Santa Barbara, Calif. More than 100 people were arrested and dozens—including six police officers—injured last week when a large spring break party near the University of California, Santa Barbara, deteriorated into a riot. An estimated 15,000 people were at the all-day annual “Deltopia” party at the beach community of Isla Vista, near the Santa Barbara campus. Fighting broke out when […]
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A study has discovered a new giant species of dinosaur fossils in South Africa. The new species lived about 200 million years ago and was twice the size of the modern-day African elephant. According to the study this animal was the largest to live on the planet during the dinosaur age. They were about 13 feet in height at the […]
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Karachi, Pakistan Nuclear plants at risk: Pakistani activists are seeking to block the construction of two nuclear power plants in an earthquake-prone, coastal area that is vulnerable to tsunamis. The Chinese are building the two reactors—using an experimental design—less than 20 miles from the sprawling city of Karachi, where 20 million people would be at risk should a reactor meltdown […]
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Budapest Power grab: In the face of mass protests and international condemnation, the Hungarian parliament has overwhelmingly passed 15 pages of amendments to the country’s 1-year-old constitution that practically abolish all judicial checks on the government. The amendments retroactively restore a number of controversial laws that were passed by the right-wing Fidesz government but subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the courts. […]
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Thomas Moore a fifth grader from Maryland decided that he wanted to help cancer patients by donating his hair. It took him two years to get it long enough to donate. The longer his hair grew he had to keep it in cornrows to help it stay nice and tame. After a while the braids started to hurt his head, […]
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Bulgarians hate old people, said Ruslan Jordanov. I’m not kidding. In a recent survey, 58 percent of Bulgarians surveyed admitted to disliking the elderly, making them even more reviled than the Roma—quite a feat in Bulgaria. No wonder “nobody ever gets up to give them a seat on the tram.” Long ago, our society revered grandparents as fonts of wisdom. […]
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The smog which suffocates Beijing has gotten so bad that the Chinese media has concluded that something must be done. Poor visibility has led to canceled flights and highway closings. The level of particulates in the air topped 35 times the World Health Organization’s safety limit. China’s new leaders “appear to be sending a signal that they want to allow […]
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An enormous iceberg in Antarctica has killed off 150,000 penguins and threatens to wipe out an entire colony, which has become trapped and unable to reach food. A study by researchers from New Zealand and Australia said only about 10,000 Adélie penguins have survived after an iceberg – labelled B09B – grounded in a bay in 2010. The grounding, at […]
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The Japanese are working themselves to death. Labor activists have been trying to draw attention to the problem of karoshi, or death from overwork, for decades. Reliable statistics can’t be found, because it’s hard to prove causation in the case of someone who, say, worked 36 hours in a row several times in the same month and then died of […]
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While some miners were digging in Northern Alberta, Canada they came upon a skeleton of a perfectly preserved dinosaur from over 110 million years ago. This dragon-like armor plated dinosaur was suggested to have been over 3000 pounds was discovered about six years ago. Previously unknown dinosaur species was a plant eating dinosaur and probably ate its last leaf over […]
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