The discovery of unauthorized genetically engineered wheat growing on a farm in the U.S. state of Oregon has cast a spotlight on agricultural biotechnology and the debate about its safety.

While genetically engineered or genetically modified (GM) wheat has not been approved for commercial planting, GM corn and GM soybeans already reign supreme on American farms.

Negotiators on Monday launched a new round of U.N. climate talks to warnings that a newly breached threshold was a wakeup call to tackle surging carbon emissions.

The 12-day talks under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) seek to breathe life into a quest to forge a pact on heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

The first manned aircraft that can fly day and night powered entirely by solar energy was to leave Texas for Missouri Monday, and will use a "revolutionary" inflatable hangar to replace one damaged in last week's Midwest tornadoes.

Powerful storms that hit the St. Louis, Missouri area late Friday rendered Solar Impulse's hangar at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport unusable, organizers of its current U.S. flight said.

Multinational companies are profiting hand over fist from abusive forestry practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where illegal logging, mislabeled timber and false permits are widespread, according to several non-governmental organizations.

The forests of the Congo basin in central Africa cover about 100 million hectares (almost 250 million acres) and are regarded as the second-largest green lung on the planet after the Amazon rainforest, but in DR Congo trees are being cut down with little regard for the law. Local and international NGOs charge that Congolese authorities are working with logging companies.

A billion dollars of public money earmarked to help people hit by Japan's 2011 quake and tsunami was spent in areas unaffected by the natural disaster, the government admitted Monday.

Projects ranging from counting sea turtles on semi-tropical beaches, to the promotion of cheese and wine events hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the disaster zone benefited from the largesse, a report said.

The Japanese government has decided to reject landmark rules on the trade in sharks, an official said Friday, opting for status quo despite a global push to protect the predators.

Japan is filing a "reservation" about the regulation under the 178-member Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), to restrict cross-border trade in the oceanic whitetip, the porbeagle and three types of hammerhead shark.

Have no fear: The White House says an asteroid more than 1 1/2 miles (2.7 kilometers) long poses no threat to planet Earth.

The big rock called Asteroid 1998 QE2 was making its closest approach to Earth on Friday, keeping a safe distance of 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

A coral-killing starfish has begun infesting a channel of water in the Philippines famed for having some of the most diverse marine life in the world, the government said Friday.

The appearance of the crown-of-thorns starfish in the Verde Island Passage could cause great damage to the area's biodiversity, Jacob Meimban, head of the wildlife bureau's coastal marine management office, told Agence France Presse.

Astronauts who travel on future missions to Mars would likely be exposed to their lifetime limit of radiation during the trip, not to mention time spent on the Red Planet, scientists said Thursday.

The measurements were made aboard the Mars Science Laboratory, an unmanned NASA rover and mobile lab that set off for Mars in 2011 before landing 253 days later in August 2012, said the report in the U.S. journal Science.

The United Nations on Thursday warned overfishing in the Mediterranean was boosting jellyfish, which reduce stocks further and it called for jellyfish to be used in food, medicine and cosmetics.

A study by the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome said overfishing had increased the number of jellyfish because it had removed their main predators from the food chain.