"'Even on a good day, I get discouraged thinking about the election of a new pope,' laments Maureen Fiedler, a nun and blogger at the progressive Catholic newspaper National Catholic Reporter. 'They all look like a Vatican version of the tea party movement.'"

"Thousands of anti-nuclear protesters have gathered across Japan. The rallies come on the eve of the two-year anniversary of an earthquake and tsunami that caused the Fukushima disaster."

"BANGKOK -- Efforts to curb the sale of ivory and rhino horns were voted down on Thursday at an international wildlife summit in Bangkok."

A new reconstruction of the global temperature over the past 11,000 years only confirms the unprecedented warming shown in the "hockey stick" graph which has become the target of anti-science climate deniers.

"BANGKOK, Thailand -- Governments have refused to ban trade in polar bear pelts, paws and teeth from Canada, amid what one observer called “controversial and frosty scenes” at the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Bangkok [Thursday]."

"Permafrost—the ground that stays frozen for two or more consecutive years—is a ticking time bomb of climate change. Some 24 percent of Northern Hemisphere land is permafrost. That's 9 million square miles (23 million square kilometers) found mostly in Siberia, the Tibetan Plateau, Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, and other higher mountain regions."

"Offshore wind turbines are vulnerable to sudden and catastrophic destruction in moderately stormy seas, according to new research."

"A dark realm far beneath the Earth's surface is a surprisingly rich home for tiny worms and 'zombie microbes' that may hold clues to the origins of life, scientists said on Monday."

"Protection measures have failed to stop around 100 million sharks being fished every year and a third of all shark species are now threatened with extinction, conservationists say."