U.N. climate talks were to resume in Bonn on Monday, tasked with sculpting a historic deal on greenhouse gases due to be sealed in Paris little more than six months from now.

The 10-day conference will be opened by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who will steer the Paris talks, and Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru's environment minister, who chaired the last big climate parlay in Lima last December.

Solar Impulse 2 will land in the Japanese city of Nagoya, organizers said Monday, as bad weather delayed a landmark attempt by a solar plane to cross the Pacific Ocean.

"Weather deteriorating over Pacific, decision taken for intermediate landing in Nagoya and wait for better conditions," tweeted Bertrand Piccard, the initiator of the mission.

Russian space officials say this month's launch failure of a Proton rocket was due to excessive vibrations in the engine of the rocket's third stage.

Igor Komarov, head of the Roscosmos space agency, told reporters Friday that the vibrations came from a rotor shaft and were due to the material it was made of. He said using a different material to solve the problem would not be excessively costly, but he didn't specify an amount.

A string of popular California beaches will remain closed until further notice due to mystery oil-based pollution, officials said Friday.

The stretch of coastline south of Los Angeles was closed to the public from Wednesday, barely a week after an oil spill 100 miles further north, although there is still no confirmed link between the two.

The sudden deaths of tens of thousands of endangered antelopes in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan over the past two weeks have left scientists scrambling for answers and conservationists worried about the animal's future.

Over 120,000 rare saiga antelopes -- more than a third of the total global population -- have been wiped out in a devastating blow that the United Nations Environment Program has called "catastrophic". 

Australia welcomed a draft decision by the United Nations to keep the Great Barrier Reef off its endangered list Saturday, but environmentalists warned of ongoing risks to the natural wonder.

Climate change, farming run-off and development have threatened the world's biggest coral reef ecosystem, stoking fears the World Heritage Site could be formally listed as "in danger".

Australia said Friday it was confident it had done enough to prevent the United Nations from listing the Great Barrier Reef, the world's biggest coral reef ecosystem, as being 'in danger'.

Amid concerns about planned coastal developments, including ports, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) is set to announce overnight a draft decision on the site, which teems with marine life.

Researchers have gained new understanding on the workings of amnesia through research that used light to revive lost memories in mice, a study published Thursday reported.

Amnesia remains a controversial subject in the field of neuroscience, with some researchers arguing that it occurs when cells are damaged and memory cannot be stored, while others believe that the memories are simply blocked and cannot be recalled.

Indian authorities urged hospitals to treat heatstroke as an emergency as the toll from a long heatwave topped 1,800 on Friday, making it the deadliest in more than two decades.

Hundreds of mainly poor people die at the height of summer every year in India, but this year's figures are already nearly double the annual average.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will inaugurate three water projects in the Bekaa valley, in eastern Lebanon on Friday. The projects were carried out in cooperation with the Bekaa Water Establishment (BWE), a news release said.

“The conflict in Syria drove large numbers of people into Lebanon. And this put the water infrastructure of the country, particularly in the Bekaa valley, under heavy strain,” said Jorge Solana, an ICRC water-and-habitat engineer in Zahle.