Australia has expressed alarm at growing support for a plan to allow limited commercial whaling, saying it could not accept the proposal before the International Whaling Commission (IWC). New Zealand, which also opposes whaling, is supporting moves to allow restricted commercial hunts over the next 10 years if it means a big cut to the number of whales currently killed ...

The international body to control whaling worldwide could collapse if a deal cannot be reached to allow restricted commercial whaling, New Zealand's representative said Thursday. Former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer, who chairs an International Whaling Commission (IWC) group trying to negotiate a deal, said the IWC could fall apart. "I think there is a big risk of ...

The Japan Coast Guard inspected a Japanese whaling ship Saturday with a New Zealand anti-whaling activist who is under arrest for trespassing on the vessel in the Antarctic Ocean last month. Peter Bethune, a member of the militant Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, boarded the Shonan Maru II mid-morning with coastguard officials at Yokohama port, south of Tokyo, according to television ...

New Zealand anti-whaling activist Peter Bethune, who is under arrest in Japan for trespass, is reported to be well and in good spirits, Foreign Minister Murray McCully said Saturday. Bethune, who has been in custody since he boarded a Japanese harpoon ship in Antarctic waters last month, was arrested when the vessel docked in Tokyo on Friday. He was visited ...

Japan's coast guard arrested an anti-whaling activist from New Zealand on Friday for illegally boarding a whaling ship last month in the latest incident in the ongoing battle over Japanese whaling. Peter Bethune, a member of the U.S.-based Sea Shepherd activist group, is accused of jumping ...

A former prime minister of New Zealand pleaded with supporters and opponents of whaling to "swallow a dead rat" and accept a controversial compromise when negotiators wrap up talks Thursday in Florida. Key nations including Australia and Japan, whose relations have been increasingly strained over whaling, have been meeting since Tuesday away from the cameras at a beachside hotel near ...

The floodlit cream shells of the famed Opera House dimmed Saturday as Sydney became the world's first major city to plunge itself into darkness for the second worldwide Earth Hour, a global campaign to highlight the threat of climate change. From the Great Pyramids ...

The New Zealand air force is to track the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctic waters this season, Defence Minister Wayne Mapp announced Sunday. New Zealand also urged both whalers and anti-whaling protesters to show restraint after a series of clashes on the high seas last year. The Japanese fleet sets sail in mid-November and the Sea Shepherd activists, who have ...

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. The whaling fleet left Japan earlier this month and is expected ...