Russia successfully launched a Proton-M rocket carrying a military satellite in the early hours of Tuesday from its Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The launch took place at 03:46 Moscow time (23:46 GMT) carrying a satellite for the Russian defense ministry, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

Meteorologists have yet to formally link global warming to typhoons like the one that devastated the Philippines, but they expect increasingly extreme weather phenomena due to a rise in ocean temperatures.

The trail of death and destruction left in the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan was at the forefront of a new round of United Nations climate talks that opened Monday in Poland, as Philippine authorities warned some 10,000 people may have died.

A potential successor to the Dalai Lama Monday warned that Chinese military installations and other projects in Tibet could have disastrous environmental consequences for Asia.

Urgyen Trinley urged India to voice its concerns over Chinese development activities in his Himalayan home country.

Dry soil at the Drennec lake near Sizun, western France, on November 25, 2011

Nations launched a new round of talks Monday for a 2015 deal to cut Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions in the aftermath of a deadly Philippines typhoon the U.N.'s climate chief labelled "sobering".

India's Mars spacecraft suffered a brief engine failure Monday as scientists tried to move it into a higher orbit around Earth, but controllers denied any setback to the ambitious low-cost mission.

The Mars Orbiter Mission, which blasted off on November 5 for a 11-month trip to the Red Planet, is being launched on its way via an unusual "slingshot" method for interplanetary journeys.

A slowdown in global warming that climate skeptics cite in favor of their cause was partly induced by one of the world's most successful environment treaties, a study said on Sunday.

The U.N.'s Montreal Protocol, designed to phase out industrial gases that destroy Earth's protective ozone layer, coincidentally applied a small brake to the planet's warming, it said.

A spent science satellite that had measured Earth's gravity field reentered the atmosphere on Sunday night and mostly disintegrated as planned, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Monday.

As expected, an estimated 25 percent of the one-tonne GOCE satellite reached the Earth's surface, said an ESA statement, but "no damage to property has been reported".

Thai customs have found over a thousand turtles and tortoises in airport luggage in a week, including a haul of 470 creatures Friday as conservationists warn of "skyrocketing" smuggling for the pet trade.

Officials at Suvarnabhumi Airport said a 25-year-old Pakistani man had been arrested on suspicion of wildlife trafficking after four suitcases on a flight from Lahore were found to contain the protected black pond turtles.

The U.N. climate talks opening in Warsaw next week will not be without a touch of irony.

The chair of a high-stakes meeting to roll back greenhouse gases is none other than Poland, one of the world's most ardent users and outspoken defenders of coal.

Fragments from a science satellite are likely to crash to Earth late Sunday or early Monday after the one-tonne probe breaks up at the end of its mission, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Friday.

In a statement, the agency said when and where the pieces would land was still unclear.