WATER

In what almost looked like a playground dare, Japanese MP Yasuhiro Sonoda drank a glass of water taken from a radioactive puddle in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power, in front of a group of reporters.

Thailand is struggling with the worst flooding it has seen in 50 years. The flood has affected a third of its provinces and is currently swamping its densely populated capital, Bangkok. The flood, which started in July, has caused billions of dollars in damage and has taken the lives of 373 people. A third of Thailand's provinces are drenched and over 110,000 people have been displaced.

The 15th NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) ended ahead of schedule due to the predicted path of Hurricane Rina.

On Oct. 31, the world's population will reach seven billion. The seven billion milestone with projections of more growth, said Babatunde Ostimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, is a challenge, an opportunity and a call to action. Global population will reach seven billion on Oct. 31, with another billion people projected on Earth by the year 2025. The world's population is projected to reach 10 billion by the end of this century.

TW Hydrae, in the constellation Hydra, is an orange dwarf star and is smaller than our sun.

Arctic ice shelves may disappear in the future, although the ice masses already broke up 1,400 years ago and refroze 600 years later, according to new research.

Cold water vapor found near star 175 light years from Earth.

For the first time, researchers and astronomers at the Herschel Space Observatory have observed cold water vapor enveloping a dusty disk around a young star.

The end of a drilling ban in New York was meant to be a new dawn for energy companies. After years of waiting, they would finally be able to exploit the richest deposit of natural gas in the country. But as companies delve into new regulations for drilling in New York, they're discovering a bitter reality: half the land they had leased for drilling may now be out of bounds.

French food group Danone SA gave a confident outlook for 2012 and said its water business was still strategic, playing down a report it was in talks on a disposal.

Seaweed, multi-cellular marine algae, contains anti-coral chemicals that are responsible for killing corals, according to a recent research.

Coral reefs, whose decline was earlier linked with coastal pollution, global warming and sunscreen, are majorly affected by the chemicals released from seaweed.

A massive algae bloom on the waters of Lake Erie in the U.S. is believed to pose a significant threat to aquatic life forms in the lake.

Al Gore links several environmental disasters, including the Great Lakes' algae problem, to climate change.

U.S. stocks fell on Thursday after three days of gains as earnings from JPMorgan and soft economic data from China reinforced worries about a slowing global economy.

Concerned about voter angst over California's finances, lawmakers say they may need to overhaul a ballot measure that would provide $11.1 billion for a slew of long-awaited water projects.

Though human beings don't have sixth sense and work with only five senses, the most desired sixth sense was present in our fish-like ancestors who lived 500 million years ago.

It was thought that the 45-foot-long Snaggle-toothed ichthyosaur, an air-breathing sea monster larger than a school bus, was the king in the world of the prehistoric oceans But now Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark McMenamin believes that there was an even larger and more cunning sea monster - a huge Kraken or something like it. The sea monster, which preyed on ichthyosaurs, roamed the Triassic Seas.

Geologists will drill down more than 3,000 meters of ice to reach a sub-glacial lake in western Antarctic that is probably a million years old, in search of new species and clues about climate change.

The first source of water on Earth has long been debated. But now astronomers, using the Herschel Space Telescope, believe the water in the Earth's oceans could have from comets.

At least one town in Alabama has warned undocumented immigrants that their water supply will be cut off if they cannot prove they are U.S. citizens.