The sleepy South African town of Carnarvon has more churches than ATMs, but science is breathing new life into the far-flung farming center.

The former 19th-century mission station is the closest town to a science and astronomy hub that is forming in the arid central Karoo region where the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) mega-telescope will be built.

Sally Ride, the first American woman to journey into space, died on Monday after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, her foundation announced. She was 61.

Ride first launched into space in 1983 aboard the Challenger shuttle, taking part in the seventh mission of U.S. space shuttle program.

Modern humans were likely a greater threat to the Neanderthals than major natural events like extreme cold weather or volcanoes, according to British-led research released on Monday.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was based on an analysis of volcanic ash that showed the largest known eruption in Europe came after traces of the Neanderthals had largely disappeared.

The sex sounds flies make can lead to a violent death -- luring predator bats to their love nests while their defenses are down, a report said Monday.

Researchers who studied a small community of flies and bats in a cowshed near Marburg, Germany, found that the insects' chances of becoming dinner were dramatically higher while copulating.

In the debate over natural gas drilling, the companies are often the ones accused of twisting the facts. But scientists say opponents sometimes mislead the public, too.

Critics of fracking often raise alarms about groundwater pollution, air pollution, and cancer risks, and there are still many uncertainties. But some of the claims have little — or nothing— to back them.

When a 100-pound shipment of lobsters arrived at Bill Sarro's seafood shop and restaurant last month, it contained a surprise — six orange crustaceans that have been said to be a 1-in-10-million oddity.

"My butcher was unloading them and said, 'Oh, my gosh, boss, they sent us cooked dead lobsters,'" said Sarro, owner of Fresh Catch Seafood in Mansfield, Mass. "He then picked one up and it crawled up his arm."

Taiwan is scheduled to take delivery next month of a powerful multiple-launch rocket system aimed at neutralizing former rival China's amphibious landing capabilities, local media reported Sunday.

The weapon, called Ray Ting 2000 or "Thunder 2000", will be put into service in August, said the Taipei-based Liberty Times, as the military plans to phase out the current rocket system introduced three decades ago.

A Japanese H-IIB rocket blasted off Saturday to deliver an unmanned supplies vessel to the International Space Station.

The rocket lifted off into an overcast sky from the southern island of Tanegashima on schedule at 11:06 am (0206 GMT), according to live images relayed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

For 15 years Aurelien Brule has lived in the Indonesian jungle, crusading against palm oil multinationals, loggers and corruption in his bid to save endangered gibbons from annihilation.

He admits that his is a losing battle. The primates are being pushed out of their natural habitat by loggers removing the equivalent of six football fields-worth of jungle "every minute" to make way for palm oil plantations.

Native American and Alaska Native leaders told of their villages being under water because of coastal erosion, droughts and more on Thursday during a Senate hearing intended to draw attention to how climate change is affecting tribal communities.

The environmental changes being seen in native communities are "a serious and growing issue and Congress needs to address them," Tex Hall, chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of New Town, N.D., said Wednesday.