Living with sub-zero temperatures for several months a year, Estonians are no strangers to a little snow.

But residents of the Baltic nation were baffled on Tuesday when flurries of the white stuff fell in June for the first time in more than three decades.

Japan is set to offer India a carbon offset scheme that would see Tokyo's environmental technology used by the rising Asian giant to help reduce its emissions, a report said.

The scheme would see Japanese firms earn carbon credits in return for helping developing countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, the Nikkei newspaper said in its Monday evening edition, adding India was a likely early partner.

A moderate earthquake shook northwest Alaska on Monday, the fifth temblor of the same magnitude since April in an area with otherwise little activity, seismologists said.

The magnitude-5.7 quake struck at 4:01 a.m. Monday northeast of the village of Noatak, the Alaska Earthquake Center reported. As with other temblors in the earthquake swarm, the quake was felt in Noatak, an Inupiat Eskimo community of 560 people.

Great white sharks are likely rising in numbers off the coast of California and are not at risk of extinction despite some reports to the contrary, U.S. researchers said Monday.

The findings are good news for the ocean predator, suggesting that around 2,000 of them are swimming about in the Eastern North Pacific, not 219 as research released three years ago had indicated.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Monday sounded the alarm on the perils facing the world's oceans, calling for a global strategy to save the planet's life-giving seas.

"Let's develop a plan" to combat over-fishing, climate change and pollution, Kerry urged as he opened a ground-breaking two-day conference of world leaders, scientists and industry captains.

Aerospace giant Airbus Group (Berlin: AIR.BE - news) and French engine maker Safran (Paris: FR0000073272 - news) announced a joint venture Monday on space launchers, as Europe looks to compete with rising US rival SpaceX.

The two companies said in a statement they would team up on production of Ariane rockets for Arianespace, which is facing intense competition from low-cost SpaceX in sending up communications satellites.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry launches an unprecedented global effort Monday to save the world's oceans under siege from overfishing, climate change and pollution.

Heads of government and state as well as ministers from some 80 countries will gather with researchers and experts from the fishing, plastics and farming industries for the two-day conference aiming to find ways to protect the planet's seas and marine life.

Australia is home to some of the most pristine environment on Earth, but two of its most high-profile protected areas face threats to their status as World Heritage Sites at a UNESCO meeting starting Sunday in Doha.

In such a vast country that boasts large tracts of desert, rainforest and coast, many of Australia's natural wonders have won UNESCO World Heritage listings.

The European Union agreed Friday to limit the bloc's use of biofuels made directly from agricultural products after criticism they push up food prices and add to pollution.

Ministers from the 28-nation bloc overcame a year-long deadlock to agree a reduction in the use of 'first generation' biofuels, which are made from crops such as corn, beetroot or rapeseed.

Thousands of Australians rallied Saturday against the proposed logging of protected forests in rugged Tasmania ahead of a UNESCO World Heritage meeting where the issue will be discussed.

The conservative government has asked UNESCO to revoke its World Heritage listing for 74,000 hectares (183,000 acres) of forest, claiming it was not pristine, and open it up to the timber industry.