The falling cost of genome sequencing is allowing scientists to begin studying the complete genomes of sufferers of genetic diseases.

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Seemingly normal Pennsylvania woman turns into a radical jihadist after turning to Islam.

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Christopher Hitchens detects extortion in an attempt to sue Danish newspapers on behalf of 95,000 descendants of Muhammad.

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More than one hundred people were feared dead in Nigeria following violent clashes between Christian villagers and Muslim herders near the central city of Jos. Ethno-religious violence claimed 326 lives in January in Jos, according to police although other observers put the overall toll at more than 550 in Jos.

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Fifty-six years after its founding, the church is fighting off calls by former members for a reformation.

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I honestly think the wheels are coming off our picture of the way the universe works at the moment. We don’t know what 96% of the universe is made of – that tells us that we don’t understand something fundamental. It reminds me of the start of the 20th century when quantum mechanics and relativity were about to appear.

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Professor Vlatko Vedral is a quantum physicist at the universities of Oxford and Singapore who grapples with the behaviour of energy and matter at subatomic scales, and this has led him to ask some bigger questions including why are we here? And what does it all mean? The 39-year-old, originally from Belgrade, passionately believes units of information – not particles – are the building blocks of humanity and everything that surrounds us. Information, he maintains, is what came before everything else. It is akin to God.

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Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools.

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HERE’s a fact to flatter the unbelievers among you: the bright young things at the University of Oxford are among the most godless groups ever studied in the UK. Of 728 students surveyed in 2007, 48.9 per cent claimed not to believe in any god, with 49.6 per cent claiming no religious affiliation. And while a very small number of Britons typically label themselves as “atheist” or “agnostic” (most surveys put it at about 5 per cent), an astonishing 57.3 per cent of the Oxford sample did.

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She’s Jewish.  He’s Catholic.  They divorced.  He baptized their kid.  What’s a judge to do?

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Nicholas Kristof argues that evangelical aid organizations are increasingly doing the hard work overseas and do not proselytize as much as is commonly thought.  He says that the secular are overly “snooty” towards evangelicals.

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