June rainfall has helped alleviate what North Korea has described as its worst drought for a century, although key rice-producing areas remain badly affected, the South Korean government said Friday.

"It seems that ... the situation has considerably eased," Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee told reporters.

Omega-3 fish oils can be grown in fields using genetically modified oilseed crops, British researchers said as they released trial results this week.

The discovery could, subject to further research, eventually mean the creation of a more sustainable supply of fish oil for fish farms, which need them to nurture their produce.

A Boston science museum that praised a teenager for catching a mistake in the golden ratio at a decades-old exhibit now says it wasn't an error after all.

The Museum of Science released a statement Tuesday afternoon saying the equation in the 34-year-old "Mathematica exhibit" with minus signs instead of plus signs is actually the "less common — but no less accurate — way to present it."

A newly named dinosaur whose head frill was adorned with curly horns has joined the ranks of the legendary family that includes the Triceratops, paleontologists said Wednesday.

The lumbering creature is named Wendiceratops pinhornensis, after the fossil hunter Wendy Sloboda, who first discovered the trove of some 200 bones in southern Alberta, Canada, said the study in the journal PLOS ONE.

Atronomers who trained their telescopes on a strange stellar blip were rewarded with a front-row seat to the spectacle of a black hole waking up to devour breakfast.

The black hole at the center of a galaxy 42 million light years away, in the constellation of Pisces, may have been dormant for millions of years, a team reported Thursday.  

Three astronauts set to travel to the International Space Station this month said Wednesday they had confidence in Russia's space program, despite a delay to their trip caused by the failed launch of a cargo craft.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, who will be making his first space voyage, admitted he and his colleagues were "disappointed" their launch had to be delayed from its planned date in May, but said the crew had faith in the Russian spacecraft.

Using bait attached to underwater cameras at 400 reefs worldwide, scientists are embarking on their first-ever attempt to count the world's sharks, researchers said Tuesday.

By 2018, the program, called Global FinPrint, aims to provide a clear picture of where shark populations are healthy and where they are struggling, and how sharks impact the health of coral reefs.

Nearly 2,000 climate scientists gathered in Paris Tuesday, just five months before the deadline for a historic carbon-curbing pact, to remind politicians it is not too late to limit dangerous planet warming.

"The world is at a critical crossroads," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a message read to the academic gathering.

Zimbabwe has shipped 24 elephant calves to China, in a move that has angered animal rights groups who described the export as "extremely cruel".

"Some 24 elephants are on route to China as we speak after they were taken from their families in Hwange National Park," Johnny Rodrigues, charirman of the animal rights group Conservation Taskforce told Agence France Presse.

More than 1,800 dried chameleons on their way to Asia have been seized in Burkina Faso, officials said Monday.

The chameleons -- which are protected in Burkina Faso -- were packed in boxes and had a combined weight of around 29 kilos (64 pounds). They were headed to countries like China and the Philippines, where some believe they have medicinal powers.