Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Thursday renewed pledges to tackle the country's chronic pollution, but did not announce any significant new environmental measures.

The Chinese public are increasingly enraged by hazardous smog that regularly blankets cities, as well as water and soil that are laced with heavy metals and various other toxic pollutants.

The Curiosity rover has temporarily stopped work on Mars while NASA engineers investigate a short circuit.

The space agency said Tuesday that the electrical problem was discovered over the weekend as Curiosity tried to transfer bits of powder from a rock that it had drilled into.

Smog covers buildings in New Delhi in this aerial photo on May 8, 2014

Torrents of thick black smoke billow up toward the smoggy skies as Kunti Desai feeds a coal-fired furnace to make tar for a Delhi road.

Close to 700 koalas have been killed off by authorities in southeastern Australia because overpopulation led to the animals starving, an official said Wednesday, sparking claims of mismanagement.

Victoria state Environment Minister Lisa Neville said the koalas were euthanised around Cape Otway near the scenic tourist drawcard the Great Ocean Road, in 2013 and 2014, with a caravan site owner saying the whole area "smelt like death" before they were put down.

A NASA spacecraft is about to reach the end of a nearly eight-year journey and make the first rendezvous with a dwarf planet.

The Dawn craft will slip into orbit Friday around Ceres, a dwarf planet the size of Texas. Unlike robotic landings or other orbit captures, the arrival won't be a nail-biter. Still, Dawn had to travel some 3 billion miles to reach the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Europe could miss several key targets for safeguarding its species, water, air and land, said a study Tuesday that warned economic recovery would add to the pressure on natural resources.

While it has made great strides in recycling and greener energy, the continent has failed to stop habitat destruction, overfishing and pollution, said a five-yearly assessment by the European Environmental Agency (EEA).

A rare sea creature described as an "alien of the deep" has been found off Australia and delivered to a museum which Tuesday showed off its fleshy snout, nail-like teeth and flabby pink body.

The prehistoric-looking goblin sharks live on deep sea bottoms and little is known about their lives.

China's booming e-commerce websites have carried thousands of advertisements for illegal wildlife products including ivory, rhino horn and tiger bone, a wildlife trade monitoring network said on Tuesday.

More than half of such products offered online in recent months are ivory, the British group TRAFFIC found in a survey of 15 Chinese retail websites over a two year period.

U.S. space transportation company SpaceX launched two commercial communications satellites atop a Falcon 9 rocket Sunday evening.

The rocket, carrying an Eutelsat and Asia Broadcast (ABS) satellite, lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on schedule at 10:50 pm (3:50 GMT) into the perfectly clear night.

On the road to Walgett a sign welcomes visitors: "Farming is not a way of life, it keeps everyone alive." But with drought taking a heavy toll on the region, farming has become a battle for survival.

The Australian agricultural town -- which takes its name from the Aboriginal word meaning the meeting of two rivers -- is in the grip of the worst drought in a century, with disillusioned farmers battling to stay afloat.