We all know the Darwin fish, the car-bumper send-up of the Christian "ichthys" symbol, or Jesus fish. Unlike the Christian symbol, the Darwin fish has, you know, legs. Har har.
But the Darwin fish isn't merely a clever joke; in effect, it contains a testable scientific prediction. If evolution is true, and if life on Earth originated in water, then there must have once been fish species possessing primitive limbs, which enabled them to spend some part of their lives on land. And these species, in turn, must be the ancestors of four-limbed, land-living vertebrates like us.
This Fish Crawled Out of the Water…and Into Creationists' Nightmares
Magnitude 7.5 quake strikes off Solomons, sparks tsunami warning
A powerful magnitude-7.6 earthquake triggered large waves in the Solomon Islands on Sunday, and authorities were trying to determine if there was any serious damage or injuries.
Government spokesman George Herming said people throughout the Pacific island chain awoke to the strong quake at 7:14am. He said that people on Makira and nearby islands southeast of the capital, Honiara, reported seeing three large waves after the quake. He said there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
Climate panel warns emissions rising, blurs reason
The U.N.'s expert panel on climate change on Sunday highlighted the disconnect between international goals to fight global warming and what is being done to attain them.
Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases must drop by 40-70 percent by 2050 to keep the global temperature rise below the 2-degree C (3.6-degree F) cap set in U.N. climate talks, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said.
The opposite is happening now. On average global emissions rose by 2.2 percent — or 1 gigaton — a year between 2000 and 2010, outpacing growth in previous decades to reach "unprecedented levels" despite some efforts to contain them, the IPCC said.
Gunmen seize two buildings in east Ukraine
Armed men have seized a police station and a security services building in eastern Ukraine, officials say. Police said the men fired shots and used stun grenades to seize the offices in Sloviansk, near the Russian border.
The interior minister called the gunmen "terrorists" and said special forces would repel the attack.
Pro-Russian activists have seized government buildings elsewhere in east Ukraine. Kiev accuses Moscow of orchestrating the unrest.
CIA’s use of harsh interrogation went beyond legal authority, Senate report says
A classified U.S. Senate report found that the CIA's legal justification for the use of harsh interrogation techniques that critics say amount to torture was based on faulty legal reasoning, McClatchy news service reported on Thursday.
The Central Intelligence Agency also issued erroneous claims about how many people it subjected to techniques such as simulated drowning, or "water boarding," according to the news service, citing conclusions from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report obtained by McClatchy.
White House news group honors black reporter it once barred
Harry S. McAlpin made history in February 1944 when he became the first black reporter to cover a presidential news conference at the White House.
Time magazine and The New York Times noted the milestone. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who’d opened the White House doors after entreaties from African-American publishers, greeted the reporter as he made his way over to the president’s desk, telling him, “Glad to see you, McAlpin.”
Tamiflu: Millions wasted on flu drug, claims major UK report
Hundreds of millions of pounds may have been wasted on a drug for flu that works no better than paracetamol, a landmark analysis has said.
The UK has spent £473m on Tamiflu, which is stockpiled by governments globally to prepare for flu pandemics.
The Cochrane Collaboration claimed the drug did not prevent the spread of flu or reduce dangerous complications, and only slightly helped symptoms. The manufacturers Roche and other experts say the analysis is flawed
The antiviral drug Tamiflu was stockpiled from 2006 in the UK when some agencies were predicting that a pandemic of bird flu could kill up to 750,000 people in Britain. Similar decisions were made in other countries.
Hidden data
New DOJ Racial Profiling Rules Would Continue FBI Ethnic Mapping
Attorney General Eric Holder's long-awaited revisions to the Justice Department’s racial profiling rules would allow the FBI to continue most or all of the tactics opposed by civil rights groups, such as mapping ethnic populations and using that data to recruit informants and open investigations, reports the New York Times.
A draft of the new rules expands the definition of prohibited profiling to include not just race, but religion, national origin, gender and sexual orientation. The draft increases the standards that agents must meet before considering those factors. They do not change the way the FBI uses nationality to map neighborhoods, recruit informants, or look for foreign spies.
Two moms, a baby and a legal first for U.S. gay marriage
Last month a baby in Tennessee made history: Emilia Maria Jesty was the first child born in the state to have a woman listed on the birth certificate as her "father."
The marital status of the baby's parents was the subject of a flurry of court filings up to a few days before her birth. Valeria Tanco and Sophy Jesty were wed in New York, a state that recognizes gay marriage, and moved to Tennessee, which does not.
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