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A 16-year-old girl has been gored by a bison in Yellowstone National Park while posing for a picture near the animal. The National Park Service says the unidentified girl's injuries were serious but not life-threatening. The agency described her as an exchange student from Taiwan who was visiting the park with her host family. The incident occurred shortly after noon Friday in the Old Faithful area. The Park Service says she and others were between 3 and 6 feet from the bison when she turned her back to the bison to have her picture taken. The bison took a couple...

Two young kids in Goose Creek, South Carolina, are captivated by their unusual new neighbor: a 10-foot alligator. The alligator first took up residence in Sonya Gilreath's bushes Thursday morning, she told ABC News today.

Since October 2014, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has regularly referred to the concept of a "Mastermind" (ust akil, "supra-intellect," in Turkish) that, he says, is plotting against Turkey. This concept has been applauded by the Islamist pro-AKP media. Erdogan's December 12, 2014 speech, which focused on this "mastermind" concept, inspired the production of a two-hour "documentary" by one of the leading Turkish television channels, the pro-AKP A Haber. The film, titled "The Mastermind," first aired on March 15, 2015 and has been broadcast repeatedly since then; in addition, the Turkish Islamist pro-AKP media are circulating the film on their...

Los Angeles police say a man was killed when he fell out of a tree and impaled himself on the spikes of a metal fence after a night of heavy drinking. The victim appears to have fallen about 20 feet from a tree branch onto the fence. The incident was reported in East Hollywood. The coroner's office identified the victim as 30-year-old Edwin Ochoa. More than a dozen empty beer cans were found around the tree. Local residents tell police the man was known as a heavy drinker.

Today is the 206th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, a day now celebrated by some as Darwin Day. Darwin, of course, is best known for his theory of evolution through natural selection. When Darwin's work was first made public in 1859, it shocked Britain's religious establishment. And while today it is accepted by virtually all scientists, evolutionary theory is still rejected by many Americans, often because it conflicts with their religious beliefs about divine creation.

Happy Darwin Day? If Darwin Day devotees want to be viewed as more than the mere members of a quirky cult, they need to start engaging their thoughtful critics. By John West Published on February 12, 2015 Today is the birthday of Charles Darwin, and enthusiasts around the globe will be marking the occasion with special dinners, lectures, birthday parties and more.Darwin boosters often insist they are inspired simply by a disinterested commitment to science, while their critics are motivated primarily by religion. But Darwin Day festivities make it painfully obvious that many promoters of Darwinian theory are just as interested...

New Edition of Darwin Day in America Exposes the Rise of "Totalitarian Science" in the Age of Obama Is America entering an era of "totalitarian science"? In the expanded paperback edition of Darwin Day in America (ISI Books, February 2015), political scientist John G. West describes the growing misuse of science to curtail basic freedoms, erode time-honored ethics, and circumvent democratic accountability. The paperback edition includes a brand new chapter titled "Scientism in the Age of Obama -- and Beyond." "Our culture is witnessing the rise of what could be called totalitarian science -- science so totalistic in its outlook...

Weed history is being made in Seattle: the first vending machines to dispense marijuana flower buds debuted Tuesday. The machines, called ZaZZZ, are being placed in medical pot dispensaries, which helps to verify customer's age and identity since medical marijuana cards are required to enter the centers, said Greg Patrick, a spokesman for the maker of ZaZZZ, American Green. Though vending machines appeared for the first time in Colorado last year, those sold only edibles, or cannabis-infused foods, and not the plant's flower buds that are so often associated with smoking pot.

Delaware's Democratic Gov. Jack Markell has designated Feb. 12 as Charles Darwin Day in his state, to coincide with the explorer's 206th birthday, The Huffington Post reported. Darwin presented his theory of evolution in "On the Origin of Species," published in 1859. The Delaware proclamation was made at the initiative of Chuck Dyke, a member of Delaware Atheist Meetup. He put in a routine request for a special recognition through the website of the governor's office, according to Patheos, a site devoted to faith issues.Markell cited Darwin's discoveries as "the foundation of modern biology [and] an essential tool in understanding...

The boy who’s proud to be a killer Will Cornick murders teacher in front of classmates in Leeds, England by Warren Nunn The horrendous stabbing murder of an English high school teacher and the comments the perpetrator made afterwards are a potent reminder of the possible effects of evolutionary thinking on impressionable minds. Some of the sickening comments the teenage student made after the killing included: “I wasn’t in shock, I was happy. I had a sense of pride. I still do. “I know it’s uncivilised but I know it’s incredibly instinctual and human. Past generations of life, killing is...

When Colorado legalized marijuana two years ago, nobody was quite ready for the problem of exploding houses. But that is exactly what firefighters, courts and lawmakers across the state are confronting these days: amateur marijuana alchemists who are turning their kitchens and basements into “Breaking Bad”-style laboratories, using flammable chemicals to extract potent drops of a marijuana concentrate commonly called hash oil, and sometimes accidentally blowing up their homes and lighting themselves on fire in the process.

Police in West Milford have released five photos taken by 22-year-old Darsh Patel before he was killed by the 300-pound black bear while hiking with four friends in the Apshawa Preserve. The photos show the bear behind a fallen tree in the woods. Investigators say the phone was found with puncture marks from the bear. ... West Milford police and the state Environmental Protection Department said last month that the bear did not seem interested in food and exhibited “stalking type behavior.”

Charles Darwin worried about a possible hole in his theory of evolution, but some American scientists may just have plugged it. For about a billion years after the dawn of life on Earth, organisms didn't evolve all that much. Then about 600 million years ago came the "Cambrian explosion." Everything changed relatively quickly, with all kinds of plants and animals emerging—which doesn't quite seem to fit with Darwin's theory of slow change, hence "Darwin's dilemma." Now, within a few days of each other, two new studies have appeared that could explain the shift, ABC News reports. One, by scientists at...

More reasons to doubt Darwin A review of: Darwin‘s Doubt, the explosive origin of animal life and the case for intelligent design by Stephen C. Meyer HarperOne, Nashville TN, USA 2013 Reviewed by Philip Bell Published: 6 November 2014 (GMT+10) Stephen Meyer has an impressive pedigree in the philosophy of science and geophysics but is better known as a prominent spokesperson for the ID movement in the USA. Darwin’s Doubt3 is, in many ways, a sequel to his Signature in the Cell (2009)4, both of them impressive in length, scope and incisive analysis. In both, he explicitly distances ID from...

There’s no good time to tell a guy you’re a virgin. First date? Too much, too soon. Wait until the third date and you risk being considered a tease. Second date? Perhaps, but at this point you’re both still fretting over whether or not to eat another piece of bread; delving into sexual histories (or lack thereof) seems a bit extreme. So: There’s no good time to tell a guy you’re a virgin. Even worse? Telling him you’re waiting until marriage.

Throwing Darwin a Curve by Randy J. Guliuzza, P.E., M.D. * “The pitch cuts the inside corner of the plate for strike two.” That familiar sound is heard on radios around the world. In fact, some of the best pitchers in America are not Americans. Great pitching ability is not limited to ethnicity or geography, but rather to human beings alone. Great pitchers make it look so easy, and “practice makes perfect,” but it helps that the brain power necessary for control, neurological connections, and muscular arrangements for the human arm are exceedingly better than any system that exists on...

Kendall Wernet, 20, who was originally from South Carolina, was with a group of about five who climbed the mast on the ship, The Ecstasy, and sat there for about 45 minutes talking about life and their future. One person in the group said no drinking had been involved. Wernet was standing when a radar dish on the restricted platform started to rotate, Steve Acorn, a mentor who was with the group, told the station. The student was knocked over to the runner's track below ... "He was the kind of guy, that if you had a daughter, you'd want...

Darwinist Denies Human Exceptionalism in NYT The New York Times is consistently anti-human exceptionalism, never missing an opportunity to publish articles that seek to reduce humans to just another animal in the forest.Today, the Sunday Review section has University of Washington biology professor, David P. Barash, bragging that he works to destroy faith in his classes (“The Talk”), insisting to his students that science and religion are incompatible.That kind of ideological indoctrination is par for the disturbing course in universities, but not the one of the areas with which I grapple. However, I would be remiss not to point out...

ROSWELL, N.M. — A driver who went missing after a one-car rollover says he later woke up in a field of donkeys. New Mexico State Police say the driver called 911 seven hours after investigators failed to find any victims from the crash. The driver told 911 dispatchers that he was lost and found himself surrounded by the animals. Authorities say the man claims he and a passenger were drinking the night before but didn't remember what happened next.

Darwin vs. Genetics: Surprises and Snags in the Science of Common Ancestry by Nathaniel T. Jeanson, Ph.D. * For over 150 years, Darwin’s hypothesis that all species share a common ancestor has dominated the creation-evolution debate. Surprisingly, when Darwin wrote his seminal work, he had no direct evidence for these genealogical relationships—he knew nothing about DNA sequences. In fact, before the discovery of the structure and function of DNA, obtaining direct scientific evidence for common ancestry was impossible. Now, with online databases full of DNA-sequence information from thousands of species, the direct testing of Darwin’s hypothesis has finally commenced. What...