Environmental campaigners WWF and oil exploration firm Soco International announced on Wednesday that the British firm had agreed to halt its hunt for oil in part of Africa's oldest national park.

In a joint statement, they said the WWF had in turn pledged not to pursue a complaint against Soco which it had filed with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

NASA is getting ready to launch a "flying saucer" into Earth's atmosphere to test technology that could be used to land on Mars.

For decades, NASA has depended on the same parachute design to slow spacecraft after they enter the Martian atmosphere. But it needs a larger and stronger parachute if it wants to land heavier objects and astronauts.

Australia's controversial shark cull could snare more than 900 animals over the next three years, a government review found, angering critics who said Tuesday most were caught needlessly.

Western Australia state has applied to national authorities to extend the policy designed to protect swimmers, under which sharks are captured using bait, and then killed if they are a threatening size.

Covering icy roads with salt can save the lives of human drivers, but U.S. researchers said Monday the practice may be cutting butterfly lives short.

Sodium chloride, the cheapest salt, is the most common used to melt ice and snow on slippery winter roads. 

The aerospace industry must embrace competition from technology companies such as Google and SpaceX which are already having a revolutionary impact on the sector, the head of the Airbus Group told Agence France Presse in an interview.

Describing the scale and speed of innovation in Silicon Valley as both "frightening and fascinating," Tom Enders said the increasing digitalisation of the economy was having a profound impact on his company's business.

Japan's prime minister told parliament Monday he would boost his efforts toward restarting commercial whaling, despite a top UN court's order that Tokyo must stop killing whales in the Antarctic.

Shinzo Abe's comments put him firmly on a collision course with anti-whaling groups, who had hoped the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) would herald the beginning of the end for the mammal hunt.

Before Houston and its suburbs were built, a dense forest naturally purified the coastal air along a stretch of the Texas Gulf Coast that grew thick with pecan, ash, live oak and hackberry trees.

It was the kind of pristine woodland that was mostly wiped out by settlers in their rush to clear land and build communities. Now one of the nation's largest chemical companies and one of its oldest conservation groups have forged an unlikely partnership that seeks to recreate some of that forest to curb pollution.

The skeletal remains of what are believed to be Japanese soldiers have been exposed on a remote Pacific island where waves have eroded the sea shore, a Japanese government official said Monday.

The bodies of around 20 men have emerged from the earth at a small coastal cemetery because of the action of the ocean on the Marshall Islands, a place scientists have long warned is vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by climate change.

The White House said Friday proposed US action against climate change would save thousands of lives by reducing asthma, heat-related illnesses and other health hazards.

Less than a week after President Barack Obama laid out his most ambitious moves yet to reduce carbon emissions blamed for climate change, his administration spelled out what it said was a public health argument for taking action.

The clock is ticking for countries to lay the foundations of a 2015 deal to tackle dangerous climate change, ministers warned in Bonn on Friday.

A special U.N. summit in September, followed by a round of talks in Lima in December, must lay the first bricks of a highly complex accord due to be sealed in Paris in December 2015, they said.