Potentially life-giving water still flows across the ancient surface of Mars from time to time, NASA scientists said Monday in revealing a potential breakthrough in both the search for life beyond Earth and human hopes to one day travel there.

New findings from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.

"We found the hydrated salts only when the seasonal features were widest, which suggests that either the dark streaks themselves or a process that forms them is the source of the hydration.

This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water -- albeit briny -- is flowing today on the surface of Mars."

Bluetongue disease has been reported in France, Romania and Hungary in the first outbreaks in the EU since 2011 and in France since 2010.

After reviewing almost 1000 hours of sound recordings in three European zoos, Angela Stöger at the University of Vienna, Austria, found no evidence of infrasonic communication – but she did pick up a weird humming coming from the giraffe enclosures in all three zoos at night.

NEW YORK (AP) — A Texas man admitted Wednesday in federal court in New York that he acted as a secret agent for the Russian government and headed an operation over about 10 years to export military technology to that country.

The bail sum of €27m was the amount that Russian billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev, who owns Monaco football club, paid for the two paintings, judicial sources told AFP. He also owns the 58 drawings, though it is not known where the third painting is. There has been no suggestion that Mr Rybolovlev, who bought his art through a family trust, knew that any of the works might have been stolen.

Far fewer people come to the UK to apply for asylum than you might think. More than 50 million people throughout the world were forced to flee their homes last year. There are more than 13 million refugees worldwide - but developing countries host over 80% of people. There are an estimated 126,000 refugees living in the UK. That's just 0.19% of the total population (64.1 million people). 

Facing the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War, ministers from EU member states are gathering to try to heal deep divisions in the bloc over migrant policy. They are expected to announce what the Union's next move will be in a press conference on Monday evening. The meeting comes after Germany - which is expecting 800,000 migrants this year - revealed it could no longer cope with the record influx in a shock decision on Sunday to reintroduce border controls. Europe's top economy had previously signalled it would throw open the country's borders to Syrian refugees but ministers explained that regions could no longer cope with the rising number of arrivals. Some observers have suggested that the move was intended to put pressure on other EU nations before Monday's crisis talks, as it will shift a heavier share of the refugee load back onto countries with external frontiers like Hungary, Greece and Italy.