North Korea fired a short range missile into the sea off its east coast on Sunday. It's the second day in a row the rogue nation fired short range missiles for no apparent reason. Seems a little wasteful, doesn't it?
France finally became the 14th country to legalize gay marriage on Saturday when President Francois Hollande signed the bill that legalizes same sex marriage into law. But ugly protests that have marked the legal process will continue even now that the bill is passed.
North Korea noticed the world stopped paying attention to them, and so, the country fired three short range missiles off the coast to out all eyes on them. Are we about to fall back into the endless stream of provocations and threats that seemed to die down?
Advocates of action on climate change hold a trump card. When the Supreme Court in 2007 determined that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, the EPA got a mandate to regulate it. But, what the court giveth, the court can rescind in a tightly contested vote.
Some simmering rumors have risen to the surface after Toronto Mayor Rob Ford appears to have been caught on camera smoking crack cocaine with drug dealers. But this is just the latest resume item for the man who might North America's most ridiculous mayor.
Though he isn't considered a suspect, a former Chechen separatist who is now a refugee in the United States has become a key target of information in the Boston Marathon bombing investigation.
Russia, one of the few remaining friends of Bashar al-Assad's regime, just sent the Syrian government some advanced antiship missiles.
National Geographic on how cell phone can help fight pirate fishing, London Review of Books on the recent literature of climate change, The Huffington Post on the reality of our environmental harm, The New York Times on how insurers are dealing with increasingly catastrophic weather, and Forbes on the future of energy storage.
Reports on Thursday of a Saudi Arabian sheikh dooming Twitter users to eternal damnation may seem like inexplicable hyperbole to Americans. But it's likely an escalation of attempts by Saudi authorities to crackdown on a key tool for dissent.
If you weren't already convinced that the Russian evidence against accused American spy Ryan Fogle is rock solid, this newest revelation has to seal the deal.
It is true that there is not unanimity in the scientific community over the role of humans in climate change. But with nearly every scientific paper for 20 years agreeing that warming is linked to human behavior, we're as close to unanimity as we'll get.
The company's selection of chicken and hearty sides is so popular that Palestinians living on the Gaza Strip, where imported goods and travel remain restricted, are willing to pay a team of smugglers to run KFC orders through underground tunnels, usually waiting four or more hours to see their orders fulfilled.
There are few industries more exposed to financial risk from climate change than insurance. Unsurprisingly, the industry at large is trying to figure out how to limit its losses from extreme weather events. Individual insurers are a little slower to act.
North Korea's state-run news agency announced on Wednesday that its mysterious American captive, Kenneth Bae, has begun his 15-year sentence at a "special prison," which has Korea watchers scratching their heads. And if Pyongyang is trying to parlay Bae's imprisonment into political gain after all, it's a pretty spectacular move.
For the second time in as many weeks, the Internet usage in Syria disappeared mysteriously around 10 a.m. local time Wednesday with little to no warning. So, is it another case of the Assad regime trying to disrupt rebel communications or are they really having technical difficulties?
One of the suspects in the rape and murder of a woman in Delhi last year is in critical condition after nearly being killed by fellow inmates in prison.
On Sunday, the low temperature was 22 degrees in Aberdeen, South Dakota — that's ten degrees below freezing. The next day, according to the National Weather Service, the high hit 92.
Every time it seems like the atrocities of the Syrian civil war have crossed another horrifying line, a new story comes along that pushes the bar even lower. And the video that's circulating — the one that appears to show a rebel commander eating the lung of a dead Syrian solider — is not the first video or the last, just the latest atrocity in this awful war.
Troops of the Congolese Army trained by a U.S. Special Forces team went on to commit mass rape and murder of women and children while fleeing rebel forces last year, according to a new United Nations report, raising questions not just about these particular atrocities but surrounding the United States's Africa Command operations in general.
Russian security forces have detained an employee at the American embassy in Moscow, accusing him of recruiting spies for the CIA. Whether the charges stick or not, this bizarre incident won't help relations one bit. Here's why Ryan Fogle might not really be a spy anyway.
Some of the world's biggest clothing retailers have agreed to pay for improvements and monitor safety in the Bangladesh garment industry after the collapse of a crowded factory late last month killed over 1,000 people.
In case you weren't sure what climate change looks like, here's a preview: It looks like tens of millions people displaced from their homes due to climate- and weather-related events each year.
If you're already afraid of humans in the same room as you, here's how to responsibly freak out on the viral news — about the SARS cousin, the Chinese bird flu, and now wild polio in Somalia — before it goes viral in the wrong way.
Two days after the temple of journalism announced its intent to honor Hussam Salama and Mahmoud al-Kumi, who were killed in November while working as cameramen for the Middle East-based Al-Aqsa TV, the museum has decided not to recognize them, citing their employer's deep ties to Hamas.
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization wants to be clear about its report today. "We are not saying that people should be eating bugs." Just that global changes may necessitate it.
Rescue and recovery workers are shutting down the search for survivors of the Bangladesh factory collapse, as officials don't expect to find any more bodies—dead or alive—inside the rubble.
In case you've ever doubted that astronauts are the best, Commander Chris Hadfield is here to set you straight with what is apparently the first music video recorded in space. His song choice? "Space Oddity," by David Bowie. Of course.
Pope Francis's first canonization ceremony was a record-breaking one. The new pontiff named over 800 new saints on Sunday. That's already almost double the number of saints declared by Pope John Paul II, whose 480-odd canonizations were, at the time, more than those of all of his predecessors since 1588, combined.
Turkish officials arrested nine Turkish nationals accused of having ties to Syrian intelligence forces for the brutal car bombings that killed 46 people in Reyhanli, a town on the border of the two countries where Syrian refugees have started living since the conflict began.
Astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn completed the most impromptu spacewalk in NASA history ahead of schedule. The two men spent roughly five hours outside of the International Space Station repairing an ammonia pump used to cool the laboratory's engine system.
Despite violence from the Taliban, citizens in Pakistan turned out in huge numbers on Saturday to vote in the country's historic first ever democratic elections.
Just when moral vegetarians thought their meal of choice wasn't sentient, it turns out that plants can totally talk to each other. Even weirder, they communicate through underground fungi. So mushrooms aren't cool to eat, either. Sorry.
José Efraín Ríos Montt, the Guatemalan octogenarian/general/Congressman/dictator whose rule was partially supported by the United States, has been convicted of ordering the deaths of thousands of Mayans during the country's 36-year-long civil war.
Fertile lovers a plus, gills a must and relocation fees included — only other Mangarahara cichlids or Ptychochromis Insolitus, need apply.
It has happened. For the first time, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels passed a daily average of 400 parts per million. There is now more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any point since 2.9 million years before humans existed.
Unlock your doors, take off the foil hats, and stop worrying about the White House—everything science fiction movies have taught you about alien invasions is wrong. Except, of course, if the only thing you know about aliens is E.T., then everything you know is right: Aliens aren't going to plop down on Earth and blow us into smithereens, sciencee says a Finnish economist swears.
It's been weeks since the first confirmations that chemical weapons are being used in Syria, but for the international community, nothing has changed when it comes to balancing the equation for going to war.
SARS's cousin, novel coronavirus, has appeared in France without warning. Even more puzzling: the new case appears to have been transmitted to and by a French man returning home from Dubai, where no cases of the disease have even been reported.
In a stunning development out of Bangladesh, workers cleaning up the wreckage of a collapsed garment factory found a survivor alive after more than two weeks trapped under the debris.
United States citizen and "devout Christian" Kenneth Bae is set to spend the next 15 years in a North Korea prison camp for possessing a National Geographic documentary, among other things.
About twice a year, Yale University's Project on Climate Change Communication releases a survey assessing how Americans feel about the environmental threat. On Thursday, it released the latest version. We've extracted the four most important graphs.
Pakistan is trying to finish its first-ever peaceful democratic transition, but extremists representing a small portion of the population will do anything they can to stop it.
This week, an emotional young traffic officer named Ri-Kyong Sim was honored at a military ceremony with the North Korean equivalent of the Medal of Valor — for what, nobody on the outside is exactly sure, but the best guess is that she may have inadvertently saved Kim Jong-un's life.
As workers continue to pull bodies out of the wreckage of the collapsed Bangladeshi factory, another factory in the capital of Dhaka caught on fire, killing eight more than people.
As the world's third largest supplier of the plant, Bolivia's trying to shake itself free from coca's drug-addled past and turn the crop into nutritious food. There's only one problem: It tastes terrible.
Over a week after multiple parties found condemning evidence, the Italian clothing company Benetton admits that it bought clothes from the garment factory in Bangladesh that recently collapsed and killed over 800 people.
This we know for sure: Silvio Berlusconi is still guilty of tax fraud. But the former three-time Italian prime minister and long-time media baron may never see the inside of a jail cell, on account of being a wealthy political fat cat, and also because he's really old.
A container ship lost control and took out the massive concrete and glass control tower overlooking Genoa, Italy's busiest port, on Tuesday evening, killing three people while another four were taken to the hospital for treatment and a few more are still missing.
Police in Europe rounded up 31 people in three countries on Wednesday and recovered most of the $50 million in diamonds stolen from the Brussels Airport earlier this year, proving once again that most daring and outlandish crimes are the hardest to get away with.
Stephen Hawking is known for a lot of things — theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, general relativity — but being an an activist for peace in the Middle East is hardly one of them. Not any more!
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