Spain will appeal for damages over the Prestige tanker disaster which choked its northwest coast in oil, the government said Monday, after a court acquitted all defendants of causing the spill.

The court on Thursday acquitted the ship's crew and a top Spanish maritime official and awarded no compensation for the 2002 wreck, one of Europe's worst environmental disasters.

Much of the U.S. East Coast is expected to get a view of a mid-Atlantic rocket launch Tuesday night, when the Air Force and NASA will try to put 29 tiny satellites into orbit, including a smartphone and a satellite built by students.

The launch of the privately built Minotaur rocket is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. (0030 GMT) from NASA's Wallops Island, Virginia, launch site. Weather permitting, it should be possible to see it from Jacksonville to Maine and Montreal and as far west as Detroit and Dayton.

Emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and cement production reached a new high in 2012, rising 2.2 percent over 2011 due chiefly to an increase in coal-burning China, scientists said Tuesday.

Output of CO2 from these sources was a record 35 billion tonnes, 58 percent above 1990, the benchmark year for calculating greenhouse-gas levels, according to the annual analysis by an international group called the Global Carbon Project.

NASA on Monday launched its unmanned MAVEN spacecraft toward Mars to study the Red Planet's atmosphere for clues as to why Earth's neighbor lost its warmth and water over time.

The white Atlas V 401 rocket carrying the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter blasted off on schedule at 1:28 pm (1828 GMT).

Czech gold deposits are whetting the appetites of foreign prospectors hoping to see the new government lift a mining moratorium in the aftermath of snap elections.

But rather than a dream come true, the prospect of a gold rush is a nightmare for environmentalists and residents of the hilly region south of the capital Prague, a popular resort area that holds the biggest deposit.

An undated handout photo released on November 1, 2011 by the Antarctic Ocean Alliance shows a penguin as it lands on the Antarctic ice

Accelerating ice loss from the Antarctic ice-sheet could be due in part to active volcanoes under the frozen continent's eastern part, a study said on Sunday.

Europe next week will launch a trio of hi-tech satellites to explore something that may seem utterly mundane: Earth's magnetic field.

After all, magnetism has been with us for billions of years.

NASA is preparing to launch its latest orbiter to Mars Monday on the hunt for clues about why the Red Planet lost much of its atmosphere.

The launch of Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN), is could happen as early as 1:28 pm (1828 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, during a two-hour launch window.

What happened to the water on Mars? How did the Red Planet's atmosphere become so thin over time? NASA's MAVEN probe is scheduled to launch Monday on a mission to find out.

The unmanned spacecraft aims to orbit Mars from a high altitude, studying its atmosphere for clues on how the Sun may have influenced gas to escape from the possibly life-bearing planet billions of years ago.

Brazil's environment minister demanded urgent action Thursday to reverse double-digit rises of as much as 52 percent in the rate of deforestation in some Amazon regions over the past year.

Agricultural production has been blamed for the spike but enforcement has also been lax in a giant country encompassing around 8.5 million square kilometers (3.3 million square miles), around three fifths of which is forest.