An inquiry has found that two members of the board which manages Australia's Great Barrier Reef have no conflict of interest despite links to the resources sector, Environment Minister Greg Hunt said Monday.

Hunt in October ordered an independent inquiry into claims that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) had relaxed its stance on industrial development because of ties to the coal and gas industry.

Dutch scientists have developed the world's smallest autonomous flapping drone, a dragonfly-like beast with 3-D vision that could revolutionize our experience of everything from pop concerts to farming.

"This is the DelFly Explorer, the world's smallest drone with flapping wings that's able to fly around by itself and avoid obstacles," its proud developer Guido de Croon of the Delft Technical University told Agence France Presse.

Volcanoes spewing Sun-reflecting particles into the atmosphere have partly offset the effects of Man's carbon emissions over a 15-year period that has become a global-warming battleground, researchers said Sunday.

A so-called hiatus in warming since 1998 has pitched climate skeptics against mainstream scientists.

A microscopic grain of Earth's oldest known mineral has been dated to 4.4 billion years ago, shedding light on our planet's infancy and how it came to harbor life, researchers said Sunday.

The finding proves that Earth remained a fiery ball covered in a magma ocean for a shorter period of time after its creation than previously thought.

Dangerous smog which has blighted swathes of northern China in recent days has prompted a spike in air purifier sales, local media reported Monday, as pollution continued to shroud Beijing.

China's National Meteorological Center issued a "yellow" smog alert for much of the country's north on Monday, the fifth consecutive day of heavy pollution which has slashed visibility and seen pollution reach hazardous levels.

The smokestacks of Kremikovtzi steel mill on Sofia's outskirts may have shut down years ago, but ancient cars ensure that Bulgaria's capital is still the most polluted in Europe.

When the steel plant went bankrupt in 2008, it did little to improve the thick smog that still hangs over Sofia.

Nigeria's biggest city Lagos is home to some 20 million people and produces a staggering 10,000 tonnes of waste every day, a lot of which piles up on the busy streets or floats in open sewers.

Currently, an estimated 40 percent of the megacity's waste is collected and taken to massive rubbish dumps, where scavengers pick through it for scrap and salvage to sell.

A training exercise designed to showcase the government's ability to recover a space capsule at sea was scrubbed after NASA ran into trouble off the Southern California coast, the space agency said Friday.

Crews had difficulty tying down a mock-up of the Orion capsule aboard an amphibious warship off the shores of San Diego.

Google, environmentalists and governments on Thursday unveiled a state-of-the-art database to track deforestation, hoping to ramp up enforcement of a major culprit behind climate change.

The website, www.globalforestwatch.org, will show tree loss around the world in high resolution and with frequent updates. The data -- aimed both at policymakers and companies buying from forest areas -- will be available for free and not require much technical skill to use.

Indonesia is now the world's largest sanctuary for manta rays, after officials were persuaded by evidence that the gentle giants known for delighting tourists are worth more alive than dead.

The government on Friday announced that manta rays within the archipelago's 5.8 million square kilometers (2.2 million square miles) of ocean will be protected from fishing and export. It will take time and cooperation at multiple levels to enforce the ban on poaching in the biggest global shark and ray fishery.