Indonesia has extended a landmark moratorium aimed at preserving the archipelago's vast swathes of tropical rainforest, but environmentalists said on Thursday the logging ban did not go far enough.

Large tracts of the country are covered in trees, including some of the world's most biodiverse rainforest that is home to endangered animals such as orangutans, tigers and elephants.

Ten people have been detained in China over the killing of an endangered wild panda for its meat and fur, state media said on Wednesday.

A panda skin was discovered in December along with 9.75 kilograms of meat, four bones and a gallbladder, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The launch failure of an unmanned Russian cargo spaceship has prompted the nation's space agency to delay both the landing of some of the International Space Station's crew and the launch of their successors, officials said Tuesday.

The chief of the Roscosmos space agency, Igor Komarov, said the April 28 launch mishap was caused by a leak of fuel tanks in the Soyuz rocket's third stage. Left in low orbit, the Progress cargo spaceship fell to Earth over the Pacific on May 8.

The largest ice shelf in the Antarctic peninsula is being thinned by warmer seas and air and could catastrophically break up, scientists said on Wednesday.

The loss of the Larsen C ice shelf could occur within a century but an earlier collapse cannot be ruled out, with major consequences for global sea levels, they said.

Growing sea ice surrounding Antarctica could prompt scientists to consider relocating research stations on the continent, according to the operations manager of the Australian Antarctic Division.

Rob Wooding said that resupplying Australia's Mawson Station -- the longest continuously operated outpost in Antarctica -- relied on access to a bay, a task increasingly complicated by sea ice blocking the way. 

A person's gut bacteria and the colony of microbes that live in the body and on the skin may serve as a unique identifier, much like a fingerprint, researchers said Monday.

The study led by Harvard University is the first to investigate just how identifiable people are based on their bacteria, which can vary substantially based on a person's age, diet, geographic location and overall health.

Two families of endangered monkeys were stolen from a zoo in central France over the weekend, the sanctuary's director told Agence France Presse late on Monday.

Rodolphe Delord said the thieves broke in to the zoo in Beauval on Saturday night, avoiding security cameras and patrols, and took seven golden lion tamarins and 10 silver marmosets.

With Gaza's supply of drinking water expected to dry up by 2020, a Palestinian engineer is pioneering a machine to make seawater potable for residents of the coastal territory.

Diaa Abu Assi, a 29-year-old father-of-two, has spent much of his spare time in the past 18 months developing the system, which he hopes will be instrumental in saving lives in the besieged enclave.

Wildlife experts welcomed Monday census figures showing India's population of endangered Asiatic lions has increased in the last five years in the western state of Gujarat.

Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel said officials counted 523 lions, up 27 percent from the last census conducted in 2010 in Gir sanctuary, the last habitat for the big cats globally. 

More than 20 whales were found dead and rotting along a rocky coast of southern Chile, maritime officials said Friday, as they tried to determine what killed them and when.

The whales, discovered beached north of the Gulf of Penas, measured about 10 meters (33 feet) long, according to officials with Chile's national fisheries service.