International

"Three Australian environmental activists were detained on board a Japanese whaling ship on Sunday after boarding in protest at Japan's annual whale cull in the Antarctic, anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd said.

The three activists from Forest Rescue, an Australian group specializing in direct action to prevent logging, boarded the ship early on Sunday with assistance from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Sea Shepherd said in a statement.

"After the March 11 tsunami slammed into the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and wrecked three reactors, many people expected the nation's cutting-edge robotic technologies to come to the rescue.

That, however, turned out to be wishful thinking, and the public was left wondering why Japanese robots, such as Honda Motor Co.'s Asimo humanoid, weren't sent to the power plant to assist firefighters and workers trying to bring the crippled reactors under control.

"A heap of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis. Instead, the pile ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect in colony collapse disorder -- a mysterious condition that for several years has been causing declines in U.S. honeybee populations, which are needed to pollinate many important crops."

"The World Health Organization issued a stern warning on Friday to scientists who have engineered a highly pathogenic form of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying their work carries significant risks and must be tightly controlled."

"The United Nations health body said it was 'deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences' of work by two leading flu research teams who this month said they had found ways to make H5N1 into a easily transmissable form capable of causing lethal human pandemics."

"The disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and the threat of radioactive fallout changed the lives of many people, including Mizuho Nakayama and other mothers of young children whose primary goal suddenly became that of keeping their kids out of harm's way."

"An Ecuadorean appeals court on Tuesday upheld a ruling that Chevron Corp should pay $18 billion in damages to plaintiffs who accused the U.S. oil giant of polluting the Amazon jungle and damaging their health."

A British police investigation and the release of new e-mails are prompting pointed speculation about who hacked, stole, and leaked private emails from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia.

"Climate change dropped even further from the world's headlines and newscasts last year. Weird weather, Australia's carbon tax and Solyndra fracas weren't enough to stem a decline that started in 2009."

"Efforts by developed countries to redistribute promised funds to help poorer parts of the world avoid environmental disasters have been described as 'dismal' by the foreign minister of Bangladesh."

"Hardline whaling opponents attempting to stop Japan's annual whale hunt in the Antarctic said Sunday they had intercepted and photographed its whaling fleet using pilotless drone aircraft.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said it located the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru off Australia's western coast Saturday using the drones, the first time this season it has made contact with the whalers.

However, other Japanese ships shielded the vessel "to allow it to escape," Sea Shepherd said in a statement.