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Texas middle school student Reginald Wells was knocked out with a punch to the face by a teacher last Friday after Wells cracked a joke about the teacher's favorite football team. Wells, who attends Willie Ray Smith Middle School in Beaumont, says he stopped to talk to an assistant teacher from his math class and joked about the teacher's favorite football team, pushing the teacher's shoulder after he said the joke. According to another teacher who was in the hallway, the assistant teacher reacted by punching 12-year-old Wells in the face, knocking him out. From 12News: "(The principal) said Reginald...

The strongest material ever could be carbyne, atom-thick chains of carbon, according to theoretical calculations by Rice University Physicists. The big question is now if and when anyone can make it in bulk. Carbyne is a chain of carbon atoms held together by either double or alternating single and triple atomic bonds. That makes it a true one-dimensional material, unlike atom-thin sheets of graphene, which have a top and a bottom, or hollow nanotubes, which have an inside and outside. These carbyne nanorods or nanoropes, if they can be made, would have a host of remarkable and useful properties, as...

Mash here for video. NEW JASPER, Ohio (WDTN) - 2 NEWS Investigates has obtained dash camera video from the car of the Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper who hit a Beavercreek couple on a motorcycle. WDTN filed a lawsuit in an effort to make the video public. Amy and Corey Waldman were traveling west on U.S. 35 the night of August 17 when their motorcycle was rear-ended by Trooper Jacob Daymon. Mrs. Waldman, the passenger, had to be flown to Miami Valley Hospital. Her husband was taken there by ambulance. They both say had it not been for their helmets...

<p>Police say a father whose infant son died after being left in a parked car in the Phoenix summertime heat is suspected of smoking marijuana at the time.</p>

In two recently published peer-reviewed articles, toxicologist Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts Amherst describes how regulators came to adopt the linear no threshold (LNT) dose-response approach to ionizing radiation exposure in the 1950s, which was later generalized to chemical carcinogen risk assessment. He also offers further evidence to support his earlier assertions that two geneticists deliberately suppressed evidence to prevent the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) from considering an alternative, threshold model, for which there was experimental support. Calabrese's articles appear in the July 26 and August 4 issues of Archives of Toxicology. --snip-- The first of...

Gripped by more than a year of conflict the thriving commercial hub has been transformed into a series of battlefields and front lines, its residents struggling to live on amid the widespread disease, dirty water and crippling food shortages. The aerial pictures show the extent of the destruction of the city, one of the oldest and most historically rich in the world. The Ancient City of Aleppo is a Unesco World Heritage site, this year placed on the UN organisation's list of World Heritage in Danger. “Aleppo has been utterly devastated, its people fleeing the conflagration in huge numbers," said...

< snip > Hyperloop transportation — referred to ... as a "cross between a Concorde, a railgun, and an air hockey table" — is a super fast tubular transport system with the ability to theoretically send someone from New York to L.A. in 30 minutes. Utilizing vacuum-sealed tubes, six-person capsules could be propelled up to speeds of 4,000 miles per hour. All while only feeling the G-forces similar to a car ride. Colorado-based company, ET3, is planning to build and test its own version of such a system, Yahoo reports, though they are calling it "Evacuated Tube Transport." ET3 will...

US officials have confirmed that Israel recently carried out a strike against Yakhont missiles near Latakia, Syria on July 5. Threat Matrix had previously reported on the incident on July 9. CNN reports: A series of explosions on July 5 at a critical Syrian port was the result of airstrikes by Israeli warplanes, according to multiple U.S. officials. Regional media widely reported the predawn explosions at Latakia, but no one had officially claimed responsibility. Three U.S. officials told CNN the target of the airstrikes were Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship missiles that Israel believes posed a threat to its naval forces. The...

EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. - Jeremy Dodge doesn't want to leave his childhood home in East Montpelier. But his days on Foster Road are numbered. "It's my homestead," he said. "You know, I planned on dying here." That plan changed last year when the town put his property up for tax sale. Dodge owed almost $18,000 in back taxes. He thought if it went to auction, he'd be homeless in 30 days. The day before the tax sale, his neighbor knocked on his door with an offer to buy him out that Dodge thought would be his saving grace. That neighbor...

An earthquake has struck a wide area west of Ottawa. Earthquakes Canada reports the 4.8 magnitude quake was centred in Braeside, Ont., northwest of the capital. Twitter erupted with reports of buildings shaking in Ottawa for several seconds. The tremor was also felt at least as as far away as Toronto. Ontario Provincial Police in Arnprior, Ont., not far from the epicentre, say they have received no reports of damage.

BURLINGTON, Vt. - A Burlington High School teacher is due in court Monday afternoon on charges of sexually exploiting a minor. School officials say Giovanna Yaranga, a Spanish teacher at BHS for 15 years, has been placed on administrative leave after allegations she had an inappropriate relationship with a student. Sources tell Channel 3 News Yaranga had sex with a 17-year-old male student. Though 17 is above the legal age of consent, the exploitation statute prohibits people in authority positions from having sexual relations with people under their guidance. It's a felony punishable by up to five years in prison....

Two prominent Syrian bishops, who had warned of the threat to religious tolerance and diversity from the two-year conflict in their country, were kidnapped on Monday by armed rebels in the northern province of Aleppo, state media said. SANA news agency said the Syriac Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Archbishops of Aleppo, Yohanna Ibrahim and Paul Yazigi, were seized by "a terrorist group" in the village of Kfar Dael as they were "carrying out humanitarian work".

As with any crisis, early information is incomplete and sometimes outright wrong. The day after the Boston Marathon bombings, a clearer picture has emerged. Let's get up to speed with where things stand right now. What do we know about the bombs? The first bomb went off at 2:50 p.m., a few feet short of the finish line, in front of a sporting goods store and a LensCrafters. The second went off 12 seconds later, about a block further up Boylston Street, which serves as the home stretch of the marathon. You can see the blast locations on the map...

INDIANAPOLIS - Three people have been arrested in the explosion on Indianapolis' south side that killed two neighbors and damaged dozens of homes, RTV6 has learned. Monserrate Shirley and her boyfriend, Mark Leonard, who lived in the home, along with Leonard's brother, Robert Leonard, were arrested Friday on numerous charges, including murder and arson. The couple, who lived in the home at 8349 Fieldfare Way along with Shirley's 12-year-old daughter, was visiting a Lawrenceburg casino the night of Nov. 10 when the blast rocked their Richmond Hill subdivision, leveling five homes and damaging dozens more. The death penalty will be...

IBM (NYSE:IBM) is reporting having made a major step forward in its search for a replacement for today’s silicon chips that could change the microchip landscape as we know it. The chip-making technology now being developed will likely ensure the shrinking of the size of the basic digital switch at the center of modern microchips for more than a decade to come. IBM is using carbon nanotubes as a replacement for silicon as a semiconductor. Carbon nanotubes have the same on-again off-again electrical properties crucial to making chip transistors. IBM announced on Sunday that a team of eight researchers had...

Both Malian security officials and Ansar Dine's spokesman have confirmed that foreign fighters are continuing to travel to northern Mali, where al Qaeda-linked jihadists from the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJOA), Ansar Dine, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have been in control since February. From Magharebia (which has done an excellent job of covering the conflict in Mali): "Hundreds of jihadists, mostly Sudanese and Sahrawis [Africans from Western Sahara], have arrived as reinforcements to face an offensive by Malian forces and their allies," AFP quoted a Malian security source as saying on Tuesday (October...

BURLINGTON, Vt. -Overseas Vermont voters will get more time to vote by absentee ballot. The state of Vermont agreed to push the deadline back to November 16th. Ballots went out late to overseas Vermont residents and military personnel -- and the U.S. Justice Department sued the state - saying Vermont needed to give voters more time. Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos says the ballots went out late - because of a recount in the Progressive primary for Governor.

Today, September 20, 2012, the winners of the 2012-2013 Catholic High School Honor Roll competition were announced by The Cardinal Newman Society. Since 2004, the Honor Roll has recognized excellence in Catholic identity, academics and civic education at Catholic high schools across the United States. The top 50 schools are recognized for overall excellence, and other schools receive honors for special recognition in particular categories. This year seven schools were recognized for excellence in Catholic identity, six schools for academics, five schools for civic education, and five schools for two of the three categories. “Since competition began in 2004, the...

Italian police have arrested two suspects over the bombing of a school that killed a 16-year-old girl and seriously injured five more teenagers, media reports said yesterday. The men were identified from security cameras at the vocational school in the southern city of Brindisi, where the bomb ripped through a group of students as they waited to begin classes early Saturday. One of the suspects is an ex-soldier with knowledge of electronics, the daily Corriere della Sera reported, citing local news website Brindisireport. Melissa Bassi died from her injuries in hospital, an only child from a working-class family who was...

Late on February 15, JotForm lost access to jotform.com. The company soon discovered the U.S. government had seized the domain by lodging a request with the site’s domain registrar GoDaddy. Soon after, it had been taken down. Aytekin Tank, co-founder of Interlogy Internet Technologies, and owner of JotForm, later confirmed that he’d been in contact with the agent assigned to his case at the Secret Service. She was busy and couldn’t look at the site for a few days. So millions of web forms and thousands of customers were left without a service and no reason as to why this...