SCIENCENVIRO (Opinion):

In any reasonable reckoning, the outcome of the 17th meeting of the Committee of Parties (COP) of the United Framework Convention on Climate Change at Durban was a triumph for European climate diplomacy
In the run-up to Durban, Europe had offered to support a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol in exchange for a “road map” that would point the way towards a legally binding agreement on mitigating global warming that would involve all parties.
At Durban, the European Union succeeded in putting together a substantial coalition, including the small island states, the least developed and some other developing countries, and the emerging economies of Brazil and South Africa, behind a climate agenda that is, in scientific terms, unambitious in its mitigation goals and clearly aimed at passing the climate burden on to the large developing countries.
It is clear that India was unprepared for the groundswell of support for a compact to deliver a global climate agreement binding on all nations.
India, together with China, which was supportive of India throughout the meeting, was more or less isolated.
The strategic mishandling of Durban is evident from the fact that after opposing for two weeks the very idea of an ‘agreement to have an agreement,' India finally assented to the Durban Platform without even the token inclusion of any of its core concerns such as equity.

Astronomers have announced the discovery of the two biggest black holes ever seen, each one around 300 million light years from Earth
These objects are some of the strangest in our known universe, where the laws of physics seem to break down and space gets very strange.
Black holes begin as giant stars (at least six times the mass of our Sun) and, after billions of years they collapse in on themselves into a point smaller than the full-stop at the end of this sentence. Nothing nearby can escape the resulting gravity pull.