A botched computer analysis resulted in design flaws that are largely to blame for unprecedented wear in steam tubes at the San Onofre nuclear power plant, but it isn't clear how the problems can be fixed, federal regulators said.

The preliminary findings by a team of Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigators were disclosed Monday night nearly five months after the seaside plant was shut down following a break in a tube that carries radioactive water. There is no date to restart either of its two reactors.

A proposed method of cutting harmful carbon emissions in the atmosphere by storing them underground risks causing earthquakes and is unlikely to succeed, a U.S. study said Monday.

The warning came in a Perspective article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, just days after another independent U.S. study warned that carbon capture and storage (CCS) risked causing earthquakes.

Air Canada's first-ever flight using biofuels headed from Toronto to Mexico City Monday, in an effort to showcase the aviation industry's global commitment to greener transportation.

An Airbus 319 used recycled cooking oil and jet fuel for the journey, which the aircraft maker says could cut carbon dioxide emissions by more than 40 percent.

A Chinese spacecraft carrying three astronauts docked with an orbiting module Monday, another first for the country as it strives to match American and Russian exploits in space.

The Shenzhou 9 capsule completed the maneuver with the Tiangong 1 module shortly after 2 p.m. (0600 GMT), 343 kilometers (213 miles) above Earth. The docking was shown live on national television.

What is a sip of clean water worth? Is there economic value in the shade of a tree? And how much would you pay for a breath of fresh air?

Putting a price on a natural bounty long taken for granted as free may sound impossible, even ridiculous. But after three decades on the fringes of serious policymaking, the idea is gaining traction, from the vividly clear waters of the Maldives to the sober, suited reaches of the World Bank.

A pilotless space plane developed by the U.S. Air Force has landed safely back on Earth after spending 469 days in orbit, officials said.

The robotic X-37B, a sort of miniature space shuttle weighing just five tons and measuring some 29 feet (8.8 meters) long, touched down Saturday at Vandenberg Air Force Base in western California, the Air Force said in a statement.

A rare white rhinoceros has been born in a zoo in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, a zoo official told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

"This baby rhino, a male, was born early on Friday afternoon without any problems," said Netta Guetta, who heads the African animals department, adding that the newcomer has yet to be named.

As a child, Liu Yang once wanted to be a bus conductor and later had her sights set on becoming a lawyer, but decades later she is set to travel into space as China's first ever female astronaut.

It was a visit by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to her school in central China that changed young Liu's mind as she realized she wanted to become a pilot -- a decision that eventually saw her take on the historic role.

Certain oil and gas operations that involve injecting wastewater underground can cause earthquakes, but the risk from hydraulic fracturing is generally low, said a U.S. scientific report Friday.

The report by the National Research Council found that the most significant risk of earthquakes is linked to secondary injection of wastewater below ground to help capture remaining hydrocarbons from a petroleum reservoir.

Unlikely candidates for box office stardom, a team of Japanese physicists may soon be in high demand with moviemakers after devising a formula to predict how successful a film is likely to be.

The team from Tottori University devised a set of mathematical models that measure how much money was spent on advertising before a movie is released, over what period of time, and how much talk the film generated in social media.