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WASHINGTON — It’s not just curiosity killing the cat anymore — it could be the Army. The Army Medical Research and Development Command has quietly allowed shooting cats and dogs for wound experiments despite a 1983 Defense Department ban on the practice, according to a policy update obtained by The Post. While the change was made as early as 2020, it’s being publicized for the first time after the Army command turned aside a bid by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to find out how many such experiments had been conducted since the switch.

MYRTLE POINT, Ore. - Melissa Morris was arrested on New Year’s Eve after she told deputies she punched her boyfriend in the face for leaving her dog outside in the rain. Police say they responded to a call of a suspected assault where they were met by the Oregon woman’s boyfriend, James, who said she punched him in the face two times. Investigators say they saw a marble-sized welt and scratch mark on James’ right eyebrow. James told police that he was talking to Morris when she began hitting him. Morris was then taken into custody on a domestic...

An Ohio animal rights activist allegedly stabbed a woman in a church on Wednesday because she was wearing fur...In 2012, Lowell allegedly posted several times on social media looking for someone willing to kill a person wearing fur...However, a forensic evaluation later determined that though she was not competent to stand trial,...Fast-forward to 2018, when Lowell reportedly stabbed a woman. Her motives were unknown. She was charged with felonious assault and released on a $5,000 bond. Her case was transferred to mental health court,...

(CNN)A 2-year-old girl remains in the hospital a day after she was injured at a Florida zoo during a private rhino encounter experience, zoo officials and her family said. The toddler and her family were taking part Tuesday in a close-up experience with white rhinos at the Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, Florida, when the girl came into contact with the animals. The family of three was given access to feel and brush the rhinos while supervised by two zookeepers in an area of the zoo where they were separated from the animals only by steel posts. The toddler wedged through...

PARADISE (CBS SF) — Three employees of a San Leandro construction company were fired Saturday for posting insensitive photos on social media from the wreckage left behind in Paradise by the deadly Camp Fire...Paradise officials posted on Facebook that police were looking into charges against the three workers...Several images were posted including a photo of someone’s beloved burned deceased cat with a beer bottle placed up to its mouth with this caption: “Dude… I was just chilling with my homies, having a couple of cold ones, and BAM… damn fire breaks out.”

Glick said, “It would’ve been good if the Jewish community in the United States and the national leadership, instead of pronouncing these milquetoast things that we all need to be more civil in our tone, would say, ‘No, we have to be less civil to anti-Semites. We have to be less civil to people who want to annihilate the Jewish people [and] the Jewish state.'” Glick added, “But what we’re finding, particularly among left-wing Jews is that they’re using it to attack the administration and trying to conflate the Nazi who committed this massacre with President Trump. Obviously, nothing could...

Tom Steyer Hastily Backpedals After Suggesting Nuclear War Could Serve as ‘Course Correction’ for Trump.(full title). Tom Steyer — the Democratic megadonor leading the charge for Donald Trump‘s impeachment — recently suggested that it might take some drastic developments to undo the impact the president has had on America. The billionaire recently gave an interview to Rolling Stone, where he argued that the Democratic grassroots and politicians on the Left have to make Trump’s removal from office their number one priority.

A Florida mother was reeling after her 9-month-old daughter was fatally mauled by a pit bull as she sat in a bouncy chair,...Brenda Villasin, 24,...said she’s not ready to blame the breed entirely. "I still don’t feel any type of way about a pit bull," Villasin told the Herald.

The Trump administration says it will no longer criminally prosecute companies that accidentally kill migratory birds. The decision reverses a rule made in the last weeks of the Obama administration. A legal memo from the Department of the Interior posted Friday declares that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act applies only to purposeful actions that kill migratory birds, and not to energy companies and other businesses that kill birds incidentally. "Interpreting the MBTA to apply to incidental or accidental actions hangs the sword of Damocles over a host of otherwise lawful and productive actions, threatening up to six months in jail...

"Journalist photographs heartbreaking scene of a starving polar bear in Canada." "Tragic Video 'Rips Your Heart Out of your Chest'" "The bear was just skin and bones as it wandered on ice-free land on Baffin Island." "Warming climate depletes the ice that's the bears' normal hunting grounds." "Polar bears are often the first arctic animals to feel the effects of higher climate temperatures."

Environment Secretary Michael Gove said Tuesday, promising that welfare standards would improve after leaving the European Union. "We are a nation of animal lovers so we will make Brexit work not just for citizens but for the animals we love and cherish too," said Gove, a leading pro-Brexit campaigner for the 2016 EU referendum. Gove was presenting a draft law that would enshrine the concept of animal sentience into British law and introduce new jail sentences for animal abusers. "Britain outside the European Union can have higher standards on the environment and indeed on animal welfare," he said.

An animal cruelty investigation is underway Saturday after a 16-year-old boy was seen on video throwing a cat onto the street, according to Ontario police. The video in question was apparently posted on Snapchat. Ontario police launched an investigation into the incident that eventually led them to identify a teen boy believed to be responsible for the abuse of the kitten, authorities said. The suspect, who will not be identified due to his age, has not been located and arrested. Investigators said they located the animal and its owner. They said the cat has a fractured leg but is expected...

When the history of the West is written it will say: they educated themselves to hate themselves and love what they hate about themselves in the other.On a fairly consistent basis people in the West embrace values abroad that they shun at home. This is particularly odd and contradictory among those who self-identify as “Left” and “liberal” and then embrace movements, leaders, ideologies and religions that are manifestly illiberal and right- wing extremist abroad. For instance American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler said in 2006 that “understanding Hamas [and] Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on...

An Austin man who is accused of beating a turtle to death with a hammer told authorities he was acting in self-defense, his arrest-warrant affidavit says. Terry Washington, 55, told police that the turtle lunged at him and repeatedly tried to bite him after it had been hooked on a fishing line on the edge of Lady Bird Lake, KVUE-TV reports. According to the affidavit, he said he killed the turtle in self-defense and in order to get the fishing hook back, then dragged it under a bridge to get it out of the view of passers-by. The June 21...

Health officials have reported a fourth New Mexico death from Hantavirus this year, making 2016 among the deadliest since the viral illness first appeared here in 1993. A 20-year-old Torrance County woman has died of Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome – the state’s sixth reported case this year, the New Mexico Department of Health announced Thursday. “The messaging is, (Hantavirus) is still here and you still have to take precautions,” said Dr. Paul Ettestad, the department’s public health veterinarian. Hantavirus infection is transmitted by infected rodents through urine, droppings or saliva. People can contract the disease when they breathe in aerosolized virus....

In some precincts, this is what passes for a joke about libertarians: "Ayn Rand, Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan walk into a bar. The bartender serves them tainted alcohol because there are no regulations. They die." The humor there eludes me, but it must work for someone: That alleged witticism has garnered tens of thousands of Twitter "likes" and retweets.Unabashed libertarians can be wacky — at the Libertarian Party convention in Florida last weekend, one contenderperformed a striptease — but they aren't anarchists. Libertarianism isn't a philosophy of dog-eat-dog or of a society with no protections for health and safety. It is a philosophy...

for the boy’s parents to be punished for not adequately supervising their child. A Facebook page called “Justice for Harambe” received more than 41,000 “likes” within hours of its creation. The page’s description says it was created to “raise awareness of Harambe’s murder” and includes YouTube tributes and memes celebrating the western lowland gorilla and admonishing zoo officials. “Shooting an endangered animal is worse than murder,” a commenter from Denmark named Per Serensen wrote on the page. “Soooo angry.” Lt. Steve Saunders, a spokesman for the Cincinnati Police Department, told the Cincinnati Enquirer that they have no plans to charge...

It's nearly 50 years since the US landed men on the moon, but Americans are still dying from a disease that ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages. Why hasn't the US eradicated the plague?

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Pets rejoice! A recent survey shows that many pet parents are making New Year’s resolutions to spend more time with their pets and make sure they are loved even more than they were last year. More than 1,000 pet parents, including hundreds of Kibblers, recently participated in the Halo, Purely for Pets Pet Parents’ New Year’s Resolution Survey. According to the survey, many pet parents want to do a better job grooming their pets, with 68.1 percent resolving to trim their pets’ nails more often, 52.6 percent planning to give their dogs and cats more baths, and more than 80...