Taiwan is to close one lane of a major highway to protect more than a million butterflies, which cross the road on their seasonal migration.

The purple milkweed butterfly, which winters in the south of the island, passes over some 600m of motorway to reach its breeding ground in the north.

Many of the 11,500 butterflies that attempt the journey each hour do not reach safety, experts say.

Protective nets and ultra-violet lights will also be used to aid the insects.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Two strong earthquakes struck the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu on Sunday and a tsunami warning was issued for some of its southern islands, police said.

TOKYO - A strong earthquake struck Japan early Sunday, killing at least one person, violently shaking buildings and triggering two very small tsunamis which hit the coast, officials and media reports said.

LOS ANGELES - Monsanto Co. (NYSE:MON - news) has asked a San Francisco federal court to allow it to continue selling its genetically modified Roundup Ready Alfalfa while the USDA conducts a court-ordered environmental impact study.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Storms that produced at least 13 tornadoes swept along New Mexico's border with Texas on Friday, destroying homes and other buildings and injuring at least 16 people, several critically, authorities said.

Scientists from the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research obtained for the first time a detailed temperature record for tropical central Africa over the past 25,000 years. They did this in cooperation with a German colleague from the University of Bremen, The scientists developed an entirely new method to reconstruct the history of land temperatures based on the molecular fossils of soil bacteria.

They applied the method to a marine sediment core taken in the outflow of the Congo River. This core contained eroded land material and microfossils from marine algae. The results show that the land environment of tropical Africa was cooled more than the adjacent Atlantic Ocean during the last ice-age. This large temperature difference between land and ocean surface resulted in drier conditions compared to the current situation, which favours the growth of a lush rainforest. These findings provide further insight in natural variations in climate and the possible consequences of a warming earth on precipitation in central Africa. The results will be published in this week's issue of 'Science'.

Scientists have identified an expanse of rock in Greenland as a remnant of Earth's crust dating back 3.8 billion years, a finding that shows the dynamic geological process called plate tectonics was occurring early in our planet's history.

Writing in the journal Science on Thursday, a team led by Harald Furnes of the University of Bergen in Norway said these ancient layered rocks from southwestern Greenland originally were formed on the sea floor of primordial Earth.

They are made up of thin sheets of formerly molten rock, and look a bit like a multilayered cake. They contain a mix of volcanic rocks associated with the formation of new crust.

Plate tectonics is a theory broadly accepted by geologists relating to the movement of the gargantuan plates that make up the planet's surface. These plates, largely corresponding to the continents, are in constant gradual motion.

Emergency services and harbour authorities braced themselves for a third round of damage from the spring equinox tidal action on Monday night.

The Zululand coast took a considerable pounding yesterday as Mother Nature unleashed her fury twice.

Richards Bay's beachfront took a hammering early on Monday as huge waves, driven by gale-force winds, scoured the beach and came within metres of crashing into the municipal beach office.

The beachfront and beaches around the harbour waterfront suffered further damage during Monday afternoon's phenomenal tide, which came close to causing major flood damage to the TuziGazi Waterfront.

Lifeguards evacuated the two-storey building and removed all valuables yesterday morning because municipal officials feared that although the structure rested on deep piles, erosion could make it unstable.

ANTANANARIVO - A cyclone that swept across Madagascar last week killed at least 69 people and made tens of thousands homeless in the north of the Indian Ocean island, officials said on Friday.

Mudslides have buried whole villages, rivers have burst their banks and roads have been cut off since Cyclone Indlala struck on March 15.

A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.