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Gulls Feasting on whales in Argentine waters

It's a weird, lopsided fight if ever there was one: seagulls divebombing to attack and feed on the fat of 50-ton whales and their babies. And the birds are winning.

The battle, new in recent years, is playing out in the South Atlantic off the coast of Argentina's Patagonia region, and is not known to be happening in waters elsewhere in the world that are home to the mighty mammals.

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Obama Says U.S. Can Lead Climate Change Battle

U.S. President Barack Obama touted his new climate change proposal in his weekly address Saturday, calling for Americans to lead the charge against the warming environment.

"Those who already feel the effects of a changing climate don't have time to deny it -- they're busy dealing with it," said Obama in his pre-recorded address on radio and the Internet.

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India to Launch Satellite Navigation System

India will Monday launch the first stage of its domestic satellite navigation network which will eventually provide services both to civilians and the military and is similar to the U.S. Global Positioning System, officials said.

The first of seven satellites will be carried into space as part of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), just months after China inaugurated its own domestic satellite navigation system.

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Scientists Urge New Zealand to Save 'Sea Hobbit'

Marine scientists have called on New Zealand to immediately ban fishing in waters inhabited by the world's rarest dolphin, saying that losing just one more of the creatures will threaten the species' existence.

The Maui's dolphin is one of the world's smallest, with a maximum length of 1.7 meters (5.5 feet), prompting conservationists to call it "the hobbit of the sea".

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NASA Test Mars Rover Prototype in Chile

NASA scientists said Friday they were testing a prototype of a robot the U.S. space agency hopes to send to Mars in 2020 in Chile's Atacama desert.

NASA hopes to use this kind of rover to explore life-friendly sites found by Curiosity, the rover already searching for signs of life on Mars. It has been there since last August.

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Discovery Could Boost Internet Bandwidth

A new fiber optic technology could increase Internet bandwidth capacity by sending data along light beams that twist like a tornado rather than move in a straight line, scientists said Thursday.

The discovery comes as Internet data traffic is reaching its limit amid mounting demand for bandwidth by users of smartphones and Internet-enabled devices, creating problems for network providers.

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NASA Launches Satellite to Study Solar Material

The U.S. space agency launched a satellite late Thursday to unlock the secrets of the Sun's lower atmosphere.

NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph -- dubbed IRIS -- was launched at 0227 GMT aboard an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket off the California coast.

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Did Humans Learn to Throw 2 Million Years Ago?

Scientists say they've figured out when our human ancestors first started throwing with accuracy and fire power, as only people can: Nearly 2 million years ago.

That's what researchers conclude in a study released Wednesday by the journal Nature. There's plenty of skepticism about their conclusion. But the new paper contends that this throwing ability probably helped our ancient ancestor Homo erectus hunt, allowing him to toss weapons — probably rocks and sharpened wooden spears.

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Malaysia Pressures Indonesia over Haze Crisis

Malaysia on Thursday stepped up pressure on Indonesia to do more to stop outbreaks of smog after fires on Sumatra island sparked Southeast Asia's worst air pollution crisis for years.

Palls of smoke from slash-and-burn agricultural fires pushed haze levels to record highs in Singapore last week, shrouding the city in smog, and badly affected parts of Malaysia.

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On the Hoof: Ancient DNA Reveals Story of the Horse

Scientists on Wednesday said they had unravelled the DNA of a horse that lived some 700,000 years ago, a record-breaking feat in the young field of palaeo-genomics.

The ancient find indicates that all horses today, as well as donkeys and zebras, shared a common ancestor that lived some four million years ago, twice as early as thought.

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