An ancient skull found in Tibet indicates that big cats originated in central Asia, and not Africa as widely thought, palaeontologists reported on Wednesday.

Dated at between 4.1 and 5.95 million years old, the fossil is the oldest remains ever found of a pantherine felid, as big cats are called.

Nations launched a new round of talks Monday for a 2015 deal to cut Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, in the aftermath of a devastating Philippines typhoon the U.N.'s climate chief labelled "sobering".

Christiana Figueres urged progress at the notoriously fractious talks amid a slew of new warnings of potentially disastrous global warming as a Filipino negotiator made a tearful undertaking to fast until the talks yield a tangible result.

A leading environmental group on Monday called on authorities to keep tough fishing quotas on Atlantic tuna when governments meet next week to set industry rules.

The U.S.-based Pew Charitable Trusts called on the 47-member governments of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas to maintain catch limits on endangered bluefin tuna.

India's Mars spacecraft was "successfully" raised into a higher orbit around Earth early on Tuesday, after a brief engine failure during an earlier attempt, the space agency said.

The Mars Orbiter Mission, which blasted off on November 5 for a 11-month trip to the Red Planet, is being launched on its way via an unusual "slingshot" method for interplanetary journeys.

Russia successfully launched a Proton-M rocket carrying a military satellite in the early hours of Tuesday from its Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The launch took place at 03:46 Moscow time (23:46 GMT) carrying a satellite for the Russian defense ministry, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

Meteorologists have yet to formally link global warming to typhoons like the one that devastated the Philippines, but they expect increasingly extreme weather phenomena due to a rise in ocean temperatures.

The trail of death and destruction left in the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan was at the forefront of a new round of United Nations climate talks that opened Monday in Poland, as Philippine authorities warned some 10,000 people may have died.

A potential successor to the Dalai Lama Monday warned that Chinese military installations and other projects in Tibet could have disastrous environmental consequences for Asia.

Urgyen Trinley urged India to voice its concerns over Chinese development activities in his Himalayan home country.

Dry soil at the Drennec lake near Sizun, western France, on November 25, 2011

Nations launched a new round of talks Monday for a 2015 deal to cut Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions in the aftermath of a deadly Philippines typhoon the U.N.'s climate chief labelled "sobering".

India's Mars spacecraft suffered a brief engine failure Monday as scientists tried to move it into a higher orbit around Earth, but controllers denied any setback to the ambitious low-cost mission.

The Mars Orbiter Mission, which blasted off on November 5 for a 11-month trip to the Red Planet, is being launched on its way via an unusual "slingshot" method for interplanetary journeys.

A slowdown in global warming that climate skeptics cite in favor of their cause was partly induced by one of the world's most successful environment treaties, a study said on Sunday.

The U.N.'s Montreal Protocol, designed to phase out industrial gases that destroy Earth's protective ozone layer, coincidentally applied a small brake to the planet's warming, it said.