Japan, China and South Korea agreed Monday to continue cooperating in the fight against cross-border air pollution, despite strained relations between the neighbors because of territorial disputes.

The annual environmental meeting in Kitakyushu, southern Japan, on Sunday and Monday, came after acrid haze blanketing swathes of China earlier this year sparked health warnings in Japan as the smog spread across the ocean.

Alaska's Cleveland Volcano is undergoing a continuous low-level eruption following an explosion early Saturday morning, scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Satellites and cameras suggest low-level emissions of gas, steam and ash, scientists said, and satellites detected highly elevated surface temperatures at the summit. A faint plume of ash extended eastward below 15,000 feet (4,600 meters), but the Federal Aviation Administration said there were no flight restrictions as a result.

Millions of birds that stop at coastal wetlands during annual migrations could die as rising sea levels and land reclamation wipe out their feeding grounds, researchers warned Monday.

The study into the migratory habits of shorebirds predicted that a loss of 23 to 40 percent of their main feeding areas could lead to a 70 percent decline in their population.

Hundreds of people protested against a proposed chemical plant in southwest China on Saturday, state media said, while residents in another city accused authorities of preventing a similar protest.

More than 200 demonstrators gathered in the city of Kunming to protest plans for a factory which will produce paraxylene (PX), a toxic petrochemical used to make fabrics, China's official Xinhua news agency reported.

Australia insisted it was committed to protecting the Great Barrier Reef on Saturday after the U.N. warned that the natural wonder's world heritage status could be in downgraded in 2014.

UNESCO said little had been done to address concerns about rampant coastal development and water quality raised a year ago with the Australian government in a warning that its heritage status was at risk.

A Chinese fishing vessel that crashed into one of the Philippines' most famous reefs damaged almost 4,000 square meters of centuries-old coral, the marine park said on Saturday.

Some 3,902 square meters (42,000 square feet) of coral was destroyed after the boat became stranded in the Tubbataha marine park -- a UNESCO World Heritage-listed coral reef -- the park management said.

The first-ever manned airplane that can fly by day or night on solar power alone landed in the dark at a major southwestern U.S. airport, a live feed from the organizer's website showed early Saturday.

Solar Impulse, piloted by Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard, touched down at the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona at 0730 GMT after departing from California more than 18 hours earlier on the first leg of a cross-country journey.

The launch Saturday of Europe's lightweight rocket, Vega, from Kourou in French Guiana was put off until an unspecified date because of poor weather conditions at the space base, the European Space Agency said.

The rocket's first mission since its maiden flight in February last year was to have been webcast live.

U.S. scientists have devised tiny winged robots inspired by flies that could one day help pollinate crops or aid the search for survivors at collapse sites -- once they get off the leash, that is.

The prototypes by researchers at Harvard University weigh 80 milligrams and have managed short controlled flights by flapping their mechanical wings while still tethered to a tiny power cable, the journal Science said this week.

Mozambique's rhinoceros population was wiped out more than a century ago by big game hunters. Reconstituted several years ago, the beasts again are on the brink of vanishing from the country by poachers seeking their horns for sale in Asia.

A leading expert told The Associated Press that the last rhino in the southern African nation has been killed. The warden of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park — the only place where the horned behemoths lived in Mozambique — also says poachers have wiped out the rhinos. Mozambique's conservation director believes a few may remain.