A U.S.-Russian space crew landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Sunday after an eight-month stint on the International Space Station.
The gigantic wildfire ravaging southwestern France has created an extremely dangerous "pyrocumulonimbus"—a phenomenon never before seen in the country—the spokesman for the country's National Firefighters Federation of France (FNSPF) told AFP.
On a boat off the coast of California, Sara Lesser gazes wistfully at dozens of dolphins playing in the vessel's wake. This summer, extreme heat is making such a scene increasingly rare.
Firefighters battled massive blazes tearing through forests across France and Spain on Monday, as authorities warned of a fresh heat wave set to engulf the scorched French wine-growing region around the major city of Bordeaux.
The fossilized spines of saber-toothed cats in the La Brea Tar Pits reveal evidence of an unexpectedly high prevalence of rare spinal nerve tumors, suggesting that the species became inbred just before extinction. These tumors, which cause significant pain and reduced limb function, could have made the cats particularly vulnerable to the lure of prey animals stuck in the tar pits.
The northern highlands of Ethiopia are among Africa's oldest agricultural landscapes. Some of the world's most important crops originated here, particularly pulses and grains, including teff. Yet another crop has a less well-known history in Ethiopia's Tigray region: the grapevine.
