Australia's most powerful computer was unveiled Wednesday, in a boost for climate scientists who need to crunch vast amounts of data to make forecasts and pinpoint extreme weather, officials said.

The Australian National University in Canberra has named the supercomputer Raijin after the Japanese god of thunder, lightning and storms.

Indonesia and India on Tuesday were named as the world's biggest catchers of sharks in an EU-backed probe into implementing a new pact to protect seven threatened species of sharks and rays.

Indonesia and India account for more than a fifth of global shark catches, according to the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.

Scientists are coming closer to understanding the evolutionary reason behind monogamy, with two new studies out Monday exploring different advantages of the practice that pairs mates for the long haul.

A leading theory had been that men stuck around to help raise children -- especially ones, as among humans, who take a long time, and a great deal of energy to rear to adulthood.

Nepal's number of Royal Bengal tigers in the wild has soared 64 percent to 198 in just four years, according to a government survey released Monday.

Experts attributed the rise to a crackdown on poaching as the government vowed to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2022.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Monday assured Malaysia that European rules on declaring product ingredients would not "discriminate" against palm oil, the target of environmentalists over its ecological impact.

Malaysia is second only to Indonesia in the production of palm oil, which is blamed for the destruction of huge swathes of rainforest to make way for vast plantations of the palm trees from which the edible oil is derived.

Thai navy personnel battled Monday to clean up a beach on a popular tourist island after oil from a pipeline leak washed up in a national park.

Roughly 50,000 liters of crude oil gushed into the sea on Saturday about 20 kilometers (12 miles) off the coast of the eastern province of Rayong, operator PTT Global Chemical said.

Earthquakes can rip open sub-sea pockets of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, according to a study by German and Swiss scientists published on Sunday.

Quake-caused methane should be added to the list of heat-trapping carbon emissions that affect the world's climate system, although the scale of this contribution remains unclear, they said.

Sixteen protesters were arrested on Friday as British police broke up a blockade against exploratory drilling by a fracking company in southern England.

Campaigners demonstrated for a second day against planned test drilling by British firm Cuadrilla, which specializes in hydraulic fracturing for shale gas, known as "fracking".

In a desperate bid to preserve a critically endangered species, a U.S. zoo is taking the controversial step of trying to mate brother and sister captive Sumatran rhinoceroses.

The coupling of six-year-old Harapan and his older sister Suci could take place as early as August at the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio, animal keepers say.

An odd underwater ballet has been unfolding in the Mediterranean port of Toulon these past few days.

Under the scrutiny of their masters, whose eyes are glued to computer screens, the world's first fleet of "marine drones" is being put through its paces.