Surging air pollution from China and other fast-growing Asian economies has intensified winter cyclones in the northwest Pacific, scientists said Tuesday.

Winter cyclones in latitudes including northwestern China, Korea and Japan have packed stronger winds and more rain as a result of rising levels of particulate pollution, they said.

Scientists whose Antarctic expedition became trapped in sea ice finally returned to dry land Wednesday, apologizing for the disruption and facing questions over who will pay for the international rescue mission.

The scientists were among the 52 passengers plucked by helicopter from their stranded Russian ship, the Akademik Shokalskiy, on January 2 after Chinese and Australian icebreakers failed to cut through the ice to rescue them.

The US ambassador to Japan should visit Taiji to see the "humane" killing methods used in the dolphin hunt, a local fisheries official said Tuesday, days after Caroline Kennedy tweeted her disapproval of the slaughter.

His comments came as campaigners watching the hunt said the butchery was under way, adding that the waters of the cove were red with the dolphins' blood.

Waking up after almost three years of hibernation, a comet-chasing spacecraft sent its first signal back to Earth on Monday, prompting cheers from scientists who hope to use it to land the first space lander onto a comet.

The European Space Agency received the all-clear message from its Rosetta spacecraft at 7:18 p.m. (1818 GMT; 1:18 p.m. EST) — a message that had to travel some 800 million kilometers (500 million miles).

Astronomers said Sunday they had for the first time seen the gas strands theorized to hold the universe together in a "cosmic web".

They had used the intense radiation generated by a quasar -- a byproduct of a supermassive black hole -- acting as a type of cosmic flashlight to illuminate part of the vast filament network.

Conservationists have joined forces with a company working on one of the world?s largest oil and gas projects to help limit the impact of seismic surveys on endangered whales.

A group working to save the critically endangered western grey whales said Monday that it and the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company had drawn up stringent guidelines for carrying out surveys of the ocean floor in a way that would cause the least damage to the sound-sensitive mammals.

Scientists at the European Space Agency are expecting an important call.

Their comet-chasing probe Rosetta is due to wake from an almost three-year hibernation at 11 a.m. Monday (1000 GMT; 5 a.m. EST) and phone home to say all is well.

Europe will expand its space presence this year through missions with a more practical application for Earthlings -- notably the Galileo constellation of navigation satellites, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Friday.

Six Galileo satellites should be launched this year, the 50th anniversary of Europe's space exploration program, ESA Director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain told journalists in Paris.

More than 1,000 rhinos were poached in South Africa last year, the government said Friday, as strong demand from Asia fueled a 50 percent jump in the illegal slaughter from 2012.

"The total number of rhino poached in South Africa during 2013 increased to 1,004," the environment ministry said in a statement.

A team of archaeologists said Friday they may have found one of the bones of King Alfred the Great, who fought off the Vikings and laid the foundations for the English nation.

Tests showed that a pelvic bone found in a box in a museum in Winchester, southern England, probably belongs to the ninth-century monarch or his son King Edward the Elder, they said.