Sea turtles can get accidentally caught and killed in fishing operations, and new research out Monday seeks to map this phenomenon for the first time in a bid to save the endangered creatures.

The study in the journal Ecosphere said sea turtles in the East Pacific, North Atlantic, Southwest Atlantic and Mediterranean face the highest bycatch mortality rates.

The United States has criticized "unnecessary" European Union rules against genetically modified U.S. crop imports as it prepares to enter free-trade talks with the EU.

EU restrictions notably have resulted in delays in the approval of new GM traits "despite positive assessments by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)," the U.S. Trade Representative's office said in a report on reducing trade sanitary barriers.

Omar Razzouki gazes intently at the wooden box, marveling at what might be the solution to the perennial water woes that he and other nomads like him across the Sahara desert face daily.

More than 330 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, or around 40 percent of the population, do not have access to clean drinking water, according to a report published to mark world water day by British NGO WaterAid.

Mountains of hazardous waste left from China's huge phosphate fertiliser industry are polluting nearby communities and waters, the environmental group Greenpeace said in a report on Tuesday.

China, the world's top maker of the material, has seen production more than double over the past decade to 20 million tons last year, leaving 300 million tons of a byproduct called phosphogypsum that can contain harmful substances.

Pattycake, a gentle giant of a gorilla who was born in New York's Central Park Zoo 40 years ago, has died, city officials said Monday.

The gorilla, the first born in the Big Apple, lived beyond the average 37-year life span of the big primates in captivity, said the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages city's zoos.

Indonesian authorities have seized nearly 700 endangered pig-nosed turtles at the main airport serving the capital Jakarta, an official said Monday.

The turtles, which were less than a month old, had been transported from the easternmost province of Papua to Soekarno-Hatta airport on a local carrier but their final destination was unknown, said quarantine official Teguh Samudro.

A Greenpeace activist in a polar bear suit floated along the Moscow River past the Kremlin on Monday morning before being briefly detained in a stunt by the environmental group to protest against energy exploration in Russia's Arctic waters.

The activist in a furry white suit stood on a white air cushion designed to look like an ice floe with signs reading "Help!" and "Arctic not for Sale" before a river patrol came out in a motorboat and bundled the activist inside.

Land within the Arctic circle is likely to experience explosive "greening" in the next few decades as grass, shrubs and trees thrive in soil stripped of ice and permafrost by global warming, a study said on Sunday.

Wooded areas in the Arctic could increase by as much as 52 percent by the 2050s as the so-called tree line -- the maximum latitude at which trees can grow -- shifts hundreds of kilometers (miles) north, according to computer simulations published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

British police said Saturday they have stepped up security around wildlife parks after conservationists warned their critically-endangered black rhino were being targeted by poachers.

The Aspinall Foundation, a wildlife charity which runs two animal parks in Kent in southeastern England, has also appealed for volunteers to help keep watch for any suspicious activity.

Salvage teams on Saturday removed the last piece of a U.S. Navy ship that was stuck on a UNESCO World Heritage-listed coral reef in the Philippines for more than 10 weeks, the coast guard said.

The stern of the USS Guardian was lifted off the Tubbataha Reef after the 68-meter (223-foot) vessel was sliced into portions for easier removal, Philippine coast guard spokeswoman Lieutenant Greanata Jude said.