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• CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- The Dragon spacecraft is on its way home.
• Early Thursday morning, space station astronauts set the SpaceX capsule loose after a five-day visit.
• The world's first commercial supply ship is due to splash down in the Pacific at midday, Eastern Time. It will aim for an area 560 miles southwest of Los Angeles. On board are science samples and old station equipment.
• Last week, the California-based SpaceX became the first private company to send a cargo ship to the International Space Station. It's now on the verge of becoming the only supplier to return major items. The government-provided cargo vessels of Russia, Europe and Japan burn up on descent. NASA lost the capability of getting things back when the shuttles were retired last year.
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.
• Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.
• So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.
• "The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."
• Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.
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