India has rejected U.S. President Donald Trump's comments that it had linked its accession to the Paris climate control accord to receiving foreign aid and said it was committed to protecting the environment on its own. An American exit could prompt other countries to withdraw from the pact or rethink their emissions pledges, making it much harder to achieve the agreement’s already difficult goal of limiting global warming to a manageable level.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched its most powerful and heaviest rocket yet on Monday (June 5), called the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV MkIII). The new rocket lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, at 7:58 a.m. EDT (1158 GMT), successfully delivering the massive GSAT-19 communications satellite into orbit.