South Korean space officials suspended a crucial rocket launch Thursday, after a technical problem halted the countdown just 17 minutes before the scheduled blast-off.

"It is impossible to resume the launch sequence today," Deputy Science Minister Cho Yul-Rae told reporters at the Naro Space Center on the south coast.

The preservation of the world's forests "is in China's hands", a top environmental campaign group said Thursday, accusing the biggest wood importer and consumer of fueling the illegal timber trade.

"China's role as the world's biggest timber trader means that further progress against illegal logging depends on the nation taking measures," the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) said in a report released in Beijing.

As the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol draws to a close, the world will dissect its record for successes to emulate in the fight against global warming -- and pitfalls to avoid.

If all goes well, Kyoto will eventually be superseded by a new worldwide treaty, whose design is being negotiated at U.N. talks in Doha, Qatar.

Work to build a permanent shelter to secure the exploded reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine reached a key milestone on Tuesday when workers raised the arched section that will cover the destroyed unit.

The explosion at reactor number four at the Chernobyl power plant in the early hours of April 26, 1986 sent radioactive fallout into the atmosphere that spread from the Soviet Union across Europe. It remains the world's worst nuclear accident.

Canada's environment minister unveiled Tuesday new regulations to improve fuel efficiency and halve the greenhouse gas emissions of passenger vehicles and light trucks.

The tougher standards, which must still be approved by parliament, would apply to model years 2017 to 2025 and align Canada's regulatory regime with the United States.

Sea levels are rising 60-percent faster than the U.N.'s climate panel forecast in its most recent assessment, scientists reported on Wednesday.

At present, sea levels are increasing at an average 3.2 millimetres (0.125 inches) per year, a trio of specialists reported in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

South Korea held a final dress rehearsal Wednesday for its third attempt to send a satellite into orbit and join an elite space club that includes Asian powers China, Japan and India.

After two previous failures in 2009 and 2010, the 140-tonne Korea Space Launch Vehicle (KSLV-I) is scheduled to blast off some time after 4:00pm (0700 GMT) Thursday from the Naro Space Center on the south coast.

Deforestation of Brazil's Amazon has slowed for a fourth consecutive year to its lowest rate since authorities began monitoring the world's largest rainforest, officials said Tuesday.

The National Institute of Space Research found that the Amazon lost 4,656 square kilometers (1,797 square miles) of rain forest over a period running from August 2011 to July 2012, 27 percent less than the previous year.

A group of American scientists met in Tokyo on Tuesday to study last year's Fukushima nuclear accident in hopes of finding lessons to improve the safety of U.S. atomic power reactors.

Norman Neureiter, head of the 22-member committee of the National Academy of Sciences, said the tsunami-spawned disaster at Fukushima nuclear power plant and its continuing impact have caused widespread concerns about the safety of nuclear energy.

China on Tuesday "successfully" launched a European-made telecommunications satellite into orbit aboard a Chinese rocket, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The satellite, made by Thales Alenia Space, will provide telecommunications services for customers in Asia, Africa and Europe, the report said, but did not name them.