An Australian farmer who lost his organic produce licence has taken his neighbor to court over contamination from his genetically modified canola crop in a closely-watched test case.

Steve Marsh's case against his neighbor Michael Baxter began in Western Australia's Supreme Court on Monday, seeking damages and a permanent injunction to protect his farm from future contamination.

Something wiped out nearly all life on Earth more than 250 million years ago, and whatever unleashed this mass die-off acted much faster than previously thought, scientists said Monday.

Based on an analysis of rocks in China, the end-Permian extinction occurred over the course of 60,000 years, give or take 48,000, researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In a London basement, cutting-edge technology is being used to make a computerised Sandra Bullock climb into her rocket. But the team who put her there in "Gravity" have spent the morning working with more basic tools of the trade -- syrup, cheese and chocolate.

"We're trying to create a melting flesh effect for the new Tom Cruise movie," said Richard Graham, visual effects project manager at Framestore, the British company that has helped "Gravity" collect 10 Oscar nominations.

Australian astronomers on Sunday said they had found a star 13.6 billion years old, making it the most ancient star ever seen.

The star was formed just a couple of hundred million years after the Big Bang that brought the Universe into being, they believe.

China's fourth Antarctic research station -- the flying saucer-shaped Taishan -- has officially opened, in another step for the country's exploration ambitions in both earth and space.

The station, named for one of China's five sacred mountains, sits at an altitude of 2,600 meters (8,530 feet) between China's Zhongshan and Kunlun stations, according to the State Oceanic Administration (SOA).

An unprecedented spike in Pacific trade winds has seen global warming slow significantly in the past 12 years but the effect is only temporary and temperatures will surge, a study found Monday.

The Australian-led report, published in the latest edition of Nature Climate Change, said a dramatic acceleration in equatorial trade winds blowing from the Americas to the West Pacific had boosted circulation of the Pacific Ocean.

A polar bear said to be depressed in Argentina will not move to Canada, after veterinary experts said the trip would be too dangerous to his health.

The fate of Arturo the bear, 29 years old and weighing in at 400 kilograms (900 pounds), has for months been the subject of controversy, as Greenpeace and zoo visitors questioned the animal's living conditions at the Mendoza site.

It was April 1956, and the No. 1 song was Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel." At the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, scientist Dean Bumpus was busy releasing glass bottles into the Atlantic Ocean as part of his work to track currents.

Nearly 58 years later, a biologist studying grey seals off Nova Scotia found one of the bottles in a pile of debris on a beach.

Footprints left by ancient humans 800,000 years ago have been found in Britain, the earliest evidence of such markings outside Africa, scientists said Friday.

Researchers discovered the footprints, which were left by both adults and children, in ancient estuary mud at Happisburgh in Norfolk, eastern England.

After weeks of rain and wind in England, miserable penguins at a marine center are being fed anti-depressants to cheer them up.

The 12 Humboldt penguins at the Sealife Center in Scarborough, northeast England, were showing signs of stress as they shivered through one of the wettest winters on record.