WELLINGTON (AFP) – Nearly 60 pilot whales have died after becoming stranded on a beach in New Zealand on Friday, conservation officials said. [Continue]

OTTAWA (AFP) – The European General Court on Thursday suspended a seal products ban on the eve of the regulation coming into force, an Inuit group announced. Restrictions on the marketing of seal products in European countries “is suspended,” said court documents provided by the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, one of several Inuit [Continue]

PORT SPAIN (AFP) – A leaking oil pipeline belonging to state-owned Petrotrin has covered more than 30 acres of farmland in Trinidad and Tobago with some 200 barrels of crude, the country’s energy minister said Thursday. “The leak developed on one of their (Petrotrin’s) trunk lines from its main refinery in [Continue]

WASHINGTON (AFP) – An international team of researchers using computer time lent to them by Google has found every way the popular Rubik’s Cube puzzle can be solved, and showed it can always be solved in 20 moves or less. The study is just the latest attempt by Rubik’s enthusiasts to figure out the secrets [Continue]

WARSAW (AFP) – Environmental group Greenpeace hoisted a huge banner with a heart across the facade of Poland’s environment ministry in Warsaw Wednesday, warning logging threatened Europe’s last first-growth forest. “We expect the minister to halt logging in the Bialowieza forest until new forest management plans are drawn [Continue]

JAKARTA (AFP) – Indonesia’s biggest palm oil producer said Tuesday it had been cleared of allegations made by environmental group Greenpeace that it had destroyed high conservation-value forests on Borneo. A report commissioned by SMART, part of the Singapore-listed Sinar Mas agri-business group, found that it was not to blame for [Continue]

MONTREAL (AFP) – A judge in Canada’s northern Nunavut province has blocked a series of joint German-Canadian Arctic experiments after Inuit residents said the tests would hurt sealife, government sources said. A territorial judge on Sunday granted a last-minute injunction that halts a major seismic program that was set to begin Monday [Continue]

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US officials urged further study of the damage to sea life wreaked by BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico, and warned that the energy giant would face a “large financial penalty.” White House energy chief Carol Browner declined to say if criminal charges could be brought, as the US Justice [Continue]