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They are the living seams that have typified the British countryside for centuries. But now hedgerows are disappearing fast, and a report published tomorrow will say we are not doing enough to protect them.

Research from the Campaign to Protect Rural England has found that though hedgerows enjoy more protection than ever before, in England their overall length fell by 26,000 kilometres between 1998 and 2007. The study, England's Hedgerows: Don't Cut Them Out!, calls for current legislation to be strengthened.

As well as having a nostalgic place in the aesthetics of the countryside, hedgerows are a vital part of the ecosystem. Research by Hedgelink, a network of British hedge conservation groups, shows that without them some 130 species – from the hedgehog and the dormouse to stag beetles and the cuckoo – would be under threat.

Although "important" hedgerows are protected by law, the majority can be taken down if a landowner wishes, which has resulted in many being dug up to create larger fields that are easier to harvest. For the past 20 years, the Government has provided financial help to landowners to restore and manage hedgerows. But most have still been left unmanaged, sometimes growing into larger trees offering fewer benefits to wildlife because they are less dense at ground level.

The CPRE study focused on England, but the picture nationwide is similarly grim.

Nigel Adams, vice-chairman of the National Hedgelaying Society, said: "The hedgerow is the unsung hero of our countryside. It's often overlooked, but visitors to England say it's what makes it so special. The majority are not used for their original purpose [as an animal barrier], but people recognise their importance in terms of wildlife and history."

Since 1998, the number of legally protected hedgerows has risen by 18 per cent. Currently, 42 per cent of the UK's hedgerows are protected, but the CPRE fears that the narrow criteria required to register a stretch of hedge as "important" will mean many more are lost.

To qualify for legal protection, a hedge must be at least 20 metres long, 30 years old and meet strict criteria on heritage and numbers of animals and plants relying on it. Some hedges were easy to register, such as Judith's Head in Cambridgeshire, which is Britain's oldest, having stood for more than 900 years. But for non-celebrity hedges, the future is dicey. More than two-thirds of local authorities surveyed by CPRE said that the current Hedgerow Regulations needed to be simplified to make them more effective.

Emma Marrington, author of the report, said: "The length of hedgerows in the country is declining, which is worrying. They're a part of our heritage, but they also offer huge benefits to wildlife and the environment in general. It's over a decade since the introduction of the Hedgerows Regulations, and the time is ripe for the Government to make improvements that give local authorities the power they need to better protect the great diversity of England's hedgerows."

The CPRE is concerned that hedgerow protection programmes could be at risk when the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) makes spending cuts in the autumn. "The Defra spending cuts could affect the money for schemes like this," Ms Marrington said. "I can see how hedgerows could be overlooked; they're taken for granted as being a part of the English countryside, and people don't realise how much they're at risk."

If hedgerows in Britain decline further, so too will those species that depend on them. Jim Jones of the People's Trust for Endangered Species is running a study of the impact of disappearing hedgerows on dormice, a species whose population has declined by 40 per cent in 20 years. "Dormice have disappeared from seven counties where they existed in the 1800s, at the same time as hedgerows have declined," he said. "Hedgerow corridors are crucial because they allow them to forage and move around."

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Sleeping is no mean art," said Friedrich Nietzsche. "For its sake one must stay awake all day." Indeed, maximising slumber duration can be a complex process. Today's anxiety-ridden, deadline-heavy world can steal away our eight hours of heavenly rest and replace it with a night frustratedly gnawing our pillows.

One professional intent on helping us snooze is Dr Nerina Ramlakhan, the author of Tired But Wired, a book released last month that advises taking naps, relaxing and exercising to hibernate effectively and wake up zinging and refreshed.

"I was frustrated about the lack of information out there," says the sleep and energy coach. "Someone once asked me to recommend a good book on sleep and I couldn't find one. I wanted to debunk many myths about sleep. I've had sleep problems myself for many years and I know what it's like. It's awful to wake up not rested and have to face the day."

Britain is an insomniac nation: the NHS spent almost £36m on sleeping pills in 2008-2009, the most recent figures available. That was a 20 per cent increase on the previous year. Medics put the increase down to people's worries over the credit crunch and unemployment. Modern sleeping pills are less addictive, meaning doctors are more likely to prescribe them.

"The biggest myths are that we need seven or eight hours a day, or that we shouldn't wake up in the night," continues Ramlakhan. "But waking early in the morning is perfectly normal. Students can still function well in an exam if they don't sleep the previous night. I sometimes professionally advise football players and I tell them not to worry about sleep before a big game. Even if they don't manage to sleep perfectly they will still perform well." So what's the key to an effective slumber? Ramlakhan explains the dos and don'ts of catching Z's.

Diet

Not eating pre-bedtime is less important than you would believe: what is pivotal is breakfast. Eating at the right time conditions your body's metabolism to wake up and wind down. "There are these fallacies swirling around that not eating before bed, or not eating lettuce or tuna, can help you sleep," says Ramlakhan. "But it's more crucial that you eat breakfast first thing in the morning, in what I call a 'metabolic window'. It's a timeframe in which you can give your body an important message. It tells it that in your world there is an adequate supply of food, it can relax, and that it can fall into sleep mode when it needs to."

Duration

Margaret Thatcher famously boasted she only needed four hours of shut-eye. Such "role models" perpetuate the myth that there is a one-size-fits-all rule. "In my experience it's all about being attuned to your requirements at different times," continues the expert. Professional footballers training twice a day might need to rest more than sedentary types. "There may be times you need four hours," adds the sleep expert. "At other points that could increase to seven or eight. It's about awareness of your needs."

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A film featuring racy sex scenes, the sinking of the Titanic and portrayals of Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock and James Joyce might be dismissed as too far-fetched by Hollywood standards.

The extraordinary life of Peggy Guggenheim, the bohemian doyenne of the 20th-century art world, often defied rational explanation, however.

A big screen biopic is in the works, and Guggenheim family aficionados and wary film censors can be certain that it will contain a lot of sex and art. The art collector denied the oft-repeated rumour that she had gone to bed with almost 1,000 people – men and women alike – but admitted that her lovers could be counted in the hundreds.

She became a close friend of Marcel Duchamp and is credited with advancing the careers of Jackson Pollock and Max Ernst. In the process she helped to develop abstract expressionism, the first American art movement to achieve worldwide importance.

Eleanor Cayre, a New York-based art advisor, is to lead the film's development in partnership with Nikki Silver, the Emmy Award-winning producer.

"I have always been fascinated with Peggy's collection and life story," Ms Cayre said. "She was an eccentric figure, who not only championed, but also had intimate relationships with some of the most creative minds in modern art history."

The film, which is still untitled and has yet to reach the casting stage, is expected to begin production in 2012. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the project is that it has taken so long for somebody to commit Peggy Guggenheim's life to celluloid.

Born in New York in 1898, Peggy Guggenheim never had to worry about money. She was the niece of Solomon Guggenheim, founder of the world famous museum, and her father Benjamin was a wealthy businessmen, who like his father, earned a fortune in mining.

In 1912, when Peggy was a teenager, her father boarded the RMS Titanic for its maiden voyage, accompanied by his mistress, his valet and his chauffeur. According to witnesses, after hearing of a collision with an iceberg he ushered his mistress to a lifeboat before returning to his cabin and changing into his evening dress, remarking: "We've dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen."

Benjamin Guggenheim did indeed go down with the ship, and by the time his daughter was 22 she found herself with an income of $22,500 a year in the form of a trust fund. One of her first acts after gaining financial independence was to hire a surgeon to carry out work on her nose, a feature she hated and referred to as her "Guggenheim potato".

Bored and frustrated by her small clique of New York friends, she decided to leave the US to go travelling in Europe in search of sexual and artistic adventures.

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Armed men have killed five campaigners working for a female candidate in next month's parliamentary election in Afghanistan.

Last Thursday, up to 10 campaign workers for the outspoken female candidate Fawzia Gilani went missing in Herat's Adraskan district. Officials originally said it was not known if they had been abducted by the Taliban or political rivals, although a spokesman for the Islamist militants later said the Taliban had seized them.

Five of those taken later turned up unharmed. The district chief of Adraskan said the bullet-riddled bodies of the other five were found on a hillside. The Taliban could not be reached for comment.

The UN said two weeks ago that three candidates had been killed, and that widespread intimidation of female candidates and other instances of election violence had been observed. The election is being seen as a key test of stability in Afghanistan, where violence is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

Poor security, particularly in Taliban strongholds in the south and east, already looms as the biggest challenge to the ballot. On Saturday, unidentified gunmen killed candidate Haji Abdul Manan as he walked from his home to a mosque in western Herat province. The Taliban later claimed the attack.

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The school closed a decade ago and the beautiful, if dangerously crumbling, church shut its doors in January, but this tiny village in one of the most unpopulated and forgotten corners of Spain is making a brave attempt to stave off a slow death.

With just 109 inhabitants and an average age of 53, the village has already shrunk to a sixth of the size it reached at the height of its glory more than half a century ago. A third of those who remain are over 65.

"We'll probably all die here," said 76-year-old Victor López, as he sat with his friends on the bench they occupy daily in the village square. "Our own children all emigrated and there are only a handful of young people now. My generation grew everything from cotton to corn, but no one wants to work the land any more."

As in many villages in this harsh, dusty corner of Teruel province, the fight for survival requires special measures. In an attempt to attract new inhabitants, Castelnou is now offering cheap houses, free land, an exemption from municipal taxes, and even a municipal babysitter to those families who wish to settle and bring children who might give the village a future.

This week, around 400 people travelled from all corners of Spain with their families to see what the village, tucked into a rocky hillside and surrounded by abandoned olive groves, had to offer. As the streets teemed with children for the first time in decades, elderly neighbours recalled fondly how it had been in their own youth.

"We need the young here. They bring joy," said pensioner Sara Galicia.

It was a meeting of the needy and the desperate. As a makeshift car park beside the ancient stone bridge across the thin trickle of the River Martín filled up with cars from around Spain, family after family told the same story – of the struggle to find work and raise a family in a country where one in five people are jobless.

"I used to work installing aluminium windows but now there is no construction and I've been out of work for two years," said Argentinian immigrant Rafael González, who arrived in Spain six years ago.

Rafael and his wife, Andrea, brought their daughter Valentina on the two-hour drive from Terrassa, an industrial suburb of Barcelona hit hard by unemployment. Their determination to find a better future would, they said, overcome the difficulties of living in a place with some of the most extreme weather in Spain.

"The village is nice," said Valentina, seven, as the thermometer soared above 100F (38C). "But all the things in the playground were so hot that I couldn't touch them."

"We fry in the summer," admitted López. "And the winter is freezing. Then everyone stays indoors – like snails in their shells."

The "children's caravan" – which was greeted with a playground of bouncy castles and a free paella lunch for 500 people – was the idea of mayor José Miguel Esteruelas. Where other Spanish villages threatened with extinction have brought caravans of single women to meet the local farmers, Mayor Esteruelas decided to bring in children.

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Artificial meat grown in vats may be needed if the 9 billion people expected to be alive in 2050 are to be adequately fed without destroying the earth, some of the world's leading scientists report today.

But a major academic assessment of future global food supplies, led by John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, suggests that even with new technologies such as genetic modification and nanotechnology, hundreds of millions of people may still go hungry owing to a combination of climate change, water shortages and increasing food consumption.

In a set of 21 papers published by the Royal Society, the scientists from many disciplines and countries say that little more land is available for food production, but add that the challenge of increasing global food supplies by as much as 70% in the next 40 years is not insurmountable.

Although more than one in seven people do not have enough protein and energy in their diet today, many of the papers are optimistic.

A team of scientists at Rothamsted, the UK's largest agricultural research centre, suggests that extra carbon dioxide in the air from global warming, along with better fertilisers and chemicals to protect arable crops, could hugely increase yields and reduce water consumption.

"Plant breeders will probably be able to increase yields considerably in the CO2 enriched environments of the future … There is a large gap between achievable yields and those delivered ... but if this is closed then there is good prospect that crop production will increase by about 50% or more by 2050 without extra land", says the paper by Dr Keith Jaggard et al.

Several studies suggest farmers will be up against environmental limits by 2050, as industry and consumers compete for water. One group of US scientists suggests that feeding the 3 billion extra people could require twice as much water by then. This, says Professor Kenneth Strzepek of the University of Colorado, could mean an 18% reduction in worldwide water availability for food growing by 2050.

"The combined effect of these increasing demands can be dramatic in key hotspots [like] northern Africa, India, China and parts of Europe and the western US," he says.

Many low-tech ways are considered to effectively increase yields, such as reducing the 30-40% food waste that occurs both in rich and poor countries. If developing countries had better storage facilities and supermarkets and consumers in rich countries bought only what they needed, there would be far more food available.

But novel ways to increase food production will also be needed, say the scientists. Conventional animal breeding should be able to meet much of the anticipated doubling of demand for dairy and meat products in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, but this may not be enough.

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If you thought Tiger Woods had experienced a difficult nine months, try stepping into the designer shoes of his ex-wife Elin Nordegren, who has broken her long and dignified silence on the scandal that claimed her marriage to inform the world: "I have gone through hell."

Ms Nordegren, whose divorce was finalised on Monday, said she had experienced "shock, anger and ultimately grief" over the revelation of her former husband's serial infidelity, adding that the stress of the situation gave her insomnia and weight loss, and caused her hair to fall out.

"The word 'betrayal' isn't strong enough," she said.

"I've been through hell. It's hard to think you have this life and then all of a sudden – was it a lie? I have been through the stages of disbelief and shock, to anger and ultimately grief over the loss of the family I so badly wanted for my children."

In the first public statement she has made since late November, when Woods crashed his SUV into a fire hydrant outside the Florida home where they lived with their two children, Ms Nordegren said she'd had no idea of her husband's extra curricular activities before the scandal first broke.

"I'm so embarrassed that I never suspected. For the last three-and-a-half years, when all this was going on, I was home a lot more with pregnancies, then the children and school. I felt stupid as more things were revealed. How could I not have known anything? I felt embarrassed for having been so deceived. I felt betrayed by many people around me."

The former Mrs Woods vehemently denied reports that she had pursued her errant husband from the house, perhaps brandishing a golf club, after getting wind of his relationship with Rachel Uchitel, a nightclub hostess who was the first in a string of mistresses to be publicly identified.

"There was never any violence inside or outside our home," she said. "The speculation that I would have used a golf club to hit him is just truly ridiculous. Tiger left the house that night, and after a while when he didn't return, I got worried and decided to look for him. That's when I found him in the car. I did everything I could to get him out of the locked car. To think anything else is absolutely wrong."

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Fancy fostering a wide-mouth frog? think you can handle a fire-bellied newt? Or maybe you just want to cuddle up with a glis glis? let Jamie Buckley be your guide...

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On a cold, stormy night in August 1985, I spent my first hour in the city of Edinburgh and resolved that it should be my last. The legendary festival Fringe that I had been persuaded to visit was nowhere to be seen, not here in an overpriced hotel room (what, then, did I know of the perennial joys of renting flats?), where no fewer than three friends had failed to appear, as promised, to show me around (what, then, did I know of the infinite flexibility of festival "arrangements"?), and where a snotty receptionist had just told me, no, no trains back to London tonight, before nodding me over the road to somewhere called the Assembly Rooms where I might pass the time (what, then, did I know of serendipity?).

Huffing, I stropped out and walked into – this is no exaggeration – my life. Like some bizarre surprise party, there were friends from school, university, ex-colleagues, past lovers and not one was surprised to see me. Later I would learn that nobody ever is; and nobody says hello or goodbye. You are either in the moment or you're not. So I grabbed an overflowing ashtray, a wobbly chair and... moved in. I live there still.

For Fringe veterans, the Assembly Rooms – 30 years old this summer – is the heart of their festival. It started in 1981 for no better reason than the desperation of a young director, William Burdett-Coutts, who needed a venue for his new play; he approached the council, who lent him the maze of civic chambers on condition that he took the whole lot, filled it and ran it. Thus it kicked off with, among others, the magical Ivor Cutler and his Life in a Scotch Sitting Room, Vol II.

When I arrived, four years later, my first show was Rik Mayall, Andy de la Tour and Ben Elton – sharing an hour's slot, mind, each doing his best 20 minutes; none of this "I'm so gifted I can do an hour all by myself" nonsense then. (Memo to comedians: just because you can doesn't always mean you should.) By then the Assembly Rooms was well established, and, although there are now other excellent venues, the original Assembly Rooms remains the cut above. Welcome to my bias.

I'm not going to attempt to sum up 30 years of shows. Can't, won't, shouldn't; to pick out five is to overlook thousands and, besides, balance decrees you'd also have to mention the turkeys. (Well, of course there bloody have been.) Suffice to say, I've seen most of my best and some of my worst in this shabby-chic building that defies itself to produce them – you try a tense moment in an Edinburgh Suite play when there's a stomp moment on stage in the vast Music Hall above. Every room is morphed into theatre space regardless of aptitude; we used to joke they'd be performing in store cupboards and toilets soon, until two years ago, when the store cupboard happened. Then, last year, the toilets.

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Elvis probably wasn't referring to a British newspaper when uttering his famous quote, but any English footballers out there considering joining the ever-swelling "special injunction" club may just care to read it as if he was. "Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away."

Of course, their lawyers will be telling them differently, assuring them there is no way The Sun, the Daily Mail, the News of the World, or whichever media outlet is on their case, can break the gagging order, which is approved by a High Court judge. But Presley knew. They're caught in a trap. They can't walk out.

The problem for the love rats is the internet, that bible of the suspicious mind. If it wasn't for the worldwide web rising to its feet at about the same time as the £100,000-a-day barrister, their dirty deeds could be buried for good. Alas, not on this information highway, with all its feeder lanes and means of access. One whisper and it's out there, zooming into the bloodstream of the public consciousness. And when it does go viral, the "sins" will only seem that much worse.
In fact, there are good examples for the advisors of the two latest England internationals to seek salvation in Britain's unofficial privacy law to quote while telling their men to grin and bear it. They only have to look at the recent cases of John Terry and Colin Montgomerie to see how it can all backfire. In January, Terry had one of these "super-injunctions" lifted and then had to watch how his perceived treachery was cast in a yet more sinister light. It's one thing sleeping with your best mate's girl; it's another being accused by a judge of being more concerned with the effect the exposure would have on your finances. Terry wasn't merely viewed as disloyal; he was deemed utterly unrepentant to boot.

Montgomerie's scenario is different, but no less foreboding. The Ryder Cup captain's exploits, or otherwise, with an ex-girlfriend are still rumours; as is the timing of the alleged alliance. But as the story remains officially unwritten, so every piece of sordid speculation continues to be unofficially discussed.

The ridicule is the thing here and it's not just on the postings on the message boards. A note was left on his locker at The Open; jokes have been whispered on the practice putting greens; double entendres have filled the range. Very few know the detail, but, thanks to the court order, everyone believes they can hang the old devil. "You're all having great fun at my expense," so Monty told a hungry press corps in the United States two weeks ago.

And what an expense it must be with the legal might of Schillings fighting his corner. Regardless of the nature of what might, or might not, be suppressed, Monty must be questioning whether the legal expense is worth it. Innocent or guilty of unspecified acts that are certainly not crimes, his image now adorns each and every self-serving article on the burgeoning trend of the sports star to gag the press.

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