This seaside city thought it had the perfect solution the last time California withered in a severe drought more than two decades ago: Tap the ocean to turn salty seawater to fresh water.

The $34 million desalination plant was fired up for only three months and mothballed after a miracle soaking of rain.

Politicians say Madrid's shared electric bicycle scheme, due to launch this month, can change the lives of citizens -- but others warn it will put their lives in danger.

The Spanish capital is seeking to match rival Barcelona, as well as Paris and London, by providing hundreds of bicycles for public hire -- with the added feature of electric motors to help riders up slopes.

U.S. farmers can grow more corn than ever before thanks to genetic modifications and improved planting techniques, but the crops are also increasingly vulnerable to drought, researchers said Thursday.

The study in the journal Science found that "densely planted corn appears to be unexpectedly more sensitive to water scarcity," raising concerns about future food supply as the planet warms.

A man was Friday convicted on 24 charges of possessing illegal wildlife products, including orangutan and tiger skulls, following the biggest seizure of such items in Australian history.

John Kolettas, 44, pleaded guilty after police raided his Sydney home last year and found 78 illegal products made from 24 threatened species.

The forked tailed drongo bird of Africa -- quite the trickster -- imitates multiple species' warning calls to scare off other animals and steal their food, a study published Thursday revealed.

The birds often use their own danger alert to trick their fellow bird and beast into abandoning a meal, but researchers were puzzled why animals never wise up to the false-warning scheme. 

Scientists have for the first time measured the rotation of a planet in another solar system -- a juvenile, gassy giant spinning at a breakneck 90,000 kilometers per hour, they reported on Wednesday.

Orbiting a star about 63 light years from Earth, Beta Pictoris b is more than 16 times larger and 3,000 times more massive than our planet, but its days last only eight hours.

Isle Royale National Park's inbred gray wolf population remains dangerously low for a third consecutive year, while the moose on which they feed have doubled during the same period — trends that could lead to long-term problems for the Lake Superior archipelago's ecosystems, scientists said Wednesday.

Only nine wolves roamed the park this winter — one more than the eight recorded last year, which was the lowest total since wildlife biologists began observing the relationship between Isle Royale wolves and moose in the late 1950s. The study is the world's longest of a predator-prey relationship in a closed ecosystem.

UNESCO on Thursday condemned a decision to allow the dumping of dredge waste in Great Barrier Reef waters and recommended the Australian marine park be considered for inclusion on the World Heritage in Danger list.

The decision in January to allow three million cubic metres of dredge waste to be disposed of in park waters followed a decision by the government to give the green light to a major coal port expansion for India's Adani Group on the reef coast in December.

President Barack Obama's administration scored a major victory Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court revived regulation limiting harmful emissions that blow across state lines.

A coalition of six progressive and conservative justices clinched the 6-2 vote overturning a lower court decision that a 2011 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule overstepped the agency's authority.

Researcher Leonid Moroz emerges from a dive off the Florida Keys and gleefully displays a plastic bag holding a creature that shimmers like an opal in the seawater.

This translucent animal and its similarly strange cousins are food for science. They regrow with amazing speed if they get chopped up. Some even regenerate a rudimentary brain.