Astrophysicists have witnessed the rare event of a black hole awakening from its slumber to snack on a planet-sized object in a galaxy 47 million light years away, the University of Geneva said Tuesday.

The observation made using the European Space Agency's INTEGRAL satellite project, revealed a black hole that had been slumbering for years chomping on a giant, low-mass object that had come too close.

Japan says the work that goes on at the Institute of Cetacean Research is crucial for studying whale populations; critics counter it is a way to get around an international ban on commercial whaling.

The institute can be found in a nondescript white-brick office building in Tokyo's port district.

Almost unknown to the public, a constellation of satellite guardians is flying overhead, and all it takes is a phone call for them to intervene when a country is hit by a storm, earthquake, tsunami or flood.

Armed with cameras or ground radar, these Earth-observation satellites were sent into orbit for scientific and commercial missions.

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.