An Australian man allegedly enlisted by two others to make money transfers for the Islamic State (ISIL) was exposed when his mother found $9,000 (US) in the pocket of his shorts. She was in the process of cleaning his laundry.
Saudi Arabia is going to the polls today (Dec. 12), electing members of 284 municipal councils across the country—and for the first time in history, women will be able to cast ballots. This is also the first municipal election in which Saudi women are eligible as candidates.
Scuba divers in George Town, Grand Cayman, were alarmed this week when they noticed a luxury cruise ship encroaching on a protected coral reef. The MV Zenith, a 700-foot ship with a carrying capacity of roughly 1,800 passengers, was “anchored oddly close to the reef,” said diver Scott Prodahl, in a YouTube video on Dec. 8.
The first episode of the second season of Serial, the investigative podcast that became a pop culture sensation when it debuted in 2014, became available this morning (Dec. 10).
The highest court in the US today debated Fisher v. University of Texas, an affirmative action case, with justices and the public still divided over how much influence an applicant’s racial background should carry in the college admissions process.
Good news and bad news for US public health today: Federal data shows that the country’s infant mortality rate declined again last year, to a new low of 5.82 deaths for every 1,000 live births. But that’s still one of the worst rates in the developed world.
Researchers at Harvard’s school of public health have published a new study about the safety of electronic cigarettes, and it has nothing to do with nicotine. More than 75% of the flavored e-cigarettes the researchers tested contained the chemical diacetyl, which multiple studies have linked to lung damage.
Since 2010, the US Department of Homeland Security has been operating with two types of alerts to signal terrorism threat levels: “imminent,” when the government has specific information about the time and place of a threatened attack, and “elevated,” when information suggests that an attack has been planned but no specifics are available regarding the time or place. Neither of these alerts has ever been activated, because the bars are set high—both levels are reserved for “credible” threats.
The US Department of Justice is launching an investigation into alleged civil rights violations by the Chicago Police Department, after national outrage erupted over video footage showing a police officer’s fatal shooting of a black teenager in 2014.
US law enforcement agents have evidence that Tashfeen Malik, who along with her husband carried out a mass shooting that killed 14 and injured 21 in San Bernardino, California on Dec. 2, was a “self-radicalized” supporter of the Islamic State.
US defense secretary Ashton Carter has decided to open all jobs in the US military to women, with no exceptions, overriding objections from some military officials.
The United States’ most deadly mass shooting of the year occurred yesterday (Dec. 2), in San Bernardino, California, where two assailants shot 31 people, killing 14. Hours earlier, in an unrelated and much more common tragedy, a man shot four people inside a house in Savannah, Georgia, killing one.
Police in suburban Sydney, Australia were prepared for a scene of domestic mayhem when they answered an emergency call this weekend. Neighbors had reported hearing a woman’s cries and a man yelling “I’m going to kill you,” along with the sound of furniture being thrown across the apartment.
In Jan. 2016, for the first time since the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) is going to be republished in Germany. The government-funded Institute of Contemporary History in Munich (IfZ) will print up to 4,000 copies of an annotated version of the text, which includes more than 3,000 scholarly notes.
This summer, a handful of journalists in San Francisco received mysterious packages—hand-delivered, in some cases—containing manuscripts of a book titled “Iterating Grace.” The writing was credited to Koons Crooks, the story’s protagonist and doubtlessly not a real person.
The oldest known bird in the wild is a female Laysan albatross named Wisdom, and US Fish and Wildlife Service officials said they were glad to report that she appeared in Hawaii about two weeks ago, with a mate.
A court in Manila today (Dec. 1) declared Joseph Scott Pemberton, a lance corporal in the US Marines, guilty of homicide in the case of Jennifer Laude, a Filipino transgender woman who was found dead in an Olongapo City hotel room last year.
The citizens of Hamburg, Germany, were not feeling the Olympic spirit as they voted down the city’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Games yesterday (Nov. 29). A spokesman for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) characterized the vote as a lost opportunity, but said there will still be a “strong competition” between the remaining candidate cities: Rome, Budapest, Paris, and Los Angeles.
The World Meteorological Organization, a branch of the United Nations, has announced that 2015 is firmly on pace to be the hottest year on record, capping what would be the warmest five-year period (2011-2015) on record.
This developing story will be updated as more information becomes available. Last update: 3:28 pm
Ella Jacobs, Daphne Mortenson, Taylor Alcozer, and Skyler Westover—all 10 years old—and Skyler’s 13-year-old sister Allie call themselves the “Unicorns.” They’re hoping to soon call themselves Boy Scouts.
A cartoonish creature known as the blue ocean slug, also known as the blue dragon, washed ashore on Australia’s Gold Coast last week. These slugs are known to biologists as Glaucus atlanticus, and they’re not frequently seen because they spend their lives floating through currents far out at sea, as The Dodo reported.
For the first time, astronomers have spotted the formation of a new planet as it happens—well, not in real time, exactly, given that the planet is about 450 light years away from Earth, but close enough. Never before have researchers been able to capture photographic evidence of this process in action.
A US citizen convicted of spying for Israel was let out of jail today (Nov. 20), ending what has long been a point of friction between the two allies.
