Andrea Comas / Reuters

Spanish Queen Sofia reacts as she holds a six-month-old panda at the Madrid Zoo & Aquarium on Monday, March 29.

By the looks of things, Queen Sofia got caught off guard during her visit with a panda cub earlier today. She stopped by the zoo in Madrid to see twin pandas, Po and De De.

The first of their species to be born in Spain since 1982, the cubs were conceived through artificial insemination in a joint effort by Spain's National Research council and scientists from China.

Po and De De are only the third litter to be born in Europe, according to Chinese veterinarian Yuan Bo. He travelled from Beijing to assist the birth and the first months of the newborns.

Peter R. Barber / The Daily Gazette via AP

Schenectady firefighters Randy Pierre, left, and Capt. Carman Pantalone battle a house fire on Stanley Street in Schenectady, N.Y., after flames broke out shortly before 5:30 a.m. Monday, March 28.

Officials in upstate New York say one woman was burned and another woman and child had to jump from a second-story window during a pre-dawn house fire.

Peter R. Barber / The Daily Gazette via AP

Officials say one woman suffered burns and another woman and a child were forced to jump from a second-story window to escape the flames.

The unidentified injured woman was flown to the burn unit at Westchester Hospital. The woman and the 4-year-old child who jumped from the house in Schenectady were taken to a local hospital.

The victims' conditions were not immediately available.

Peter R. Barber / The Daily Gazette via AP

Schenectady firefighters extinguish the smoldering shell of the home early Monday morning.

Peter R. Barber / The Daily Gazette via AP

Schenectady firefighters Josh Donavan, left, and Capt. Timothy Tietz, extinguish remains from a tower.

Officials say the fire struck just before 5:30 a.m. Monday and destroyed the house in the industrial city about 10 miles west of Albany.

Terje Sorgjerd

After staying up all night for a week, Norwegian photographer Terje Sorgjerd captured the aurora borealis in a way few have ever seen before.

He endured forbiddingly frigid temperatures of -15 degrees Fahrenheit while shooting 22,000 pictures of the skies near Kirkenes and Pas National Park in Norway, near the Russian border. A testament to his patience and passion, he referred to the expedition as "good fun." The results are stunning.

Terje Sorgjerd

For years Sorgjerd planned, waiting for precisely the right conditions, then packed 90 pounds of gear and headed into the wilderness. Using a motion control dolly in conjunction with professional SLR lenses, he created the time lapse video from 1.3 terabytes of pictures.

Terje Sorgjerd

The Aurora Borealis is caused by radiation from the sun, or "solar wind," interacting with Earth's magnetic field. According to Lorne McKee, a space weather forecaster for Natural Resources Canada, more solar storms are expected, since the sun recently moved from a quiet period in its 11-year solar cycle to a more active phase.

Check out excerpts of his video in our interview with Sorgjerd talking about his work.

The original video can be seen on Vimeo here.

Trevor Glass / AP

Oil coats rock hopper penguins on the island chain of Tristan da Cunha. Thousands of the endangered penguins have been covered in oil after a cargo ship ran aground and broke up on a remote British South Atlantic territory, officials and conservationists said Tuesday. The shipwreck also threatens lobster fisheries.

LONDON (AP)— Thousands of endangered penguins have been coated with oil after a cargo ship ran aground and broke up on a remote British South Atlantic territory, officials and conservationists said Tuesday.

The shipwreck also threatens the lobster fishery that provides a livelihood to one of the world's most isolated communities.

The Malta-registered MS Olivia was grounded on Nightingale Island in the Tristan da Cunha chain last week. The ship had been traveling from Brazil to Singapore and contained 1,500 metric tons (1,650 tons) of crude oil and a cargo of 60,000 metric tons (66,000 tons) of soya beans.

The ship's 22 crew members were rescued before it broke in two.

Trevor Glass / AP

The Malta-registered MS Olivia rests where she grounded on Nightingale Island in the Tristan da Cunha chain in the south Atlantic Ocean. The ship was traveling from Brazil to Singapore and contained 1,650 tons of crude oil.

Tristan da Cunha's conservation officer, Trevor Glass, said oil was encircling Nightingale Island and called the situation "a disaster."

The territory's British administrator, Sean Burns, said more than half of about 500 birds gathered by rescue workers had been coated in oil. An environmentalist at the scene estimated that 20,000 penguins might be affected.

Tristan da Cunha is home to some 200,000 penguins, including almost half the world's total of northern rockhopper penguins. The bird is classed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Located midway between Africa and South America — more than 2,800 kilometers (1,700 miles) from the nearest land — Tristan da Cunha is home to about 275 people who rely on rock lobster fishing for their livelihood.

Burns said he had temporarily closed the area around Nightingale and nearby Inaccessible Island to fishing.

"We are concerned about the potential impact (the spill) may have on the spawning grounds," Burns said. "The lobster fishery is what Tristan depends on. The revenue keeps this island afloat."

Richard Cuthbert, a research biologist with Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said the wreck was "potentially disastrous for wildlife and the fishery-based economy of these remote islands."

He said that alongside the threat to penguins and sea life, there was a risk rats from the ship could come ashore and eat the chicks and eggs of native seabirds.

"Nightingale is one of two large islands in the Tristan da Cunha group that are rodent-free," Cuthbert said. "If rats gain a foothold, their impact would be devastating.

The islands' remoteness was complicating clean-up efforts. Tristan da Cunha is usually accessible only by boats that sail nine times a year from Cape Town. Nightingale Island has no fresh water, so the penguins will have to be transported to the main island for cleaning.

A salvage tug from South Africa carrying a seabird specialist arrived in Tristan da Cunha on Monday and was assessing the environmental damage.

Officials said they hoped to bring another vessel carrying a penguin-cleaning team from Cape Town to the islands.

The British government said it was very concerned about the situation, but said it was too early to know what the economic and environmental damage to the islands would be.

Alexandre Meneghini / AP

Haiti's ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide waves from the plane as his wife Mildred stands behind him as he arrives to the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday, March 18.

Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti on Friday, ending seven years of exile in South Africa despite U.S. objections and just two days before a crucial presidential election.

Supporters whooped and cheered at Port-au-Prince airport as a smiling, clearly delighted Aristide, accompanied by his family and U.S. actor and black rights activist Danny Glover, emerged from the charter plane that brought him home.

"If you could lean against my heart you could hear how fast it is beating, how it is singing a melody to Haiti," Aristide, wearing a blue suit, white shirt and striped tie said in his emotional first comments to reporters at the airport.

He said he had come back to make "a small contribution" to his country, which is struggling to recover from a devastating 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people and set back development in one of the world's poorest states.

Aristide, 57, who was ousted from power in 2004 through an armed rebellion, is a divisive figure in Haiti -- very popular among the poor but reviled by business leaders. Continue reading...

By Jonathan Woods, msnbc.com: (updated at 9:37am EST on 3/18/2011) The New York Times says four of its journalists who were reported missing while covering the Libya conflict have been found.

The Times reported on its website that the four were captured by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and will be released Friday. His son, Seif IslamGadhafi, gave the information to Christiane Amanpour in an ABC News interview.

Times Director of Photography Michele McNally confirmed to msnbc.com that this was the last known image of the photographers (taken Friday, March 11) before they went missing on Tuesday, March 15.

Paul Conroy / Reuters

New York Times photographers Tyler Hicks (right, in glasses) and Lynsey Addario (far left), run for cover during a bombing run by Libyan government planes at a checkpoint near the oil refinery of Ras Lanuf on Friday, Mar. 11. The other photojournalists pictured, starting from second left are John Moore of Getty Images, Holly Pickett and Philip Poupin. Hicks and Addario, along with NYT correspondents Stephen Farrell and Anthony Shadid, were reported missing near lines of advancing Gadhafi forces two days ago, the NYT announced on Wednesday.

Before their disappearance, the four were last in contact with editors on Tuesday from the northern port city of Ajdabiya, where they were covering the retreat of rebels.

Holly Pickett, a photojournalist pictured above with Hicks and Addario, spoke with msnbc.com in a phone interview from Cairo.

Pickett said it was the most chaotic, intense situation she has ever been in.

“Bullets were whizzing past us. You could see the dust stirring on the ground from bullets zipping past our legs. I’ve never taken this much fire before,” she said.

At the end of the day, opposition forces were in a full-scale retreat.

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said there were unconfirmed reports that the journalists had been detained at a government checkpoint between Ajdabiya and Benghazi, a rebel stronghold. If so, Keller said, they would eventually be taken to Tripoli.

Related content:
Slideshow: Unrest in Libya

Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images

Libyan rebel fighters run for cover as a bomb dropped by a a Libyan air force fighter jet explodes on Friday, Mar. 11 east of the key oil port of Ras Lanuf.

The highly-censored media in Tripoli may not be alone in their lack of liberty to freely report on newsworthy events in Libya. Ty Cacek, a freelance photojournalist working in Libya said officials have severed communications.

"Phone service to all foreign mobile numbers seems has been suspended by the central government in Tripoli," Cacek told msnbc.com.

Meanwhile, AP is reporting that rebels held out Friday in part of a strategic oil port after fierce fighting with Moammar Gadhafi loyalists waging a heavy counteroffensive trying to push the opposition further east away from the capital.

Nasser Nasser / AP

Two Libyan rebels man an anti-aircraft weapon on the border of the eastern town of Brega, Libya, on Friday, Mar. 11.

Pro-Gadhafi forces barraged rebels a day earlier with an hourslong hail of rockets and tank and artillery shells in their strongest attempt yet to recapture the oil facility of Ras Lanouf, in central Libya. The assault sent hundreds of rebel fighters into a frantic retreat further east, fleeing in cars and pickup trucks fitted with heavy machine guns. More images...

But some opposition forces — including special commando forces that defected to the rebellion — continued the battle into the evening. By sunset, the regime troops burst into the residential area of Ras Lanouf, forcing rebels there to pull back, said Ibrahim Said, deputy director of the main hospital in Ajdabiya, a nearby city where rebel wounded were taken.

The rebel forces continued to hold out in the oil facilities and industrial areas of Ras Lanouf, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) east of the residential area. Four people were killed and 42 wounded in Thursday's fighting. Continue Reading...

Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

A man pushes his belongings towards a United Nations displacement camp on Mar. 11 in Ras Jdir, Tunisia. Tens of thousands from Egypt, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Sudan and elsewhere are fleeing Libya for the Tunisian border to escape the fighting. The masses of refugees have descended on Tunisia, creating a humanitarian crisis in the country.