A dozen dogs originally destined for dinner tables in South Korea arrived in the Washington area Monday to be adopted as pets.

They were the first of a total of 23 dogs being imported into the United States this week as part of a campaign to combat the eating of dog meat in East Asia.

SpaceX on Tuesday aborted its Falcon 9 rocket launch at the last minute, postponing a landmark bid to open a new era of recycling rockets by landing a key part on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

The year 2014 broke a series of heat records in France, Britain, Germany and Belgium, weather agencies reported Monday.

In France, "2014 was the hottest year since 1900," the Meteo-France weather agency said in a statement.

3D printing will revolutionize war and foreign policy, say experts, not only by making possible incredible new designs but by turning the defense industry -- and possibly the entire global economy -- on its head.

For many, 3D printing still looks like a gimmick, used for printing useless plastic figurines and not much else.

Thick mangroves have long protected Karachi, southern Pakistan's sprawling metropolis, from battering by the Arabian Sea, but pollution, badly managed irrigation and years of illegal logging have left this natural barrier in a parlous state.

Experts fear that loss of the natural barrier formed by the mangroves could put the city of nearly 20 million people at greater risk from violent storms and even tsunamis.

A giant bluefin tuna sold for more than $37,000 in the first auction of the year at a Tokyo fish market on Monday, as Japan faces growing pressure to cut back on consumption of the threatened fish.

The 180.4-kilogram (380 pound) tuna, caught off Japan's northern region of Aomori, fetched a winning bid of 4.51 million yen ($37,480), said an official at the Tsukiji fish market.

Air pollution in Beijing dropped slightly last year, municipal authorities said, although levels of the most dangerous small particulate matter remained more than three times the internationally recommended limit.

China's cities are often hit by heavy pollution, blamed on coal-burning by power stations and industry, as well as vehicle use, and it has become a major source of discontent with the ruling Communist Party.

Two Polish teams will search this year for the Polish submarine ORP Orzel, which disappeared in the North Sea in May 1940 during a mission with the Allies in World War II.

The two searches will be conducted by the Culture Ministry and the Maritime Museum in the Baltic port of Gdansk.

Much of America is about to get the Arctic shivers.

Meteorologists are forecasting frigid polar air will plunge much of the central and eastern U.S. into sub-freezing temperatures next week.

A newborn orca in the endangered pod that frequents Puget Sound is an encouraging sign following the death earlier this month of a pregnant killer whale from the same group.

"That was a pretty hard hit," Howard Garrett of the Whidbey Island-based Orca Network said Wednesday. "It's good to see a positive sign."