Corn farmers in the verdant plains of southwestern France have responded to dwindling water resources by adopting drip irrigation -- a money-saving technique invented in the 1960s in Israel.

Initially adopted in water-poor regions including the vineyards and orchards of southern France, the method has begun appearing in big agriculture further north in the past three years.

As she has every day for 26 years, Delfina Salinas, a stocky Mexican woman, loads plastic jugs onto her donkey for a 30-minute walk to fetch water.

In Tehuixtitla, a mountainous area south of Mexico City, there is no running water. Salinas is used to this drudgery.

The limbs of an 11-year-old boy have been found inside a huge crocodile and his head discovered nearby after he was attacked in Papua New Guinea, a report said Wednesday.

The four-meter (13-foot) croc grabbed the boy, Melas Mero, as he was fishing with his parents on Thursday at the Siloura River in Gulf Province in the south of the Pacific nation, police commander Lincoln Gerari told PNG's National newspaper.

Mountainous Yemen is blessed with more water than its Arabian desert neighbors but the national passion for the stimulant plant qat threatens to exhaust that precious resource.

In the mountains around Sanaa, farmers are drilling so many unlicensed boreholes to irrigate the thirsty crop -- craved by the capital's residents --that the water table is falling by as much as six meters (20 feet) a year.

The world's oldest and best-preserved sperm, dating back 17 million years, has been unearthed in Australia, scientists said Wednesday.

The sperm from an ancient species of tiny shrimp was discovered at the Riversleigh World Heritage Fossil Site, an area in the far north of the state of Queensland where many extraordinary prehistoric Australian animals have previously been found.

Three astronauts, including a Russian and an American, touched down safely on Earth Wednesday aboard a Soyuz capsule, the first such landing since Russia's relationship with the West slumped amid the Ukraine crisis.

The returning crew consisted of Japan's Koichi Wakata, who was the first ever Japanese commander of an ISS space mission, as well as NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin.

The next time your throat is as dry as a bone and the Sun is beating down, take a glass of clean, cool water.

Savour it. Sip by sip.

German and Danish scientists on Monday said they had identified dozens of chemicals, including some used in hygiene and consumer products, that interfere with male fertility by damaging sperm.

Writing in the journal EMBO Reports, the team said a third of 96 compounds they tested using a new technique had an adverse effect on sperm.

British satellite operator Inmarsat said Monday it was offering a basic tracking service to all the world's passenger airlines free of charge, following the disappearance of Malaysian Airways flight MH370.

Inmarsat, which has played a role in the search for the missing plane, said the service it was offering would provide definitive positional information.

Ice is melting in the western Antarctic at an "unstoppable" pace, scientists said Monday, warning that the discovery holds major consequences for global sea level rise in the coming decades.

The speedy melting means that prior calculations of sea level rise worldwide made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will have to be adjusted upwards, scientists told reporters.