An idea by the father of the H-bomb to slow global warming by sowing the stratosphere with light-reflecting particles could wreck the weather system in the tropics, a study said Wednesday.

The scheme may benefit northern Europe and parts of Asia, but around the equator rainfall patterns would be disrupted, potentially drying up tropical forests in South America and intensifying droughts in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The first regular contract flight of Orbital Sciences' unmanned cargo ship is poised for launch on Wednesday toward the International Space Station, NASA said.

The Cygnus spacecraft is set to take off from Wallops Island, Virginia atop an Antares rocket at 1:32 pm (1832 GMT), carrying 2,780 pounds (1,260 kilograms) of gear including science experiments, supplies and hardware.

A Chinese research vessel's escape from pack ice after evacuating 52 people from a Russian ship trapped in Antarctica has shone a spotlight on the Asian power's growing polar ambitions at both ends of the Earth.

In the Arctic, China's strategic goals include the opening up of a "Northeast Passage" shipping route Beijing hopes will shave days off the journey from China to Europe, its biggest export destination.

A Christmas swell on Oahu's North Shore damaged at least five oceanfront properties, rekindling a decades-old debate about how best Hawaii officials and homeowners should respond to beach erosion and the increasingly rising waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Some property owners want to be able to install a seawall or something similar to protect their property.

South African authorities revealed Tuesday that a phosphate mine spillage has caused "extensive pollution" to a river in the country's famed Kruger National Park.

Park officials said "highly acidic water" from a dam at the Palaborwa-based Bosveld phosphate mine spilled into a tributary of the Olifants River, killing thousands of fish.

Eating nuts and acorns may have helped hunter-gatherers survive 15,000 years ago in northern Africa but the practice wreaked havoc on their teeth, researchers said Monday.

Fermented carbohydrates in the nuts caused cavities, tooth decay and bad breath, said the study led by British scientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a U.S. journal.

Astronomers call them super-Earths, and they are abundant outside our solar system. But the more experts learn about them, the weirder our own planet seems in comparison.

Planets the size of Earth and up to four times larger are believed to make up about three-quarters of the planet candidates discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft.

U.S. company SpaceX said Monday it had deployed a commercial Thai satellite, in its second successful launch in weeks.

The private firm's two-stage Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 2206 GMT, carrying with it the Thaicom 6 telecommunications satellite.

China crushed a pile of ivory reportedly weighing over six tonnes on Monday, in a landmark event aimed at shedding its image as a global hub for the illegal trade in African elephant tusks.

Clouds of dust emerged as masked workers fed tusks into crushing machines in what was described as the first ever public destruction of ivory in China.

India on Sunday successfully launched its first rocket using domestically produced booster technology after several previous missions had failed, taking another step forward in its ambitious space program.

The Indian-made cryogenically-powered rocket blasted off from the southern spaceport of Sriharikota as scheduled, as Delhi tries to join an elite club of countries which have mastered the complex technology.