More midwives needed: An additional 350,000 midwives are needed to ensure 95 per cent of the 160 million births the world over in a year are attended by trained health workers. As per the International Confederation of Midwives and WHO, maternal mortality is the

Bangladesh Academy of Science and the academies of 69 other countries around the world in a joint statement yesterday warned that ocean acidification, one of the world's most important climate change challenges, may be left off the agenda at the United Nations Copenhagen conference.

Climate change is turning the oceans more acid in a trend that could endanger everything from clams to coral and be irreversible for thousands of years, national science academies said on Monday.

A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook Honduras on Thursday, killing at least five people, knocking down flimsy homes and causing damage in neighboring Guatemala.

The offshore quake destroyed some 60 houses and damaged scores of other buildings across the north of Honduras, a poor country of 7 million people, and briefly triggered a tsunami alert for Central America's Caribbean coast.

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The five-day World Ocean Conference has ended in Indonesia's Sulawesi Island with a focus on the state of the oceans, the role they play in the world's changing climate and the negative effects of climate change on the world's oceans.

A commitment by six Asia-Pacific nations to protect a huge swathe of ecologically rich coral reef is an important step, although the pact is non-binding and key details still need to thrashed out, conservationists said.

Indonesia has opened Southeast Asia's largest marine park in the Savu Sea, a migration route for almost half the world's whale species and home to vast tracts of rare coral, the country's fisheries minister said.