China, the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide, is directly feeling the man-made heat of global warming, scientists conclude in the first study to link the burning of fossil fuels to one country's rise in its daily temperature spikes.

China emits more of the greenhouse gas than the next two biggest carbon polluters — the U.S. and India — combined. And its emissions keep soaring by about 10 percent per year.

Amputees often experience "phantom limbs", or the sensation that their missing limb is still present, but a Swedish study published Thursday showed that even non-amputees can experience the bizarre sensation.

"Our results show that the sight of a physical hand is remarkably unimportant to the brain for creating the experience of one's physical self," said the lead author of the study, Arvid Guterstam of Sweden's prestigious Karolinska Institute.

President Vladimir Putin on Friday unveiled a new $50 billion drive for Russia to preserve its status as a top space power, including the construction of a brand new cosmodrome from where humans will fly to space by the end of the decade.

Fifty-two years to the day since Yuri Gagarin became the Soviet Union's greatest hero by making the first human flight into space, Putin inspected the new Vostochny (Eastern) cosmodrome Russia is building in the Amur region of the Far East.

Carbon-dating of an ancient beam from a Guatemalan temple may help end a century-long debate about the Mayan calendar, anthropologists said on Thursday.

Experts have long wrangled over how the Mayan calendar -- which leapt to global prominence last year when the superstitious said it predicted the end of the world -- correlates to the European calendar.

She walked with a knock-kneed gait, with a heel like a chimp but the upright posture of a human, and she may provide the most complete evidence yet of early man's closest ancestor, scientists said Thursday.

Two-million-year-old Australopithecus sediba's awkward strut would eventually send a modern man begging for a knee or hip replacement, but scientists are stunned at how evolution equipped her for both climbing trees and walking.

Australia is to fire the opening salvoes in a legal battle before the United Nations' highest court in June aimed at stopping Japan's whaling research program in Antarctica.

"The International Court of Justice... will hold public hearings in the case concerning whaling in the Antarctic, Australia versus Japan, from Wednesday 26 June," the Hague-based ICJ said in a statement on Thursday.

Several major companies issued a joint call Wednesday for the United States to enact legislation to battle climate change, saying that the issue was critical to their businesses.

Thirty-three firms including online retailer eBay, tech giant Intel, coffee leader Starbucks and sportswear makers Adidas, Nike, Patagonia, The North Face and Timberland called climate change a threat that required coordinated action.

Activists warned Thursday that wild populations of Southeast Asia's striking Tokay Gecko were in danger of being over-hunted for use in traditional medicine in China and other countries.

Calling the trade "colossal", wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC called on authorities in the region to implement tougher regulations and limits on commerce involving the lizard, the second-largest gecko species.

A letter the British scientist who co-discovered the structure of DNA wrote to his son announcing the news sold Wednesday for a record sum of just over $6 million, Christie's said.

Elizabeth Van Bergen, a spokeswoman for the auction house in New York, said the sale "did make the new world auction record for a letter and was sold for $6,059,750."

Two Greenpeace activists dressed as polar bears boarded an oil platform in Norway on Wednesday to protest against Norwegian oil and gas group Statoil's planned drilling in the Arctic.

"No oil company in the world is prepared for Arctic conditions," said the head of Greenpeace Norway, Truls Gulowsen, one of the two activists who boarded the West Hercules platform currently stationed in Oelen in southwestern Norway.