Miami Beach's condo boom is bubbling hot, with glass towers being built as fast as they can be -- even as scientists say rising seas could swamp much of the storied city by the century's end.
City officials are betting that a property boom-fueled surge in real estate tax dollars will bankroll big investments in fighting effects of climate change.

As the Hubble Space Telescope celebrates 25 years in space this week, NASA and its international partners are building an even more powerful tool to look deeper into the universe than ever before.
The James Webb Space Telescope will be 100 times more potent than Hubble, and will launch in 2018 on a mission to give astronomers an unprecedented glimpse at the first galaxies that formed in the early universe.

A pioneering plane attempting to circumnavigate the globe powered only by the sun took off in China early Tuesday for the next stage of its journey, organizers said.
The Solar Impulse 2's departure from Chongqing came after repeated meteorological delays and one of its co-pilots returned to Europe to be treated for migraine.

The world's first space-based optical telescope marks its 25th anniversary this week. Here are some facts about the Hubble Space Telescope.
The telescope launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990 and is named after U.S. astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953).

Air pollution levels in some of China's smoggiest cities fell by nearly a third in the first quarter of this year, environmental campaign group Greenpeace said on Tuesday.
But pollution levels remain a major public health threat, linked to thousands of early deaths, and the group said they continue to increase in other parts of the country.

U.S. President Barack Obama will travel to Florida's Everglades Wednesday hoping to reframe the debate on climate change ahead of a vital few months that will shape his environmental legacy.
On "Earth Day" Obama will swap Washington's turbid political waters for gator-infested wetlands, in the hope of putting America's cherished national parks -- and their economic impact -- front-and-center of a bitter partisan debate.

Japan plans to launch an unmanned mission to the moon as a stepping stone to a future visit to Mars, officials and local media said Monday.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) unveiled the plan for a moon lander to a council of the cabinet office and the ministry of education, culture, sports science and technology, a JAXA official said.

Cuba's efforts to sustain the critically endangered Cuban crocodile are getting a boost from Sweden, home to a pair of reptiles that Fidel Castro gave to a Soviet cosmonaut four decades ago.
A Stockholm zoo on Sunday is sending 10 of the couple's children to Cuba, where they will be placed in quarantine and eventually released into the Zapata Swamp, said Jonas Wahlstrom, the zookeeper who raised them.

California almonds are becoming one of the world's favorite snacks and creating a multi-billion-dollar bonanza for agricultural investors. But the crop extracts a staggering price from the land, consuming more water than all the showering, dish-washing and other indoor household water use of California's 39 million people.
As California enters its fourth year of drought and imposes the first mandatory statewide water cutbacks on cities and towns, the $6.5 billion almond crop is helping drive a sharp debate about water use, agricultural interests and how both affect the state's giant economy.

Five years after the worst U.S. offshore oil spill, the industry is working on drilling even further into the risky depths beneath the Gulf of Mexico to tap massive deposits once thought unreachable.
But critics say energy companies haven't developed the corresponding safety measures to prevent another disaster or contain one if it happens — a sign, environmentalists say, that the lessons of BP's spill were short-lived.
