A flotilla of hundreds of icebergs that split off Antarctic ice shelves is drifting toward New Zealand and could pose a risk to ships in the south Pacific Ocean, officials said Tuesday.

After nearly a week together, the crews of shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station said goodbye Tuesday and closed the hatches between them.

The world's largest atom smasher used its accelerator Tuesday to speed up proton beams for the first time as scientists moved ahead in efforts to learn more about the universe.

The United States should be ready to spell out its long-term vision for reducing carbon emissions over the next two decades, not just until 2020, the European Union said Tuesday.

A panda research center in northwestern China has been closed to visitors as a precaution to protect the endangered species from catching swine flu, state media reported on Tuesday.

The number of people worldwide infected with the virus that causes AIDS -- about 33 million -- has remained virtually unchanged for the last two years, United Nations experts said Tuesday.

The readings at this 2-mile-high station show a troubling upward curve as the world counts down to crucial climate talks: Global warming gases are building in the atmosphere at record levels from emissions that match scientists' worst-case scenarios.

Greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere reached record highs in 2008, with carbon dioxide levels increasing faster than previously, the U.N. weather agency said Monday.

Getting one of the roughly 11,500 permits granted each year to backpack overnight in the Grand Canyon has become so competitive and "unfair" that managers at the national park have decided to change the system.

Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated -- beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.

The creatures living in the depths of the ocean are as weird and outlandish as the creations in a Dr. Seuss book: tentacled transparent sea cucumbers, primitive "dumbos" that flap ear-like fins, and tubeworms that feed on oil deposits.

A leading climate change scientist whose private e-mails are included in thousands of documents that were stolen by hackers and posted online said Sunday the leaks may have been aimed at undermining next month's global climate summit in Denmark.

Sixty-five world leaders have said they will attend the Copenhagen climate summit in December, and several more have responded positively to invitations, Danish officials said Sunday.

An auction house says it is selling a rare first edition of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" found in a family's guest lavatory in southern England.

Vladimir Gapor is a plumber by trade, but now he's a scavenger, prying bits of scrap steel from the ruins of his old factory and selling them for a pittance.

Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online -- stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change.

Scientists are preparing the world's largest atom smasher to explore the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs.

The mother who gave up conjoined Bangladeshi newborn twins for adoption said Saturday she is overjoyed the toddlers have been successfully separated and wants them to grow up in Australia.

A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery.