"Climate change has likely intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered record floods in Australia's Queensland state, scientists said on Wednesday, with several months of heavy rain and storms still to come."

"Thousands of residents of Australia's third-largest city evacuated homes on Wednesday as massive floods threatened to inundate the financial district, sparked panic buying of food and left authorities despairing for more than 90 people missing."

"Australian troops and emergency workers were Monday battling huge flooding in the country's northeast that has left at least two people dead, with the worst devastation yet to come for some areas."

The US-owned bottled water giant Fiji Water shut down operations in the military-ruled Pacific nation of Fiji Monday, after the nation raised the tax on pumping the water the firm exports.

"Indonesia's Mount Merapi blasted ash and gas into the sky on Thursday, killing six more people in the latest in a series of eruptions over the past nine days that claimed 44 lives and forced more than 75,000 to flee their homes."

"The death toll from a tsunami and a volcano rose to 376 Thursday as more victims of Indonesia's double disasters were found and an official said a warning system installed after a deadly ocean wave in 2004 had broken from a lack of maintenance."

"The South Pacific island nation of Palau has declared all the waters within its Exclusive Economic Zone to be a marine mammal sanctuary for the protection of whales, dolphins, and dugongs."

"A[n Australian] federal government agency has banned pesticides that use the toxic chemical endosulfan, reversing earlier rulings that said it was safe if used correctly."

"In its effort to rid the island territory of Guam of an invasive snake species, the US Navy has enlisted the help of an unlikely set of allies: Dead mice stuffed with a common painkiller."

"Australian scientists Thursday said they had made a breakthrough in the fight to save the cancer-hit Tasmanian devil by mapping the species' genome for the first time."

Scientists have just discovered a new lizard species -- 6 feet long -- in a remote part of the Philippines. Inhabitants there knew about it all along.
 

"Maritime authorities have pulled off an incredibly complex salvage operation without spilling any more oil into Great Barrier Reef waters. Nine days after the coal carrier Shen Neng 1 ran aground on Douglas Shoal off Rockhampton it has been refloated, and is now anchored in safe waters."

"The Chinese coal ship that ran onto the Great Barrier Reef was one of dozens of freighters to have taken a legal short cut between dangerous shoals this year, satellite images show."

"HONG KONG -- Salvage experts and a tugboat crew struggled on Monday to save a large Chinese freighter that slammed into the Great Barrier Reef off Australia  over the weekend, trying to prevent the vessel from breaking apart as some of the 1,075 tons of engine fuel in its tanks began oozing from the hull, threatening the world’s largest collection of coral."

"A team of international scientists has made a major breakthrough in the fight to save tasmanian devils from extinction."