Extreme heat from a massive supervolcano underneath Yellowstone National Park is melting a major roadway at the popular summertime tourist attraction. Park officials have closed the area to visitors. Firehole Lake Drive, a 3-mile-plus offshoot of the park’s Grand Loop that connects the Old Faithful geyser and the Madison Junction, is currently off limits. [...]

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff symbolically handed over the World Cup to her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Sunday, as Russia is set to host the 2018 tournament. The two were joined by FIFA president Sepp Blatter. The ceremony took place inside Maracana Stadium before the Germany-Argentina final in Rio de Janeiro. [...]

Germany has claimed a fourth World Cup crown in a 1-0 win against Argentina after extra time in the final in Rio de Janeiro. Substitute Mario Goetze was the hero, as he scored the only goal with seven minutes to go. With that triumph Germany has become the first European nation to win the trophy outside of their home continent, which led to jubilant scenes both on the pitch and back home, with mil [...]

The next time you wolf down that Big Mac with large fries consider you may be affecting more than your own waistline. Scientists now say an unhealthy diet can be encoded into DNA, which is passed down to future generations. By now, most people have heard various negative things about a Western diet: it is too fatty, too salty and too sugary. [...]

Ukraine is the land where time has stood still and the consequences of what has been sown are now being reaped as anarchy is unleashed upon its rotting corpse. Just over a year ago, in rather more peaceful times, I was on a train from Kharkov to Simferopol, sharing a cabin with two Russian gents from the Far Eastern outpost of Nakhodka and, breaking the monotony of long distance rail commutation, [...]

The journal that has published the Facebook mood swings study regrets the way the study was conducted. Facebook issued a sorry statement for accessing the content of 700,000 people's pages, but the company's second-in-command said she has no regrets. It was concluded by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal that the move to manipulate the content appearing on the Facebook pag [...]

A new study reveals the similarity between the way our brain works while sleeping, and when we're tripping on psychedelic drugs. What's more, LSD and magic mushrooms could act as a cure from depression or boost creativity. With the help of some hallucinogenic drugs and some willing volunteers [...]

Russia has stepped up the battle against the moral corruption signified by the likes of Austrian Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst by announcing that crime busting Crimean prosecutor general Natalia Poklonskaya is to take over judging as part of the new Russian alternative to Eurovision. [...]

Facebook's experiment on over half-a-million unsuspecting users has taken a new twist with the revelation that a researcher connected to a Department of Defense-funded program to use the military to quell civil unrest also participated in the study. Social media sites exploded over the weekend after it was revealed that Facebook, no stranger to controversy of late, secretly manipulated posts be [...]

"Apocalypse, Man" is an intimate portrait of a man convinced of the imminent collapse of the world, but with answers to how the human spirit can survive the impending apocalypse. Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Given his tragic death, Michael was an extremely rare person - far beyond what most [...]

Comedian Russell Brand condemned Fox News as a "fanatical terrorist propaganda organization" during a heated, 10-minute tirade recorded on video and uploaded to the web this week. The 39-year-old British stand-up comic-turned-actor is now making headlines for the video footage, which was uploaded to his personal YouTube channel on Tuesday this week under the title: Is Fox News More Dangerous than [...]

Florida is sinking and it’s not because of climate change. A new report, Florida – A State of Embarassment, by the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans (FLARA), categorizes the reasons why seniors and young families should not move there. [...]

A good night'€™s sleep is crucial for better memory and studying. While this has been long known, scientists lacked exact evidence of what happened inside the brain. But now US and Chinese researchers have revealed precisely how sleep boosts memory. Sleeping after learning something new encourages the growth of the dendritic spines, [...]

Mercer has released their updated Quality of Living Survey for 2013. The survey analyzes 39 factors like political stability, cost of living, crime levels, pollution, and healthcare, which are important for future expats moving to the country. Europe dominated the top five list with just one city being from North America. [...]

Lief Simon discusses the main types of people giving up their U.S. passport. It’s not that they are hiding anything. They are simply private people, which is one of the reasons they no longer wanted to be U.S. citizens. More and more are becoming aware of their tax filing requirements as U.S. citizens, even if they have never lived or worked in the United States. [...]

World-famous Russian traveller and adventurer Fedor Konyukhov, who has been on a solo-rowing voyage across the Pacific Ocean since December, has reached the Australian coast, completing his adventure in a record 162 days. [...]

William Shakespeare said the eyes are the window to the soul, and though there’s some truth to that, why give significance to just the eyes? I believe the skin is the mirror of your health. When I worked in a clinical setting, I became adept at gauging an individual’s health by simply looking at him or her. This very basic, objective assessment was always revealing. [...]

Nearly half of unemployed Americans are on the verge of completely giving up on looking for a job, but they remain optimistic they will find a job they really want within the next six months, a new survey found. [...]

Massive regions of the ice sheet that makes up West Antarctica have begun collapsing in a process that scientists have worried about for decades and fear is likely unstoppable. Researchers warned that the accelerated pace of disintegration is expected to remain relatively slow over the next 100 years, [...]