Paris has leapt into the headlines over an alert for dangerous atmospheric particles, yet it does not ordinarily count among the world's most polluted cities.

Here are the top 10 cities for which data is available, according to a 2011 World Health Organisation (WHO) report.

Archaeologists have found the 3,200-year-old skeleton of a man with a spreading form of cancer, the oldest example so far of a disease often associated with modern lifestyles, scientists said Monday.

The remains of a man believed to be aged between 25 and 35 were found last year in a tomb in Sudan on the banks of the River Nile by a student at Durham University in northeast England.

U.S. researchers say they have spotted evidence that a split-second after the Big Bang, the newly formed universe ballooned out at a pace so astonishing that it left behind ripples in the fabric of the cosmos.

If confirmed, experts said, the discovery would be a major advance in the understanding of the early universe. Although many scientists already believed that an initial, extremely rapid growth spurt happened, they have long sought the evidence cited in the new study.

A corner of South Korea is in the grip of a frenzied hunt for valuable space souvenirs, following a rare meteor shower there last week.

Hundreds of people have been scouring hills and rice paddies for meteorites near the southeastern city of Jinju after the shower on March 9, some of them armed with GPS devices and metal detectors, according to media reports.

Analysis of satellite data showed that dusty conditions in North Africa and West Asia were followed within days by stronger monsoon rains in the subcontinent, according to research published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"Dust in the air absorbs sunlight west of India, warming the air and strengthening the winds carrying moisture eastward," the U.S.-based Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said in a press release.

The last edge of the Greenland ice sheet that had resisted global warming has now become unstable, adding billions of tonnes of meltwater to rising seas, scientists said on Sunday.

In a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, they said a surge in temperature from 2003 had eased the brakes on a long "river" of ice that flows to the coast in northeastern Greenland.

Beneath its Sun-scorched exterior, the planet Mercury is cooling, which is causing it to shrink ever so slightly, scientists said Sunday.

Over the last 3.8 billion years, the planet has shrunk by up to 14 kilometers (8.8 miles) to reach its present diameter of 4,800 km (3,032 miles), they said.

Paris on Monday resorted to drastic measures to curb soaring pollution levels by forcing all cars with number plates ending in even numbers off the road for the first time in two decades.

Around 700 police officers were deployed to man 60 checkpoints around the French capital to ensure that only cars with number plates ending in odd numbers were out on the streets.

Scientists have crowdsourced a network of volunteers taking water samples at beaches along the U.S. West Coast in hopes of capturing a detailed look at low levels of radiation drifting across the ocean since the 2011 tsunami that devastated a nuclear power plant in Japan.

With the risk to public health extremely low, the effort is more about perfecting computer models that will better predict chemical and radiation spills in the future than bracing for a threat, researchers say.

China's troubled Jade Rabbit moon rover "woke up" again early Friday, though the mechanical troubles that have plagued it remain unfixed, the government said.

The rover, called Yutu in Chinese, turns dormant and stops sending signals during the lunar night, two-week periods when the part of the moon's surface it is on rotates away from the sun and temperatures turn extremely cold.