Five weeks into the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico -- and under intense pressure from the US government -- BP was poised to attempt a tricky “top kill” procedure in another effort to clog the gushing deep-sea well, Reuters reported. For a live BP video link from the seabed, see here.

In the hours before the oil rig exploded, there were strong warning signs of an impending blowout, according to a US congressional committee briefed on the accident by BP executives, The New York Times said.

Scientists are reviving long-ignored African rice to cut dependence on Asian varieties that may be less able to withstand the impact of climate change on the continent, Reuters quoted a scientist at Africa Rice Center as saying. Africa imports 40% of its rice.

Exploiting a political crisis in Madagascar, timber barons are illegally cutting down scarce species of rosewood trees in poorly protected national parks and exporting most of the valuable logs to China, The New York Times reported. Environmental groups say the trade has increased at least 25-fold in the past year.

Indonesia’s anti-graft commission is investigating rampant corruption in the forestry sector on the island of Borneo, said to cost the country more than US$100 billion, Agence France-Presse quoted an official as saying. Deforestation and illegal logging are blamed for Indonesia’s ranking as the world’s third-biggest emitter of greenhouse-gas emissions.

The Alaotra grebe – last seen in 1985 -- is extinct, according to the latest expert assessment of the world’s rarest birds, the BBC said. The species, which lived around Madagascar’s Lake Alaotra, is believed to have been killed off by poaching and predatory fish.

Egypt and Kenya have sought to play down a regional dispute following the signing by five African states of a new agreement on water-sharing, according to Agence France-Presse. The pact -- opposed by Egypt and Sudan -- addresses what is said to be an equitable sharing of the Nile’s waters.

Conservationists have flown the first five of 32 critically endangered East African black rhinos from South Africa back to their habitat in Tanzania’s Serengeti national park, Reuters said.

An agriculture ministry official in Kazakhstan said more than 3,200 endangered Saiga antelopes have died in a suspected infectious disease epidemic, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Interfax-Kazakhstan.

Whales and dolphins should get “human rights” to life and liberty because of mounting evidence of their intelligence, said a group of conservationists and experts in philosophy, law and ethics, Reuters reported.