NASA is counting down the seconds until its twin spacecraft bound for the moon make back-to-back arrivals over the New Year's weekend.

The washing machine-sized probes have been cruising independently toward their destination since launching in September aboard the same rocket on a mission to measure lunar gravity.

Scientists struggling to protect fish native to the U.S. Great Lakes from a greedy predator called the round goby are taking a page from the playbook of stores that pipe classical music through loudspeakers to chase away loitering teens.

Gobies hang around prime spawning areas and gobble up eggs laid by trout, whitefish and other species important to the region's commercial and sport fishing industries. Biologists plan to strike back by firing loud underwater cannons near some of the gobies' favorite haunts, hoping to drive them off long enough for the eggs to survive.

A new island has appeared off the west coast of Yemen following a volcanic eruption, NASA said Friday.

The U.S. space agency's Earth Observatory posted satellite photos showing a plume of white smoke rising from the ocean near the Zubair group of islands in the Red Sea on December 23.

A camera at a Chinese nature reserve has spied a wild panda eating meat.

Pandas spend most of their days eating bamboo.

Samoans go to bed Thursday and will wake up on Saturday in an historic time zone switch which the Pacific island state's prime minister says will take the country forward to a more prosperous future.

Samoa currently sits to the east of the International Date Line -- which runs through the middle of the Pacific -- meaning that it is 11 hours behind GMT and is one of the last places on Earth to see the dawn.

China plans to launch space labs and manned ships and prepare to build space stations over the next five years, according to a plan released Thursday that shows the country's space program is gathering momentum.

China has already said its eventual goals are to have a space station and put an astronaut on the moon. It has made methodical progress with its ambitious lunar and human spaceflight programs, but its latest five-year plan beginning next year signals an acceleration.

Large seizures of elephant tusks make this year the worst on record since ivory sales were banned in 1989, with recent estimates suggesting as many as 3,000 elephants were killed by poachers, experts said.

"2011 has truly been a horrible year for elephants," said Tom Milliken, elephant and rhino expert for the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, on Thursday.

Anti-whaling activists chasing the Japanese harpoon fleet suffered a major setback Thursday when the hull of one of their ships cracked in massive seas, forcing a second to divert to its rescue.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said the Brigitte Bardot's hull split when it was struck by a "rogue wave" as it tailed the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru in six meter (20-foot) swells some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) southwest of Australia.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is questioning the rash of cancer cases among Latin American leaders and asking if somehow the U.S. might have a way to induce the illness.

Chavez has long questioned whether the U.S. government could be plotting to oust him, but his latest remarks went far beyond any such theories.

The New Year's countdown to the moon has begun.

NASA said Wednesday that its twin spacecraft were on course to arrive back-to-back at the moon after a 3½-month journey.