Drivers hoping to slip the surly -- and traffic congested -- bonds of Earth moved a step closer to realizing their dream Monday, as a US firm said it had successfully tested a street-legal plane.

Massachusetts-based firm Terrafugia said their production prototype "Transition" car-plane had completed an eight-minute test flight, clearing the way for it to hit the market within a year.

Two Days for Britain’s Giant Pandas to Get Pregnant

The clock is ticking, and the heat is on. A giant male panda loaned to Britain by China has just 36 hours to make his move on his female companion or he'll have to wait another year.

Ash and charred bone, the earliest known evidence of controlled use of fire, reveal that human ancestors may have used fire a million years ago, a discovery that researchers say will shed light on this major turning point in human evolution.

Norwegian adventurer Jarle Andhoy, who headed an unauthorized expedition to Antarctica earlier this year, was intercepted off Chile upon his return from the icy continent, his spokesman said Monday.

"Armed soldiers are on board the boat," Rune Olsgaard told AFP in Oslo, adding: "Chilean authorities will decide how to proceed in this case this afternoon, Chilean time, at the earliest."

A Greenpeace ship sailed up to the exclusion zone surrounding a stricken North Sea platform on Monday to assess the danger presented by its week-long flammable gas leak, the Agence France Presse said Monday.

French energy giant Total has insisted the leak on its abandoned Elgin rig, 150 miles (240 kilometers) off Aberdeen in eastern Scotland, does not pose a significant threat to the environment.

The potential impact from an earthquake off Japan’s southern coast is very likely, Japan experts say, and estimates show that much of the country's Pacific shore could be inundated by a tsunami more than 34 meters (112 feet) high, the Agence Presse said Monday.

A government-commissioned panel of experts says a tsunami unleashed by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake in the Nankai trough, which runs east of Japan's main island of Honshu to the southern island of Kyushu, could top 34 meters. An earlier forecast in 2003 put the potential maximum height of such a tsunami at less than 20 meters (66 feet).

An explosion at a German chemical plant killed one person Saturday and left another injured, rescuers and industrial park administrators said.

The explosion of a tank at the Evonik Degussa plant in the western town of Marl sent black smoke billowing over the town, and residents were warned to stay indoors, with their windows and doors closed.

Millions of people are expected to switch off their lights for Earth Hour Saturday in a global effort to raise awareness about climate change that will even be monitored from space.

From Egypt's Tahrir Square to New York's Empire State Building, thousands of cities will turn off lights for 60 minutes from 8:30 p.m. local time, with switches flicked in around 150 countries and territories.

An Italian physicist at the head of a team that made a cautious but hugely controversial claim that neutrinos may travel faster than the speed of light resigned on Friday following calls for his dismissal.

Antonio Ereditato submitted his resignation before a vote on a motion by some members of his OPERA team that he be removed after tests this month contradicted the claim that the universe's speed limit had been broken.

Scientists are facing an uphill battle to warn the public about pressing issues due to dissenters in their ranks who intentionally sow uncertainty, says a U.S. historian.

These naysayers -- some of whom are paid by interest groups -- have helped undermine action on vital problems despite evidence of the need to respond, said Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California at San Diego.