Somewhere south of Newcastle, amid the wide-open prairie and rolling hills, rests a mass grave. A femur here. A tooth there. A tip of a tail barely poking through the ground somewhere else.The cause of death is unknown. It could have been a lightning…

US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has said that President Obama has asked the military to "prepare options for all contingencies" as the crisis in Syria deepens following reports of a chemical weapons attack by that country's government earlier this week. Speaking in Malaysia Sunday,…

As a lobbyist in New York's statehouse, Stephen Acquario is doing pretty well. He pulls down $204,000 a year, more than the governor makes, gets a Ford Explorer as his company car and is afforded another special perk:Even though he's not a government employee,…

A 20-year-old man faces criminal charges after allegedly firing shots from an assault rifle Tuesday at an Atlanta-area elementary school. No one was injured in the shooting and all students and teachers were accounted for and safe. The suspect, later identified as Michael Brandon Hill,…

Clumps of squid beaks sticking out of clay in Italy's Umbrian badlands may be the first fossilized ambergris, or whale poo, ever found.Ambergris is a fatty, waxy-looking substance. Scientists believe sperm whales the largest toothed predator on Earth secrete ambergris inside their digestive tracts…

BEIJING (AFP) - People with a poor aim are to be fined if they miss their mark when using public toilets in a Chinese city, officials said -- provoking online derision over how the rule will be enforced.The penalty will apply to those who…

Potty humor just got prehistoric. A new study suggests that dinosaurs may have helped keep an already overheated world warmer with their flatulence and burps 200 million years ago. The research published Monday in Current Biology suggests that large dinosaurs made a significant contribution to…

Scanning the horizon on his solar-powered catamaran, Swiss electrical engineer Raphael Domjan counts down the hours to the completion of his record-breaking world tour. "The idea was not to perform a feat but an eco-adventure with the aim of passing on the message that change…

Three people were killed and five missing Wednesday after floods carrying volcanic debris swept through a town in eastern Indonesia, a government official said. "Following heavy rains during the night, volcanic floods hit early morning at 2:00 am (1700 GMT)," national disaster mitigation agency spokesman…

China's high court overturned the death sentence on a former tycoon Friday, in a case that caused an uproar over the nation's use of capital punishment for economic crimes. The State Supreme Court ordered the high court in eastern China's Zhejiang province to retry the…