Mountains of hazardous waste left from China's huge phosphate fertiliser industry are polluting nearby communities and waters, the environmental group Greenpeace said in a report on Tuesday.

China, the world's top maker of the material, has seen production more than double over the past decade to 20 million tons last year, leaving 300 million tons of a byproduct called phosphogypsum that can contain harmful substances.

Pattycake, a gentle giant of a gorilla who was born in New York's Central Park Zoo 40 years ago, has died, city officials said Monday.

The gorilla, the first born in the Big Apple, lived beyond the average 37-year life span of the big primates in captivity, said the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages city's zoos.

Indonesian authorities have seized nearly 700 endangered pig-nosed turtles at the main airport serving the capital Jakarta, an official said Monday.

The turtles, which were less than a month old, had been transported from the easternmost province of Papua to Soekarno-Hatta airport on a local carrier but their final destination was unknown, said quarantine official Teguh Samudro.

A Greenpeace activist in a polar bear suit floated along the Moscow River past the Kremlin on Monday morning before being briefly detained in a stunt by the environmental group to protest against energy exploration in Russia's Arctic waters.

The activist in a furry white suit stood on a white air cushion designed to look like an ice floe with signs reading "Help!" and "Arctic not for Sale" before a river patrol came out in a motorboat and bundled the activist inside.

Land within the Arctic circle is likely to experience explosive "greening" in the next few decades as grass, shrubs and trees thrive in soil stripped of ice and permafrost by global warming, a study said on Sunday.

Wooded areas in the Arctic could increase by as much as 52 percent by the 2050s as the so-called tree line -- the maximum latitude at which trees can grow -- shifts hundreds of kilometers (miles) north, according to computer simulations published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

British police said Saturday they have stepped up security around wildlife parks after conservationists warned their critically-endangered black rhino were being targeted by poachers.

The Aspinall Foundation, a wildlife charity which runs two animal parks in Kent in southeastern England, has also appealed for volunteers to help keep watch for any suspicious activity.

Salvage teams on Saturday removed the last piece of a U.S. Navy ship that was stuck on a UNESCO World Heritage-listed coral reef in the Philippines for more than 10 weeks, the coast guard said.

The stern of the USS Guardian was lifted off the Tubbataha Reef after the 68-meter (223-foot) vessel was sliced into portions for easier removal, Philippine coast guard spokeswoman Lieutenant Greanata Jude said.

French and South African biologists will dive to deep-sea caves in the Indian Ocean next month in a bid to locate the coelacanth, the "living fossil" fish whose history predates the dinosaurs, France's National Museum of Natural History said on Friday.

The "Gombessa" expedition, named after a local term for the coelacanth, will run from April 5 to May 15, exploring locations in the Jesser Canyon, 120 meters (390 feet) below the waters of Sodwana Bay, where the strange fish is believed to live.

Canadian researchers have developed a ground-breaking method which may ultimately enable excess energy created by wind turbines and solar panels to be stored for later use.

Two researchers at the University of Calgary report in the journal Science that they have invented a relatively inexpensive way of using rust to act as a catalyst for capturing energy through the electrolysis of water.

China is to build two extra research stations in Antarctica, where it currently has three facilities, the State Oceanic Administration confirmed on Friday.

A summer base, to be used between December and March, will be built between two of its existing stations -- Kunlun and Zhongshan -- on the frozen continent, the official Xinhua news agency said.