Articles

Science is to make way for diplomacy at the Pope's summer residence, with the dismantling of the astronomical observatory that has been part of Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, for more than 75 years. The Pope needs more room to receive diplomats so the telescopes have to go.

In 1984 and again in 1999, the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's most eminent scientific organization, produced books on the evidence supporting the theory of evolution and arguing against the introduction of creationism or other religious alternatives in public school science classes.

Twins who were separated at birth got married without realizing they were brother and sister, a lawmaker said, urging more information be provided on birth certificates for adopted children.

Scientists reported Thursday that for the first time they have made human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, a development that the government's top stem cell official said would make the controversial research eligible for federal funding.

Area police continue to search for a man who they believe killed his two teenage daughters and left their bodies in a taxi at an Irving hotel. Police sealed off a street and surrounded the man's home in Lewisville for more than five hours Wednesday but found that Yaser Abdel Said, 50, a cabdriver, was not inside.

Normally, Garrido v. Krasnansky, a divorce case playing out in Vermont family court, would be of little interest to anyone but the couple involved. But the court has ordered the husband to stop posting blog items about his wife and their crumbled marriage, possibly turning an ordinary divorce into a much broader battle over free speech on the Internet.

Virginia's attorney general is defending the right of 11 conservative Anglican parishes to use the state's Civil War-era "division statute" to leave the Episcopal Church while retaining millions of dollars in assets and property.

An intellectual war of words has broken out between two of the world's leading evolutionists. Oxford University's Richard Dawkins and Harvard's Edward Wilson have gone head to head over the evolution of altruism in the animal kingdom, and whether it can have come about as a result of something called group selection.

A Texas woman is demanding an apology from her city's mass transit system after she was booted off a bus for reading the Bible aloud.