India's government approved in July spending nearly US$8 billion over five years to develop infrastructure for rural irrigation to boost crop productivity in a country where farmers rely largely on annual rains.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet gave its nod to allocate 500 billion rupees ($7.9 billion) for the project that aims to help India's 120 million-odd farmers, many of whom lack access to irrigation and struggle with deficient monsoon rains.

Senior diplomats charged with condensing an unwieldy draft for a global climate rescue pact, due to be inked in December, handed in their much-anticipated homework on Friday.

A near 90-page draft accord that has emerged from the 195-nation talks so far was a laundry list of unresolved issues and a myriad of options, often clashing, for averting climate disaster.

Seafood lovers are set to see less shellfish, salmon and other fish on their dinner plates as climate change warms the oceans and makes them more acidic.

The findings from a series of studies out this week suggest rising greenhouse emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are adding stress to oceans that are already suffering from overfishing, pollution and destruction of coastal ecosystems like mangroves.

Rising sea levels from climate change are a threat to sea turtle populations as eggs laid on beaches become submerged in saltwater, Australian scientists said Thursday.

Eggs buried by female turtles in usually "high and dry" areas on beaches could be inundated by rising sea levels and storm surges, a study by researchers from Australia's James Cook University said.

Blue skies in Beijing were a welcome surprise this week for the residents of Gaobeidian, a migrant neighborhood on the outskirts of the city.

Gaobeidian sits near the smokestacks and cooling towers of an 845-megawatt power plant, the last coal-fired plant operating in the Chinese capital. Billowing smoke forms a hazy backdrop as children play and women hang clothes out to dry.

If left unchecked, global warming will cause irreversible damage to marine life in the world's oceans, forcing fish to search for cooler waters and destroying valuable coral reefs, an international study said.

Keeping global average temperatures within two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures is the only way to stave off the worst effects of climate change on the Earth's oceans, which provide 90 percent of the planet's habitable space, said the study in the journal Science.

France signaled a "breakthrough" Tuesday at 46-nation talks in Paris tasked with paving the way for a highly-anticipated climate rescue pact to be inked in December.

Ministers and top officials at an informal gathering reached consensus on several issues that have stymied the official negotiations for years, France's top climate negotiator Laurence Tubiana told journalists.

Plans to build an 800-megawatt coal power plant near some of Thailand's most popular beaches have sparked protests and a hunger strike by activists who say officials aren't considering its impact on the pristine environment that makes the area an international tourist destination.

More than 100 members of the Save Andaman from Coal Network this week staged a march and sit-in outside the prime minister's office in the nation's capital against plans to build the plant near southern Thailand's Andaman coast about 650 kilometers (400 miles) south of Bangkok.

A Pacific islander who launched a landmark bid to become the world's first climate change refugee faces deportation from New Zealand after a court rejected his appeal.

Ioane Teitiota, 38, argued that he should not be sent back to Kiribati because rising seas threaten to deluge the island nation, making it unsafe for him and his family.

Foreign and environment ministers and other high-level officials from 45 countries are set to gather in Paris Monday seeking to re-energize climate talks mired in technical details and political squabbling.

Just four months ahead of a U.N. conference in the French capital tasked with producing a historic climate pact, U.S. scientists this week said 2014 was a record year for sea level rise, land temperatures, and the greenhouse gases that drive dangerous global warming.