The 13th tropical depression of the Atlantic hurricane season formed far out in the ocean Monday and was posing no immediate threat to land.

The depression was located 1,350 miles northwest of the Cape Verde Islands on Monday afternoon and had maximum sustained winds of 35 mph, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. It was creeping northwest at 3 mph and was expected to continue in a northwesterly direction.

A huge Dutch super-trawler was Tuesday given the go-ahead to fish in Australian waters but with tough conditions to minimize by-catch such as dolphins, seals and sea lions.

The 9,500-tonne FV Margiris repelled Greenpeace protesters to dock at Port Lincoln in South Australia last Thursday for re-flagging as an Australian vessel before its proposed deployment to Tasmania for bait-fishing.

Peruvian authorities say wastewater laced with heavy metals from a major zinc mine has spilled into a tributary of the Amazon, contaminating at least six miles of the waterway.

Pasco regional mining environmental engineer Juan Escalante tells The Associated Press that an unknown quantity of toxic wastewater from the Atacocha mine escaped from a sedimentation well Wednesday into the Huallaga River. The mine is owned by the Brazilian company Votorantim.

U.S. scientists are to investigate what led 22 whales to beach themselves in Florida -- killing 17 of them -- one of three such incidents in North America over the weekend.

The dead whales will be "dispersed at different labs across Florida for necropsy," or animal autopsies, Blair Mase, regional stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

A new underwater explorer hit the seas this summer, armed with cameras, strobes and sonar and charged with being a protector of sorts to a half-billion dollar resource — the Atlantic scallop catch.

The stainless steel Seahorse, which gets its nickname from its s-shaped silhouette, traces its roots to a conversation a decade ago between a biologist and a fisherman who was seeking a better way to track the scallop population.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has fired the chief of a key state-run aerospace bureau following several launch failures, the Kremlin said Monday.

The head of the Khrunichev space center, Vladimir Nesterov, has been relieved of his duties, said a decree dated August 31 and published on the Kremlin website Monday.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced hope Friday the United States would act beyond its pledges on curbing emissions as she visited Pacific islands threatened by climate change.

Clinton, the first U.S. secretary of state to take part in the annual Pacific Islands Forum, pledged $25 million in new assistance to help the low-lying nations of the region plan and adapt to expected rising water levels.

Neil Armstrong was a humble hero who saw himself as a team player and never capitalized on his celebrity as the first man to walk on the moon, mourners said Friday outside a private service attended by fellow space pioneers, including his two crewmates on the historic Apollo 11 mission.

Hundreds of people attended a closed service for Armstrong Friday at a private club in suburban Cincinnati. A national memorial service has been scheduled for Sept. 12 in Washington, although no other details have been released on the service or burial plans for Armstrong. He died Saturday at age 82.

Workers have discovered hundreds of bones belonging to Ice Age animals, including mammoths, mastodons and glyptodonts, while digging to build a wastewater treatment plant north of Mexico City.

The bones could be between 10,000 and 12,000 years old and may include a human tooth from the late Pleistocene period, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said Thursday.

A controversial idea to brake global warming, first floated by the father of the hydrogen bomb, is affordable and technically feasible, but its environmental impact remains unknown, a trio of U.S. scientists say.

Sowing the stratosphere with particles to reflect the Sun and cool the planet is possible with current technology and would cost a fraction of the bill from climate change or reducing emissions by fossil fuels, they argue.