A parasite that is found in cats and can cause brain disease, blindness and miscarriage in people has been found for the first time in Arctic beluga whales, scientists said Thursday.

Pregnant women are often warned to avoid changing kitty litter in order to stay clear of the parasite, Toxoplasma gondii.

A new genetically modified corn, U.S. firm Pioneer's TC1507, won EU approval in controversial fashion Tuesday after a large majority of member states failed to block it.

A meeting of European Affairs ministers from the 28-member bloc could not establish a definitive position either way, Greek chairman Evangelos Venizelos said, citing EU procedural rules.

China's troubled Jade Rabbit lunar rover has died on the surface of the moon, state media reported Wednesday, in a major setback for the country's ambitious space program just weeks after its much-celebrated soft landing.

The country's first moon rover "could not be restored to full function on Monday as expected", the state-run China News Service said in a brief report, after the landmark mission suffered a mechanical malfunction last month.

A windy stretch of the Mojave Desert once roamed by tortoises and coyotes has been transformed by hundreds of thousands of mirrors into the largest solar power plant of its type in the world, a milestone for a growing industry that is testing the balance between wilderness conservation and the pursuit of green energy across the West.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles (13 sq. kilometers) of federal land near the California-Nevada border, formally opens Thursday after years of regulatory and legal tangles ranging from relocating protected tortoises to assessing the impact on Mojave milkweed and other plants.

British scientists on Tuesday announced plans to create the complete genome sequence of infamous British king Richard III after his remains were found under a car park in 2012.

Geneticist Turi King will lead the £100,000 project ($164,000, 120,000 euros) to produce the first genome sequence from ancient DNA for a named historical figure, the project's co-funders the Wellcome Trust and the Leverhulme Trust said in a statement.

In the dead of the bone-chilling Lithuanian winter, a hunter cocks his gun and squints as he takes aim at a wild boar foraging for food 30 paces away.

A sharp crack from the rifle and the prey, a pregnant female, collapses as blood trickles onto the snow.

A pod of nine killer whales died on Wednesday in a rare mass stranding on the New Zealand coast, in a loss conservationists said was a major blow to the local orca population.

The pod, comprising eight adults and one juvenile, beached themselves at the remote Blue Cliffs Beach on the far south coast of the South Island, Department of Conservation spokesman Reuben Williams said.

A year ago on Saturday, inhabitants of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk looked skyward, some frozen in fear that a nuclear war had begun.

Overhead, an asteroid exploded in a ball of fire, sending debris plummeting to Earth in brilliant streaks.

The United States and France unveiled plans to collaborate on a new Mars mission, two years after NASA withdrew from a European partnership to send a probe and lander to the Red Planet.

The project aims to send an unmanned lander to study the deep interior of the dry, dusty planet that is Earth's neighbor, and will be called InSight, short for the Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Tuesday he wants Japan to apologize over a whaling ship entering Wellington's exclusive economic zone (EEZ), despite warnings for it to keep out.

The New Zealand foreign ministry has already hauled in the Japanese ambassador Yasuaki Nogawa for a dressing down over the incident last Friday, which it labelled "unhelpful, disrespectful and short-sighted".