road and rail disrupted as the UK was battered again by rain and gales.

A band of heavy rain accompanied by winds of 70mph trundled across much of the country from the north-west, bringing with it chaos. Forecasters said on Thursday night that there was likely to be a reprieve on Friday before another weather front arrives at the weekend, this time from the south-west. Next week it is likely to turn calmer but colder, and there could be snow on the way.

The organisers of WWEM 2012, the Water Wastewater and Environmental Monitoring event, have announced that visitor numbers were up by 22% in comparison with 2010. On behalf of the organisers, Marcus Pattison expressed his delight with this success, adding: “We are extremely pleased with the number of people that took advantage of everything that WWEM 2012 had to offer and it is very satisfying to receive overwhelmingly positive feedback from both visitors and exhibitors.”

WWEM 2012 attendees were provided with a wide choice of activities including a Process Monitoring Conference and a Laboratory Analysis Conference (both CPD approved), a ‘Meet the (international) Buyer’ event, a meeting on water sector innovation, over 80 Workshops, free training courses on gas detection and safety, and an exhibition featuring over 130 stands representing more than 250 of the world’s leading providers of test and monitoring equipment and related services. As a result of the wealth of information available, many visitors found it necessary to attend both days of the event.

Talks on a new climate change treaty in Qatar next week will not advance unless rich countries promise more ambitious cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, four major developing nations said.

The four nations, Brazil, China, India and South Africa, known in climate talks as the Basic bloc, released a joint ministerial statement late on Tuesday saying responsibility for the outcome of the latest round of UN climate talks in Doha lay in the hands of rich countries.

"Ministers reaffirmed that the Kyoto protocol remains a key component of the international climate regime and that its second commitment period is the key deliverable for Doha, and the essential basis for ambition within the regime," they said.

Instrumentation specialist Quantitech launched a range of hydrogen –specific gas analysers in the UK and Ireland in 2007. Since that time Managing Director Keith Golding says “The solid-state sensor technology from H2scan has proved highly popular in a wide variety of applications, but online process monitoring is becoming the most popular because of the rapid return on investment that this technology can deliver. For example, an oil refinery in California recently purchased an explosion proof version of the online analyser, the HY-OPTIMA™ 2700, for its isomerisation plant and this has improved process efficiency, extended catalyst life and allowed longer process runs.”

The HY-OPTIMA™ 2700 is the latest development in the H2scan advanced range of accurate hydrogen leak detection and process gas monitoring analysers, which have recently been included in the Honeywell UOP Schedule A list.

The question about climate change is no longer whether it is real. The question is what the world is going to look like for our children as they grow up. I have a three-year-old son, and, when he is my age, he could be living in a world that is completely different from ours, largely because of climate change.

Despite the global community's best intentions to keep global warming below a 2C increase from the pre-industrial climate, higher levels of warming are increasingly likely. Scientists agree that countries' current emission pledges and commitments under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change would most likely result in 3.5-4C warming. And the longer those pledges remain unmet, the more likely it is that we will be living in a world that is four degrees warmer by the end of this century.

BP met its day of reckoning in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster on Thursday when the company admitted guilt on 14 criminal charges and agreed to pay an historic $4.5bn (£2.8bn) penalty in connection with the fatal explosion of its rig and the catastrophic oil spill.

The payments include $4bn for criminal charges and $525m to security regulators. BP will plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect in relation to the deaths of 11 men aboard the Deepwater Horizon when the rig blew up and sank in April 2010, as well as misdemeanour counts under the clean water and migratory bird acts. The company will plead guilty to lying to Congress.

The Conservative party has said it has no plans to discipline Chris Heaton-Harris for plotting with a Telegraph columnist to help him stand as an anti-windfarm candidate in the Corby byelection, even though the MP was the official agent for the Tory campaign in the constituency.

After speaking to Heaton-Harris and watching the video evidence, Tory officials said they wanted to focus on the big issues, but admitted he had been silly.

Ministers have been accused of "hiding inconvenient truths" about the spread of the deadly fungus threatening Britain's ash trees.

The criticism stems from changes made to the "scientific facts" published by the government about ash dieback, which emphasised the role of the wind in spreading the disease over the role of infected trees imported from continental Europe. Ministers can do nothing to stop the wind blowing spores across the country, but have been attacked for taking too long to ban the import and movement of infected ash trees.