A U.S. flag hangs from a home in a heavily damaged section of East New Orleans on November 21, 2005

Hurricanes with feminine names may kill three times as many victims because people do not perceive them as being as threatening as storms named after men, scientists said Monday.

A sun-powered plane made a successful test flight on Monday, clearing a vital hurdle towards its goal of a round-the-world trip next year, its pilot and mission chiefs said.

Solar Impulse 2 carried out a flight lasting two hours and 15 minutes, half an hour longer than scheduled, German test pilot Markus Scherdel said.

Astronomers have spotted the "Godzilla" of all Earths, a huge rocky planet orbiting a star 560 light years away that is changing scientists' understanding of the origins of the universe.

This new mega-Earth weighs 17 times as much as our planet, and was found by NASA's Kepler mission, experts said at a meeting in Boston of the American Astronomical Society.

The skies off the Hawaiian island of Kauai will be a stand-in for Mars as NASA prepares to launch a saucer-shaped vehicle in an experimental flight designed to land heavy loads on the red planet.

For decades, robotic landers and rovers have hitched a ride to Earth's planetary neighbor using the same parachute design. But NASA needs a bigger and stronger parachute if it wants to send astronauts there.

Like viewers worldwide, Fabien Cousteau was entranced by his famous grandfather's films about marine life and human exploration underwater. Now he's adding to his family's sea stories with a 31-day underwater expedition in the Florida Keys.

Cousteau dove Sunday to Aquarius Reef Base, a school bus-sized laboratory 60 feet (18 meters) below the ocean's surface, a few miles off Key Largo. He plans to spend more than a month living underwater with a five-person crew, making a documentary and leading science experiments on the nearby coral reef.

Japan will on Monday start constructing an underground ice wall at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, freezing the soil under broken reactors to slow the build-up of radioactive water, officials said.

The wall is intended to block groundwater from nearby hillsides that has been flowing under the plant and mixing with polluted water already there.

The U.S. government will propose a rule Monday requiring power plants to cut by 30 percent carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 based on 2005 levels, U.S. media reported Sunday.

The Wall Street Journal cited people briefed on the rule as saying the Environmental Protection Agency's draft measure was due to be completed within a year.

If Hollywood were to set a psychological thriller in the Amazon rainforest, the haunting Paricatuba Ruins would be the perfect backdrop.

Massive root structures poke through the foundations of the once-stately neo-classical edifice, across the Rio Negro from the jungle metropolis of Manaus, one of the cities set to host World Cup matches.

Before Apollo astronauts went to the moon, they went to Hawaii to train on the Big Island's lunar landscapes.

Now, decades-old photos are surfacing of astronauts scooping up Hawaii's soil and riding across volcanic fields in a "moon buggy" vehicle.

Norwegian coastguards on Friday removed a Greenpeace ship from a controversial Arctic drilling site where it was trying to prevent oil explorations, the environmentalist group said.

"We are appalled by Norway’s decision to end a peaceful and legal protest," Greenpeace activist Sune Scheller said in a statement.