International

"LOS ANGELES -- Eight U.S. and German automakers have agreed to utilize a fast-charging technology that recharges EV batteries in just 15 to 20 minutes. Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche and Volkswagen have agreed to support a harmonized single-port fast charging approach - called DC Fast Charging with a Combined Charging System - for use on electric vehicles in Europe and the United States."

"It’s the kind of scenario that might evolve in Hollywood: A college professor detects drug-resistance genes collecting in local wetlands, where they survive for weeks and are spread far and wide by seabirds.

But the discovery of extra-hardy DNA flourishing on the edge of San Diego isn’t science fiction. It’s the result of research by David Cummings, a microbiologist at Point Loma Nazarene University.

"Soccer balls, motorcycles and a million other reminders of the massive tsunami in Japan a year ago are appearing along Alaska's coastlines."

"Greenland's glaciers are hemorrhaging ice at an increasingly faster rate but not at the breakneck pace that scientists once feared, a new study says."

"Japan shuts down its last working nuclear power reactor this weekend just over a year after a tsunami scarred the nation and if it survives the summer without major electricity shortages, producers fear the plants will stay offline for good."

"Plants are flowering faster than scientists predicted in response to climate change, research in the United States showed on Wednesday, which could have devastating knock-on effects for food chains and ecosystems. Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world, changing some breeding, migration and feeding patterns, scientists say."

"The results, showing an engineered flu strain can spread easily between ferrets, derive from a controversial study that stirred debate over fears of a bioterrorism threat."

"Polar bears are capable of swimming vast distances, a potential survival skill needed in an Arctic environment where summer sea ice is vanishing, a study led by the U.S. Geological Survey showed on Tuesday."

"Despite investigations by four special committees, key questions remain about the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl."

"Some of the main proposals in a draft text for negotiation at a U.N. sustainable development conference next month are being watered down at informal talks in New York, observers said on Tuesday, heightening fears the summit will fail to deliver."