China will launch its second orbiting space laboratory in two years' time, a top official said Wednesday, the latest step in an ambitious space programme Beijing says will one day land a Chinese man on the moon.

Iconic North American birds like the Bald Eagle and Brown Pelican are among hundreds of mankind's feathered friends facing threats to their survival due to climate change, researchers said Tuesday.

The European Space Agency on Tuesday put the final touches to its first-ever "space plane" before blasting it into sub-orbit for tests aimed at eventually paving the way to the continent's first space shuttle.

Researchers Wednesday urged sailors to become "citizen oceanographers" and help scientists better understand some of the world's wildest seas where ships and even planes disappear without trace.

An Australian-led study said that despite technology such as GPS navigation and advanced research vessels with modern capabilities, much of the world's oceans remains under-explored, with cost a key impediment to knowing more.

Surging levels of carbon dioxide sent greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to a new record in 2013, while oceans, which absorb the emissions, have become more acidic than ever, the U.N. said on Tuesday.

"We know without any doubt that our climate is changing and our weather is becoming more extreme due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels," said Michel Jarraud, the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that released a report on the issue on Tuesday.

Lava from one of the world's most active volcanoes has been advancing at a slower pace the past few days and is now moving parallel to a sparsely populated subdivision on Hawaii's Big Island.

Lava from Kilauea volcano was still at least a mile (1.6 kilometers) from any homes in Kaohe Homesteads, Hawaii County Civil Defense Director Darryl Oliveira said.

A snail once thought to have been among the first species to go extinct because of climate change has reappeared in the wild.

The Aldabra banded snail, declared extinct seven years ago, was rediscovered on Aug. 23 in the Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles. The mollusk, which is endemic to the Aldabra coral atoll — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — had not been seen on the islands since 1997, said the Seychelles Islands Foundation.

Harvesting mineral-rich seaweed on Morocco's Atlantic coast, Attibari Lemkhanter worries that the plant known locally as "red gold" is becoming increasingly scarce. 

A rare discovery of dinosaur bones in Tanzania has led scientists to identify a new species of long-extinct, leaf-eating dinosaur, according to research published on Monday.

This 12-frame mosaic released by NASA on March 6, 2000, provides a high resolution view of the side of Jupiter's moon Europa that faces the giant planet

Jupiter's icy moon Europa may have active tectonic plates similar to those that shape the Earth, which had long been thought unique in this respect, scientists said Sunday.