"Frustrated with the pace of the United Nations group charged with protecting Antarctic waters, a coalition of environmental groups announced its own initiative on Tuesday, calling for the creation of what would be the world’s largest network of marine reserves in the Southern Ocean."

"A new independent report from Japan details just how close that country came to a "devil's chain reaction" of nuclear plant after nuclear plant melting down and sending a plume of radiation over the city of Tokyo and its 30 million inhabitants."

"The World Bank announced on Friday a global alliance to better manage and protect the world's oceans, which are under threat from over-fishing, pollution and climate change."

"DETROIT -- Average retail gas prices in Detroit have risen over 25.6 cents per gallon in the past week. According to GasBuddy.com this compares with the national average that has increased 11.3 cents per gallon in the last week to $3.64/gallon."

"Earth's clouds got a little lower - about one percent on average - during the first decade of this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate."

"A European experiment that in September showed particles moving faster than the speed of light has been exposed as a mistake due to a faulty wire connection, the US journal Science said Wednesday.

'A bad connection between a GPS unit and a computer may be to blame,' said the report on the magazine’s website section Science Insider, citing 'sources familiar with the experiment.'

"Mount Sinai School of Medicine virologists find signs of infection in 1-2% of blood samples screened, but most people didn't seek or need treatment."

"Federal wildlife investigators in California and other states say they have cracked an international smuggling ring that trafficked for years in sawed-off rhinoceros horns, which fetch stratospheric prices in Vietnam and China for their supposed cancer-curing powers."

"Dow Chemical Co hoped an Olympic sponsorship would boost its global cache, but the company's link to a gas leak tragedy 28 years ago threatens to curb some of the benefits from the $100 million advertising deal. As many as 25,000 residents of Bhopal, India, died in the aftermath of a 1984 gas leak at a pesticide factory that was owned by a subsidiary of Union Carbide, which sold the facility in 1994. Dow bought Union Carbide in 2001."

"MOSCOW -- It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species.

The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds.