The vicious fight for survival and power among disparate kingdoms and clans may have led some ancient people to evolve facial traits more quickly than others, a study said Thursday.

New research on 17 skulls from a collection of 430,000-year-old remains found at the base of an underground shaft in Spain suggests that big jaws were the first prominent feature of these pre-Neandertals.

Agriculture watchdogs in Brazil fear foreigners arriving for the World Cup could bring up to 350 new plant parasites into the country.

American tourists pose the biggest threat, since the United States has 225 agricultural parasites that do not currently exist in Brazil, said the National Plant Defense Association (Andef), an agro-industry umbrella group.

Australia Thursday called a decision by UNESCO to defer listing the Great Barrier Reef as in danger "a win for logic", but environmentalists said it was a final warning.

The U.N. cultural agency on Wednesday said the reef could be put on a list of endangered World Heritage Sites if more was not done to protect it.

Fijian leader Voreqe Bainimarama accused the global community Thursday of abandoning Pacific island nations to "sink below the waves" instead of tackling climate change, singling out "selfish" Australia for criticism.

Opening a regional summit, he said there was "collective disappointment and dismay" in the Pacific at the failure to address climate change, which scientists blame for rising seas that threaten many low-lying island nations.

An American and a Japanese immunologist were Thursday named joint recipients of the Tang Prize, touted as Asia's version of the Nobels, for their contributions in the fight against cancer.

James P. Allison of the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University beat out some 100 nominees from around the world to take the inaugural prize in the category of biopharmaceutical sciences. 

Scientists Wednesday announced an advance in the quest to solve the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, saying they had found a chink in the armor of bacteria cells.

A resilient class of germs called Gram-negative bacteria have an impermeable lipid-based outer membrane that defends the cell against the human immune system as well as antibiotics.

Four former heads of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who served under Republican presidents urged lawmakers Wednesday to stop bickering over whether climate change is real and start finding solutions.

Global warming is an increasingly polarizing issue in American politics, with most Republicans questioning the science behind it and most Democrats calling for stricter pollution limits.

Antarctic scientists warned Wednesday that a surge in tourists visiting the frozen continent was threatening its fragile environment and called for better protection.

Tourist numbers have exploded from less than 5,000 in 1990 to about 40,000 a year, according to industry figures, and most people go to the fragmented ice-free areas that make up less than one percent of Antarctica.

U.N. cultural agency UNESCO on Wednesday warned Australia that the Great Barrier Reef could be put on a list of endangered World Heritage Sites if more is not done to protect it.

UNESCO's annual World Heritage Committee gathering, which takes place this year in Doha, called on Australia to submit a report on its actions by February 1, 2015 or face the possibility of the reef being put on the "in danger" list.

The United States Tuesday unveiled "historic" steps to combat illegal fishing and proposed plans to create the world's largest marine sanctuary in a bid to help save the world's besieged oceans.

"We all know how fragile our planet can be," Obama said opening the second day of a landmark conference dubbed "Our Ocean" urging everyone to "redouble our efforts."