South Korea says it may scrap research whaling plans that have been widely criticized.

Fisheries official Kang Joon-suk said Wednesday that Seoul may drop the plans if it finds ways to study whales without killing them.

Scientists held a mock funeral march Tuesday marking the "death of evidence" in Canada, accusing the ruling Tories of muzzling government scientists to advance a political agenda that ignores research findings.

The procession of 200 scientists in lab coats lead by pallbearers carrying a coffin winded silently through downtown Ottawa's streets to Parliament, where a mock funeral service was held for scientific programs cut in recent budgets.

The death of a baby panda in Japan stopped regular television programming and brought a Tokyo zoo director to tears Wednesday, a week after its birth sent ripples of excitement across the nation.

Newscasts had dedicated a nightly segment to the male cub's daily activities since his birth on July 5, with retailers unveiling a host of panda-themed products in celebration.

Severe droughts, floods and heat waves rocked the world last year as greenhouse gas levels climbed, boosting the odds of some extreme weather events, international scientists said Tuesday.

The details are contained in the annual State of the Climate report, compiled by nearly 400 scientists from 48 countries and published in the peer-reviewed Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

More than 800 nuclear scientists and engineers went on strike on Monday, warning of "dire consequences" for Canada's nuclear industry after contract talks broke down with Candu Energy Inc.

No nuclear power plants will be shut down as a result of the labor strife, union spokeswoman Michelle Duncan told Agence France Presse.

It was a provocative finding: strange bacteria in a California lake that thrived on something completely unexpected — arsenic. What it suggested is that life, a very different kind of life, could possibly exist on some other planet.

The research, published by a leading scientific journal in 2010, led to overheated speculation about how life might exist elsewhere — and quickly some dissent about the original finding.

Naturally occurring underground pathways may increase the risk of well water pollution from fracking, a process used to release natural gas from the ground, U.S. scientists said on Monday.

While the latest study by Duke University researchers does not find evidence that methane found in some samples of drinking water was directly caused by fracking, it raises concern about the ease with which deep ground elements can infiltrate shallow wells.

The negligence of local authorities and a failure to learn from past disasters were a prime factor behind the flooding that claimed at least 171 lives in southern Russia, the press said on Monday.

With officials keen to blame freak rains for the disaster, both pro-government and opposition newspapers showed rare unanimity in saying the authorities had badly failed local inhabitants in the worst-hit town of Krymsk.

More than 85 percent of reefs in Asia's "Coral Triangle" are directly threatened by human activities such as coastal development, pollution, and overfishing, a new report warned Monday.

Launched at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Cairns, it said the threat was substantially more than the global average of 60 percent and urged greater efforts to reduce destructive fishing and run-off from land.

A nuclear reactor in western Japan began full operations Monday, the first restart since the country shut down its atomic stations in the wake of last year's crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO), operator of the Oi power plant in the nation's industrial heartland, said its Unit No. 3 had come back to full capacity early Monday after the reactor was switched on earlier this month.