Floodwaters on Friday breached a dam that contains a man-made lake connected to a Duke Energy power plant in North Carolina, possibly causing coal ash to flow into the nearby Cape Fear River, the company said. The floodwaters flowed from Cape Fear River into the northern side of Sutton Lake, an 1,100-acre reservoir built in 1972 to cool the L.V. Sutton Power Station. That water caused breaches in the dam on the south end of the lake, which was flowing back into the river, Duke Energy said in a p...

NASA has released the first image from its new space telescope. TESS, short for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is helping scientists detect and study new planets in other solar systems. The telescope launched in April on a SpaceX rocket, and on July 25, TESS slipped into a unique orbit between Earth and the moon. The telescope is now scanning the night sky, staring down distant solar systems, and hunting for small, rocky, Earth-like planets.

Eager to make you uncomfortable, “Active Measures” piles on the ire as it outlines Russian efforts to manipulate world events, particularly the 2016 American presidential election. Directed by Jack Bryan, this documentary starts by summarizing Vladimir V. Putin’s career through the time of his election as Russia’s president. In the heaps of interviews, video clips and flow charts that follow, we hear of links between Mr. Putin and Donald J. Trump; of extensive work done by Paul Manafort,...

Gérard Depardieu, the enfant terrible of French cinema, has been spotted in the North Korean capital Pyongyang hours before the 70th anniversary of the country's birth. Journalists noticed the iconic actor in the Yangakdo hotel for tourists in the biggest city of the Communist state, which is due to mark its “Day of the Foundation of the Republic” on Sunday. A major military parade, huge rallies and the return of iconic “mass games” are expected. It is not known whether Mr Depardi...

If you know your way around a chemistry lab, you could help humanity set up shop on Mars — and make some serious cash in the process. NASA is challenging people throughout the United States to come up with a new and efficient way to convert carbon dioxide into glucose, a simple sugar. CO2 dominates the thin atmosphere of Mars, and energy-rich glucose is a great fuel for microbe-milking "bioreactors" that could manufacture a variety of items for future settlers of the Red Planet, NASA...

Climate change is one of the issues on which the late Sen. John McCain was roundly praised for bucking his party. But McCain was arguably the reason we don’t have a sane climate law in place right now. The Arizona Republican’s early work on climate change with then-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) was indeed groundbreaking, producing the 2003 and 2005 iterations of the proposed Climate Stewardship Act. While those bills had little chance of success, they were presented at a time when th...

It's a really important step to understanding the subtle ways genes actually work. In 2003, researchers sequenced the human genome for the first time, writing out all 3 billion of the DNA base pairs that dictate every aspect of our makeup. Now, a new team of researchers has figured out a way to create a 3D image of this valuable roadmap to human biology.

Electrically charged volcanic ash short-circuited Earth’s atmosphere in 1815, causing global poor weather and Napoleon’s defeat, says new research. Historians know that rainy and muddy conditions helped the Allied army defeat the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo. The June 1815 event changed the course of European history. Two months prior, a volcano named Mount Tambora erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, killing 100,000 people and plunging the Earth into a...

A woman was detained in Dubai for three days with her four-year-old daughter after drinking a complimentary glass of wine on a flight from London, an NGO has said. Ellie Holman, a dentist originally from Sweden who lives in Sevenoaks, Kent, with her English partner, Gary, and their three children, was denied water and made to clean toilets while in custody, according to the human rights group Detained in Dubai.

“Angels walk amongst us,” starts Rick’s GoFundMe campaign. The California man started the fundraiser for James, a homeless man who cared for one of the most important individuals in Rick’s life: his dog Maya. Recently, the 9-month-old rat terrier ran away from home, and even after his searches turned up nothing, Rick was confident his furry friend was all right.

Neanderthal man knew how to make a fire by striking stone to create sparks, researchers said Thursday after analyzing several tools found at sites in France dating from 50,000 years ago. It was already known that Neanderthals used fire but it was mostly thought to have occurred by natural causes such as lightning or volcanic eruptions, although perhaps they did know techniques for creating a flame.

One in three adults is affected by loneliness. It's time for us to take a risk and let others into our lives, says Olivia Remes, PhD candidate at the Cambridge Institute of Public Health, writing for The Conversation. Loneliness is a common condition affecting around one in three adults. It damages your brain, immune system, and can lead to depression and suicide. Loneliness can also increase your risk of dying prematurely as much as smoking can – and even more so than obesity.

"To bring a coin flip ... that's not part of that decision making to decide to take someone's freedom," the police chief said.

If one anecdote can sum up how good the current Mazda MX-5 Miata is, consider the following. Thanks to this job, I drive a lot of press fleet cars–between two and four a month depending on my travel schedule. And during the course of the last year, the little MX-5 has been the only one I've just driven around for hours with no other objective than enjoying the experience—supercars included. What makes it even more remarkable is that Mazda hit on this formula 29 years ago.

Wallabies have been filmed hurling themselves into a metal fence after being trapped in a park for more than a year. Animal welfare activists said the marsupials were “starving” after Cairns Regional Council erected barriers around the park in a suburb of the North Queensland city. The Australian Society for Kangaroos (ASK) said some of the wallabies had “died trying to escape, smashing themselves up against fences”.

After dozens of series and countless episodes, Telltale Games is finally set to replace its aging game engine. That's according to a new Variety report, which confirms earlier rumblings Telltale would move away from its own, increasingly rickety Telltale Tool in favour of the widely-used Unity engine instead.

Starting about 7,000 years ago, something weird seems to have happened to men: Over the next two millennia, recent studies suggest, their genetic diversity –specifically, the diversity of their Y chromosomes – collapsed. So extreme was that collapse that it was as if there were only one man left to mate for every 17 women.