EARTH

Abundant rains punctuated by sunny spells last week in most of Ivory Coast's key cocoa regions have boosted the main crop, but heavy rains in some areas have prevented harvesting and may damage quality by preventing proper drying, farmers said on Monday.

Comet Elenin, an icy comet described by some as a 'Doomsday Comet' and the latest to swing by our inner solar system, closely passed by Earth early Sunday. It was estimated that Elenin would pass about 22 million miles (35 million kilometres) from Earth.

A massive algae bloom on the waters of Lake Erie in the U.S. is believed to pose a significant threat to aquatic life forms in the lake.

Violence and the threat of worse violence has idled a major gold exploration project in a highly prospective area of the central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan.

The Ballestas Island in Peru, like the other 21 islands along the Peruvian coast, is home to nearly 4 million migratory birds such as guanays, boobies and pelicans.

Severe seasonal melting has reduced ice floes, floating chunk of ice, in the Arctic Ocean to the thinnest on record, according to researchers. Changes in sea ice thickness and extent also have direct consequences for the ecosystem of the Arctic Ocean, the researchers said.

In the UK, a team of scientists have set out on an Antarctic expedition to get to the bottom of climate change mysteries. Quite literally, the group is planning to drill through three kilometers of Antarctic ice in order get samples from its lake.

World Monuments Fund has released its 2012 Watch list of 67 cultural-heritage sights at risk.

The first source of water on Earth has long been debated. But now astronomers, using the Herschel Space Telescope, believe the water in the Earth's oceans could have from comets.

The number of foreign travelers to Japan plunged by more than 50 percent year-over-year during the three months following the March 11 catastrophe.

Some 2.5 million years ago, the Crete Senesi region is said to have been covered by the Pliocene sea and clay. The distinctive grey color of the clay sediments left behind is said to give a distinctively lunar appearance to the landscape.

Icy Comet Elenin will make its closest approach to Earth next week and should enter naked eye visibility (magnitude +6) when it comes within 22 million miles of the planet on Oct. 16, according to reports. But will you see it?

Yes, Virginia, Venus does have an ozone layer -- and the finding could help astronomers better target their search for life on other planets.

At the California Institute of Technology, plans are being discussed about bringing an asteroid back to Earth.

The first comet containing water similar to Earth's oceans has been discovered by a team of astronomers using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory.

As if the news about the Arctic's ozone hole outsizing the hole in Antarctica in early 2011 wasn't bad enough, Tuesday, NASA officials released more bad news: sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean reached its second lowest level in recorded history in September.

Turkish Prime Tayyip Erdogan visited South Africa on Tuesday, the latest stop in a diplomatic drive into the resource-rich continent whose attention is increasingly fixed on emerging market relationships rather than old commercial ties to Europe.

A large ozone hole over the Arctic may have likely exposed people living in Russia, parts of Greenland and Norway to high ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

Typically, Japanese whaling vessels sail to the Antarctic in late autumn and return the following spring.

There are unprecedented levels of depletion of the ozone layer, above the Arctic Circle, this spring, according to a NASA-led study. The research was conducted by a team of scientists from 19 institutions across nine countries, including Canada and the United States.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recently released a report identifying the those cities in the world with the worst statistics relating to levels of air pollution.