International

"The mystery of how horsemeat got into Findus beef lasagne has led to an international hunt already taking in four countries.

"Multinational food, drink and alcohol companies are using strategies similar to those employed by the tobacco industry to undermine public health policies, health experts said on Tuesday."

"There's a global campaign to force meat producers to rein in their use of antibiotics on pigs, chickens and cattle. European countries, especially Denmark and the Netherlands, have taken the lead. The U.S. is moving, haltingly, toward similar restrictions. Now the concerns about rampant antibiotic use appear to have reached China, where meat production and antibiotic use have been growing fast."

The labels meant to give consumers confidence in the sustainability of the seafood they buy may be deceptive.

"President Obama on Tuesday called North Korea's third successful nuclear test a 'highly provocative act' that 'undermines regional stability' and threatens action by the international community."

"Organised criminal gangs operating internationally are suspected of playing a major role in the horsemeat scandal that has seen supermarket shelves cleared of a series of products and triggered concerns about the contamination of the UK's food chain."

"Amid all the progress on this planet -- declining losses from terrible diseases and war, rising literacy and the rest -- there remain plenty of planet-scale risks requiring serious focus, from pandemic flu to centuries of locked-in climate change to, yes, collisions with space rocks."

"A nuclear accident similar to the one at Japan's Fukushima reactor would cost France about 430 billion euros ($580 billion), or 20 percent of its economic output, French nuclear safety institute IRSN said in a study on the possible financial impact of a nuclear crisis."

"A powerful 8.0 magnitude earthquake set off a tsunami that killed at least five people in a remote part of the Solomon Islands on Wednesday and triggered evacuations across the South Pacific as island nations issued tsunami alerts."

"HOBART, Australia -- The month of January, usually the prime whale catching month for the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean, has come and gone without the death of a single whale, says Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Australia Director Jeff Hansen."