Swiss glaciers suffer 'disastrous' year of ice loss, threatening water supplies

Dr Ning Xu denies he broke the rules of Nikon's annual Small World In Motion contest.

When Vladimir Putin arrived to address Russia's parliament on Wednesday, a warm welcome was guaranteed. "The Special Election Operation", as one Russian newspaper dubbed last month's legislative vote , has produced a State Duma even more pro-Putin than anything before it. It allows the Kremlin to claim it has been handed a huge mandate from the Russian people.

A month after mass catastrophic flooding, around 30 people have died in landslides and heavy rain.

As flight FZ 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv approached the Jordanian border on Wednesday, passengers knew in an instant that something was wrong when the plane began plummeting from the sky in a rapid dive. It was like "we were having very big turbulence, but there was no turbulence", passenger Almog Italie told AFP, describing the sensation of losing thousands of feet of altitude in seconds as similar to riding a "rollercoaster". FRANCE 24's August Hakansson reports.