He cast his rod happily here for 30 years -- but where a river once teemed with fish, Brazilian fisherman Ernane da Silva these days stares out over a valley of weeds and bone dry, sun-parched land.

The southeastern state of Sao Paulo is suffering its worst drought in 80 years with scores of towns sounding the alarm, blaming increasing deforestation, unseasonably high temperatures and creeping urbanization.

Phnom Penh's only working elephant was blessed by a crowd of chanting Buddhist monks Tuesday as she prepared for a life of comfortable jungle retirement after three decades of giving rides to tourists.

Sambo, a 54-year-old female, had been a fixture at the Cambodian capital's Wat Phnom temple since 1980. 

Vietnam's environmental police have seized a record haul of over 1,000 endangered sea turtles which were being prepared for illegal export to China, an official said Tuesday.

"The turtles were all dead," Le Hong Thai, an official of the Ministry of Public Security's environmental police department, told Agence France Presse. 

Developed countries must do more than their less wealthy counterparts to tackle climate change, the world's biggest polluter China said Tuesday, reaffirming its longstanding position before a United Nations climate conference next month.

The meeting, to be held in the Peruvian capital Lima from December 1 to 12, is intended to pave the way for a global deal on cutting Earth-warming carbon emissions to be agreed next year in Paris as a replacement for the Kyoto treaty.

Bee populations have declined in recent decades mainly due to a loss of biodiversity causing the disappearance of their favorite pollinating plants, according to a study published Monday.

Researchers analyzed the pollen found on the bodies of insects from 57 different wild bee species collected before 1950 and held in natural history museums in the Netherlands. They found that the insects had certain preferred plants for pollinating.

Peruvian authorities were investigating Sunday the deaths of some 500 sea lions whose rotting corpses were found on a northern beach.

Environmental police told the official Andina news agency that the decomposing bodies of adult and juvenile sea lions were found on a beach in Santa province about 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Lima.

Climate change could undermine efforts to defeat extreme poverty around the globe, the World Bank warned Sunday.

In a new report on the impact of global warming, the bank said sharp temperature rises would cut deeply into crop yields and water supplies in many areas and possibly set back efforts to bring populations out of poverty.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Italy's first female astronaut has safely docked with the International Space Station, NASA said.

Samantha Cristoforetti, along with Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov and American astronaut Terry Virts, arrived at the orbiting space lab on the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft at 0249 GMT Monday, NASA said.

Swimmers were ordered out of the water at Sydney's Bondi Beach Saturday after a shark was seen in the area, just hours after a dead great white was pulled from nets protecting bathers.

The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries said the carcass, which was found about 500 metres (yards) from the shoreline, was the second great white to be found in the nets designed to protect swimmers this week.

For the 21st-century spacewoman, gender is a subject often best ignored.

After years of training for their first space mission, the last thing Samantha Cristoforetti and Elana Serova want to dwell on is the fact they are women.