In at least two nations of the European Union, the notion that earthquakes are "natural disasters’ or "acts of God" is being challenged on a fundamental level. In both Italy and Spain, earthquakes — or their deadly effects — are being blamed on human activity, and six men now face lengthy prison sentences for deaths which resulted from one quake.

In the heartland of the Taliban it is regularly taken for granted that Western notions of human rights are dismissed as an attempt to foist Christian values on a Muslim nation. Now, the reprehensible murder of a young bride is the latest fact emphasizing the systemic disregard for the rights of women in Afghanistan.

Environmentalists and their governmental counterparts throughout the United States and Canada are expressing their outrage and threatening legal action against a project undertaken in international waters that was intended to lower the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increase the population of salmon. At the heart of the controversy are the actions of the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation (HSRC), which spread 100 tons of iron dust in the ocean with the intention of boosting the level of plankton in the surrounding sea water — and thus increasing the food available for the surrounding salmon population.

As a new leader rises to the top of the Zetas — one of Mexico’s most violent and powerful drug cartels — the belief that the situation across America’s southern border could not get any worse has proven to be a failure of imagination. Even by the vicious standards of the cartels, Miguel Angel Treviño Morales stands out as a man described by experts as “extremely brutal, to the point of sadism.” As the Mexican government continues its fifth year of open warfare against the cartels — a war in which 50,000 people have already lost their lives — the rise of Morales to power illustrates a deteriorating situation which seems to drift more and more out of control.

D. A. Carson’s new book, The Intolerance of Tolerance, is an exceptional work that stands out as having an enduring significance for understanding the roots of the current intolerant demands for tolerance. It offers readers an opportunity to comprehend the origins of the self-contradictory credo which is attacking the heart of Western culture.

A private U.S. company — SpaceX — has sent the first of 12 resupply missions to the International Space Station.

If climate change theorists want to blame man for warming conditions at Earth’s north and south poles, they may need to start blaming the man in the Moon. Long-term lunar cycles may have more to do with such climate changes due to their effect on tidal patterns than has previously been generally understood. 

More than nine months after Boko Haram, an Islamist terror organization in Nigeria, demanded that Christians immediately vacate the northern states of that African nation, Christians are continuing to be murdered while the government struggles to wage a campaign against the destabilizing guerrilla forces.

After nearly two years of support from the Obama administration for the “Arab Spring” movement that Islamists used to gain power, the new president of Egypt is rewarding his American ally with the retort: “You’re not an ally — you’re a friend.”

A September 22 article for the New York Times highlights a host of problems with the relationship between the United States and Egypt with its headline: “Egypt’s New Leader Spells Out Terms for U.S.-Arab Ties.” Egypt — the most powerful nation to have its previous government swept away by an Islamist insurgency in the past two years — is now set forth as the gatekeeper to American foreign policy in the entire region. And the relationship between the United States and Egypt will now be determined by that party which had been previously perceived to be the junior partner.

Will Science disprove the existence of God? No, but that hasn't stopped atheists from continuing to make that claim for centuries.