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.

A short, hairy "ape man" who tumbled into a pit in South Africa millions of years ago is back in the running as a candidate ancestor for humans, scientists said Friday.

A painstaking 13-year probe has "convincingly shown", they said, that the strange-looking creature named Little Foot lived some three million years ago -- almost a million years earlier than calculated by rival teams.

Veterinarians at the San Diego Zoo have performed an operation on a newborn gorilla that was delivered by cesarean section.

The zoo says the 4.6-pound (2 kilogram) female was born Wednesday but seemed to have breathing problems. On Friday morning, a team fixed a collapsed lung that probably occurred during delivery.

Paris authorities said Thursday they would make public transport free for three days to encourage drivers to leave their vehicles behind due to severe pollution caused by unusually warm weather.

The French capital has been under maximum pollution alert for several days, as have more than 30 departments in the country, and the air is expected to remain exceptionally unhealthy until the end of the weekend.

A Japanese research institute was likely to retract a study that promised a revolutionary way to create stem cells over claims its data was faulty, reports said Friday, dealing a huge blow to what was touted as a game-changing discovery.

The findings, published by Haruko Obokata along with other Japanese researchers and a U.S.-based scientist in the January edition of British journal Nature, outlined a relatively simple approach in the quest to grow transplant tissue in the lab.

World Cup organizers said Wednesday that an estimated 320 tons of solid waste which the June 12 to July 13 event is expected to generate will be sent for recycling.

The government World Cup web portal said organizers expect each match to generate around five tons of recyclable waste based on the experience of last year's Confederations Cup.