Mexican authorities are proposing a $37 million plan to ban gillnet fishing in most of the upper Sea of Cortez to save the critically endangered vaquita marina, the world's smallest porpoise.

The plan would compensate fishermen for stopping the use of nets that often sweep up the tiny porpoises along with their catch.

Uruguay, a country of 3.3 million inhabitants and four times as many cows, hopes to feed 50 million people thanks to drones, "smart" combines and other high-tech farming techniques.

At a farm a two-hour drive outside the capital Montevideo, combines on auto pilot meticulously harvest every millimeter of field.

Wildlife authorities in Zimbabwe on Wednesday announced plans to export at least 62 elephants to top up scant state funding and curb a ballooning pachyderm population.

"Zimbabwe got allocations from CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) to export elephants to suitable destinations and one of the destinations is China," Jerry Gotora, chairman of the parks and wildlife authority, told AFP.

Call it a holiday gift from Pele.

Lava from the mountain believed to be home to the Hawaiian volcano goddess has stalled on its slow creep toward a Big Island shopping center.

On land deep in Hong Kong's lush green northern suburbs near the border with mainland China, farmer Koon-wing Chan is working to keep a legendary scent alive in the city known as the Fragrant Harbor.

Chan runs Hong Kong's last commercial plantation of agarwood trees, prized throughout the centuries for aromatic resin used to make incense, perfume and medicine.

A fish eye from a primitive time when Earth was but one single continent, has yielded evidence of color vision dating back at least 300 million years, researchers said Tuesday.

Analyzing the fossilized remains of a fish from the "spiny shark" family that lived long before the dinosaurs, scientists discovered light-sensing "rod" and "cone" eye cells -- the oldest ever found.

European rock ants at a crossroads will most often turn left, a group trait that may boost survival, a study said Wednesday.

Many creatures, including humans, show a preference for one side over the other in movement or the senses.

A suspected organised crime boss alleged to be a leading figure in the illegal ivory trade has been arrested by Interpol agents in Tanzania, officials said Tuesday.

The international police organisation last month put Kenyan national Feisal Ali Mohammed on a list of nine most wanted suspects linked to crimes against the environment. 

At times, waterboarding rendered al-Qaida terror suspect Abu Zubaydah hysterical. But later, a message to CIA headquarters described an interrogator merely lifting his eyebrow and snapping his fingers, and Zubaydah "slowly walked on his own to the water table" to lie down.

The Senate's torture report describes how the CIA's harsh interrogation program sought to make detainees passive and powerless to resist, using techniques from sleep deprivation to stress positions to waterboarding to induce a state that psychologists call "learned helplessness." ''Compliant," was the interrogators' description of Zubaydah.

British emergency services rescued an "exhausted" lost seal stranded in a muddy field about 30 kilometers (over 18 miles) from the sea in northern England on Monday.

Spotted by a woman walking her dog, photos of the incongruous marine creature lying on the grass spread quickly on social media and curious onlookers gathered at the field in Newton-le-Willows to see it.