AFP - High above the war-battered plain, a giant silverback gorilla ruminatively strips a plant of its leaves with green tombstone teeth. Five females nearby suckle their babies. The world can celebrate a small miracle in eastern Congo.

AFP - The New Zealand air force is to track the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctic waters this season, Defence Minister Wayne Mapp announced Sunday.

AP - New Zealand will not be able to quickly rescue anyone who gets lost or hurt if clashes erupt between animal rights activists and Japanese whalers off the north Antarctic coast, the foreign minister said Saturday.

AP - New Zealand will not be able to quickly rescue anyone who gets lost or hurt if clashes erupt between animal rights activists and Japanese whalers off the north Antarctic coast, the foreign minister said Saturday.

AFP - The International Whaling Commission will next month start negotiations in a bid to find a compromise over restrictions on whale hunting, a newspaper said Saturday.

AP - The Christmas ornaments for sale at the Miller Park Zoo's gift shop are partly manufactured by reindeer. Honest!

AP - An animal rights group is urging Iraqi authorities to find better ways to eliminate stray dogs after 200 of them were killed in Baghdad this week by poisoned meat and rifles.

AP - In the headline on a Nov. 26 story about controlling the dog population in Baghdad, The Associated Press erroneously described recommendations from Humane Society International. The animal rights group suggested how to control the dog population, not ways to kill dogs.

AFP - A less than two degree Celsius rise in global temperatures might be sufficient to spark a meltdown of the Greenland Ice Sheet and Arctic sea ice, the WWF warned in a new study released Thursday.

AP - An animal rights group is urging Iraqi authorities to better ways to eliminate stray dogs after 200 of them were killed in Baghdad this week by poisoned meat and rifles.