Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga likened the impact of climate change on Pacific island nations to "a weapon of mass destruction" Friday, saying strong global leadership on the issue was needed.

Sopoaga said a U.N.-sponsored summit on climate change in New York next month was a chance to set the scene for real progress in the quest to seal a global pact on greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2015.

Antarctic minke whales engage in an underwater feeding frenzy, filling their huge mouths up to 100 times an hour as they gorge on prawn-like krill during the summer, new research showed Friday.

The Australian Antarctic Division said it was the first time that the feeding behaviour of the animals under the sea ice had been recorded, and the frenetic pace of the activity was unexpected.

A stash of buried bones in Brazil has allowed scientists to identify a new species of flying dinosaur that soared in the skies 66 to 100 million years ago, a study said Wednesday.

The remains of at least 47 individual flying reptiles were found in an old lake deposit on the outskirts of Cruzeiro do Oeste in the southern state of Parana.

India's top court on Wednesday accused the new Hindu nationalist government of failing to move on its promise to clean up the sewage-ridden, sacred river Ganges.

The Supreme Court urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to deliver a road map on its highly-publicized pledge to restore the Ganges, which is revered by Hindus and is believed to cleanse sins.

Dolphins often squeal when they get a fish treat, sounding much like happy children.

U.S. researchers said Wednesday they believe these calls are not just ways of signaling to others in the group that there is food around, but expressions of pure delight.

North Chile is at risk of a mega earthquake after a tremor in April released only some of the tension building along a high-risk fault zone since 1877, researchers said Wednesday.

Two studies published in the journal Nature said the 8.1-8.2 magnitude quake that shook the city of Iquique, killing six people and forcing a million to leave their homes, may not have been the anticipated Big One.

Europe turned a page in its space flight history on Tuesday when it delivered supplies to the International Space Station for the last time.

An automated cargo ship successfully docked with the ISS as scheduled in a precision manoeuvre broadcast live on the web.

Concerns about pollution and endangered whales in southern California have prompted six global shipping companies to try slower speeds in exchange for cash incentives, environmental groups said.

The companies agreed to slow down -- from typical speeds of 14-16 knots down to 12 knots or less -- in exchange for $2,500 each time they pass through the Santa Barbara Channel.

An Iranian-born mathematician has become the first woman to win a prestigious Fields Medal, widely viewed as the Nobel Prize of mathematics.

Maryam Mirzakhani, a Harvard-educated mathematician and professor at Stanford University in California, was one of four winners announced by the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) at its conference in Seoul on Wednesday.

Climate change remains the most serious threat to the Great Barrier Reef and the outlook for the natural wonder is "poor", an Australian government report has warned.

The World Heritage site on the north-east coast is "under pressure" and its capacity to recover could be weakening, said the report from the Great Barrier Marine Park Authority, released late Tuesday.