Science - AFP

BEIJING (AFP) - China's third manned space flight, which will feature China's first attempted space walk, will blast off in late September, state media reported.

MIAMI (AFP) - Hurricane Ike lashed the Turks and Caicos Islands early Sunday and threatened to unleash its fury on the Bahamas, Cuba and the US Gulf Coast, as Tropical Storm Hanna continued to batter the US East Coast.

PARIS (AFP) - US scientists have unveiled the most complete genetic profile ever attempted of glioblastoma, a common and deadly form of the brain cancer that US Senator Edward Kennedy is battling.

PARIS (AFP) - European scientists were jubilant on Saturday after the pride of their space fleet, racing towards a rendezvous with a comet in 2014, enjoyed a close encounter with an asteroid likened to a "diamond in the sky."

PARIS (AFP) - A European robot freighter decoupled from the International Space Station (ISS), positioning itself for a fiery, suicide descent into Earth's atmosphere.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - More than 500 people were found dead in Haiti as international aid trickled to desperate residents who have not eaten in days since the latest in a battery of severe storms crushed the country, and yet another storm posed a grave threat.

PORT MORESBY (AFP) - Armed police have removed four activists from a timber cargo ship on the South Pacific island of Papua New Guinea, ending a three-day protest against logging, environmentalists said Saturday.

LONDON (AFP) - British explorer Lewis Gordon Pugh declared Friday he had kayaked further to the top of the world than anyone else ever has, as his bid to reach the North Pole failed -- much to his delight.

MADRID (AFP) - The world must speed up the deployment of solar power as it has the potential to meet all the world's energy needs, the chairman of an industry gathering which wrapped up Friday in Spain said.

MIAMI (AFP) - Tropical Storm Hanna raced across the southeastern United States on Saturday, battering the coast with powerful waves, rain and wind as Florida and Cuba kept a wary eye on a dangerous hurricane.

MADRID (AFP) - Climate change will melt the 21 remaining glaciers in the Pyrenees mountains before 2050, a group of Spanish researchers said Friday.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia's chief climate advisor Friday urged a 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 but conceded this may not save the country's natural assets such as the Great Barrier Reef.

PARIS (AFP) - A European spacecraft racing through the asteroid belt skimmed past a 10-kilometre (six-mile) space rock on Friday to carry out its first scientific work in a decade-long trek into the Solar System, mission controllers said.

TOKYO (AFP) - The United Nations on Friday launched a bid to designate Iraq's famed marshlands, which were ravaged by Saddam Hussein, a World Heritage site after a four-year restoration project.

PARIS (AFP) - People who fear a powerful atom-smashing machine, due to start operations next Wednesday, will cause Earth to be gobbled up or reduced to grey goo can rest assured, according to a study released Friday.

JAKARTA (AFP) - A decision by Indonesian palm oil companies to reject a moratorium on land clearing is threatening to wipe out more than 8,000 orangutans in the next three years, activists said Thursday.

SEOUL (AFP) - Snuppy, the first cloned dog, has become a father after the world's first successful breeding involving only cloned canines, South Korean researchers said Thursday.

HONG KONG (AFP) - Hong Kong is considering banning fishing trawlers in its waters to save fish stocks, a report said Thursday. The drastic proposal comes as annual catches were estimated to be 30 percent above sustainable levels, the South China Morning Post said, citing a consultation paper from the Food and Health bureau.

MIAMI (AFP) - The latest devastating storm to lash the Americas swelled into a massive hurricane threatening to inflict more misery on Haiti, Cuba and the US Gulf Coast, as Tropical Storm Hanna battered the US east coast.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - Hundreds of people were found dead in Haiti as international aid trickled Saturday to desperate residents who have not eaten in days since the latest in a battery of storms crushed the country.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - International emergency aid was providing a tentative lifeline to hundreds of thousands of displaced Haitians without food or water who faced "catastrophic" conditions after a trio of fierce storms devastated the impoverished nation.

PARIS (AFP) - A European spacecraft was on course to skim past a rock in the asteroid belt on Friday, carrying out its first scientific work on a 10-year trek into deep space, mission controllers said.

PARIS (AFP) - Far from Earth, a robot spacecraft has been prodded from deep slumber to make a rare encounter with an asteroid, the intriguing orbital debris that could offer clues into the making of the Solar System.

MONTREAL (AFP) - Canadian, French and US astronomers have found a strange asteroid with an odd orbit which could help explain the origin of comets, the National Research Council of Canada reported Thursday.

PORT MORESBY (AFP) - Greenpeace said Thursday that its activists had boarded a logging ship in Papua New Guinea to stop it exporting timber to China, in a move labelled a smear campaign by the company involved.

DAKAR (AFP) - Sub-Saharan Africa is missing out on investments from industrialised countries to develop clean energy projects in the region, participants at Africa's first "carbon market" said Monday in Dakar.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Environmental and animal rights activists dressed as dolphins Wednesday staged a die-in in Washington to protest what they called the "horrific butchering" of thousands of dolphins by Japanese fishermen every year.

PARIS (AFP) - Global warming is likely to boost the power of the strongest tropical cyclones, a study released on Wednesday says.