California is running on groundwater right now. As the state has cut down on surface water deliveries from rivers and reservoirs, farmers and municipal water suppliers have reacted by sucking more and more out of Madre Earth. The state’s land, in res ...

Have you ever needed to deposit a fat stack of cash, but didn't want to travel to a bank? Poland’s Idea Bank has bolted ATMs into a fleet of cars that can be ordered via a smartphone app for no-fee deposits, wherever you are, even late at night. ...

Under a bright, midday sun, a large group of prospective college students waits in the parking lot outside Kepler University, in the Rwandan capital of Kigali. The results of the morning’s admissions tests will soon be taped to a large window next to ...

Five years after the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico caused by British Petroleum, Mexican fishermen have still not received any compensation. Mexican fishermen filed a class action lawsuit in a U.S. court against BP oil company, as co ...

R&B and soul singer Ben E King, best known for the classic song Stand By Me, has died at the age of 76. King started his career in the late 1950s with The Drifters, singing hits including There Goes My Baby and Save The Last Dance For Me. After g ...

At a very, very basic level, this is how common photographic film works: film is thin plastic covered in a layer or layers of photosensitive chemicals. When exposed to a very small amount of light — like the tiny amount that hits it when a photograph ...

A woman who hit President Nicolás Maduro on the head with a mango has been promised a new house for her troubles in a surreal tropical tale that has gone viral in Venezuela. The 52-year-old president was driving a bus through a crowd in the central s ...

Poland’s foreign ministry urgently summoned US ambassador Stephen Mull on Sunday, to “protest and demand an apology”, saying the head of the FBI had suggested that Poles were accomplices in the Holocaust. After meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Le ...

ISIS is intent on creating an Islamic caliphate and reports show they are becoming increasingly organised in the process. In an effort to bolster the perceived legitimacy of their self-proclaimed caliphate, the group is handing out IS identification ...

Throughout 2012, numerous American factions were pushing for U.S. intervention in Syria to bring down the regime of Bashar Assad, who throughout the War on Terror had helped the U.S. in all sorts of ways, including torturing people for them. But by t ...

Anti-graffiti enforcement is expensive. By one estimate, the U.S. spends between 15 and 18 billion dollars a year to “monitor, detect, remove, and repair graffiti damage.” Around the world, laws vary. In this week’s City Index, we found cities that w ...

Oral arguments in a lawsuit over whether a Mississippi high school student was exercising his right of free speech when he posted a rap song online criticizing two coaches he accused of misconduct toward female students are now set for May 12. The fu ...

A power outage affected much of Washington D.C. and large swaths of southern Maryland on Tuesday, touching even White House and State Department facilities. Pepco, the D.C. electric services provider, initially said it had scattered reports of outage ...

What is the first food that comes to mind when you hear "foraged"? My guess is that a mushroom came to mind. While it's true that most mushrooms are grown in the wild, there's an abundance of other wild plant foods that are much e ...

Manhattan may be a cruddy place to drive, but every April, it becomes a fantastic place to look at cars. The New York International Auto Show is the biggest car show on the continent, and this year doesn’t disappoint: The world’s automakers unveiled ...

m I the only person who can’t wait to start choking back piles of smoked ham this Sunday! Geez…why does holiday food always have to be so awesome? I know for sure that leftovers will be happening, and that means sandwiches!

Would you think me a hopelessly humorless curmudgeon if I confessed that the Internet’s aggressive celebration of April Fools’ Day — which gets a little more aggressive each year — hasn’t improved April Fools’ Day for me? For one thing, you know in a ...

Infamous torrent site The Pirate Bay has a new European block to contend with after a judge in Spain handed down a ruling against the site today. Local ISPs now have 72 hours in which to block the site, the first instruction of its type under the cou ...

A fatty acid might be among organic molecules discovered on Mars by Nasa's Curiosity rover. However, it's not possible at this stage to determine whether the compound has a biological or non-biological origin. And contamination could still ...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Party has won a surprise victory in Israel's election. Exit polls had forecast a dead heat but with almost all votes counted, results give Likud a clear lead over its main rival, the cent ...