Free Republic

New incidents of the so-called “knockout game,” where “players” walk up to strangers and sucker punch them in the face, renewed fears among New York and Pennsylvania residents that the cruel prank was making a comeback. Two separate incidents in New York City and Pittsburgh reported last week showed a woman and man being knocked out. The 43-year-old man was pummeled near the Shake Shack in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood about 9:15 p.m. Thursday, the New York Post reported. The unidentified attacker then snapped a photo of himself with the injured man before fleeing the scene. A woman in Pittsburgh was...

A mysterious series of apparently random killings in Kansas City, mostly committed in isolated spots along walking trails, came to an end when the killer deviated from his pattern with a brazen, execution-style shooting in broad daylight on a city street, according to Jackson County prosecutors. The fifth and final killing came shortly after noon on Aug. 13, when 22-year-old Fredrick Demond Scott allegedly followed a man from a city bus, crept up behind him on the street and shot him in the head — before turning and getting right back on a bus. Like the other four victims Scott...

Aboriginal hunters from Arctic Canada have a couple of names for what they say is an extremely rare polar bear that is huge, narrow-bodied, fast-moving and lithe: "tiriarnaq" or "tigiaqpak," meaning "weasel bear." Now the thawing and rapidly eroding Chukchi Sea coastal permafrost has produced evidence that one of these legendary weasel bears — or some other strange kind of bear — roamed Arctic Alaska centuries ago. A huge, fully intact and unusually shaped polar bear skull emerged in 2014 from an eroding archaeological site about 13 miles southwest of Utqiaġvik (Barrow). It is one of the biggest polar bear...

https://gma.yahoo.com/heartwarming-video-shows-polar-bear-petting-eskimo-dog-162204545--abc-news-topstories.html

A photographer captured an image of a polar bear in the Canadian Arctic that has gone viral. Sebastian Copeland blamed climate change for the death--or more specifically, the melting sea ice in the area, which makes it harder for the polar bears to hunt. The picture shows a polar bear's emaciated corpse on a patch of rocky ground, which Copeland came across while trekking in the Arctic. "For the state of the ice in general, we're headed into uncharted territory. There's no doubt about it," Copeland wrote accompanying the photograph in his new book "Arctica: The Vanishing North," reported the...

Pictures of a horribly thin polar bear have emerged, sparking a debate over global warming. Many have said it is a sign of how global warming is destroying the planet while others suggest it could actually be an old or sick bear. The picture was posted by Kerstin Langenberger who spotted the bear on the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard. She said: ‘Yes, I have seen bears in good shape – but I have also seen dead and starving polar bears. Bears walking on the shores, looking for food, bears trying to hunt reindeer, eating bird’s eggs, moss and seaweed. ‘Many times...

James Stuhlman was killed as he took his labradoodle on a walk at night Two 15-year-old boys have been charged with the married father's murder A 14-year-old arrested on lesser charges and is co-operating with police The 51-year-old pleaded 'Please don't shoot me' repeatedly, police say Usually took nightly walks with his daughter, 13, but was alone that night

A tourist visiting Svalbard in Norway's Arctic during the solar eclipse has been mauled by a polar bear, said police. The Czech man, who has not been identified, suffered minor injuries when a bear attacked the tent he was sleeping in on the remote archipelago. Some 3,000 polar bears live in the region, outnumbering the 2,500 inhabitants.

Researchers with the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) recently admitted to experienced zoologist and polar bear specialist Susan Crockford that the estimate given for the total number of polar bars in the Arctic was “simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.” Crockford has been critical of official polar bear population estimates because they fail to include five large subpopulations of polar bears. Due to the uncertainty of the populations in these areas, PBSG did not include them in their official estimate — but the polar bear group did include other subpopulation estimates. PBSG has for years said...

This may come as a shocker to some, but scientists are not always right — especially when under intense public pressure for answers. Researchers with the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) recently admitted to experienced zoologist and polar bear specialist Susan Crockford that the estimate given for the total number of polar bars in the Arctic was “simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.”

Polar bear population counts are estimates only, derived from the most “rudimentary” of scientific knowledge and made up largely to meet the expectations of the public, researchers said in an email to a science blogger. Dag Vongraven, chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Polar Bear Specialist Group, sent an email to Polar Bear Science blogger Susan Crockford to clarify that a report that’s about to go public to give updates on the animal’s worldwide population level contains estimates, not hard facts. “As part of past status reports, the PBSG has traditionally estimated a range for the total...

This may come as a shocker to some, but scientists are not always right — especially when under intense public pressure for answers. Researchers with the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) recently admitted to experienced zoologist and polar bear specialist Susan Crockford that the estimate given for the total number of polar bars in the Arctic was “simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.” Crockford has been critical of official polar bear population estimates because they fail to include five large subpopulations of polar bears. Due to the uncertainty of the populations in these areas, PBSG did...

LANSDALE >> A North Wales teen is accused of chasing and then punching a man who was out running in Lansdale because the teen felt “disrespected,” according to police. Da’Quan McClendon, 18, of the 200 block of South Third Street, faces misdemeanor counts of simple assault and disorderly conduct, as well as a summary count of harassment, in connection with the alleged Nov. 11 incident. Lansdale police said that around 5:30 p.m. that evening, officers responded to the vicinity of Church Road and East Hancock Street for a reported disturbance involving a man accosted by four males who were seen...

We get it: the last two days have been "miserably hot." You want your San Francisco fog back so you can cool off. Plus, you miss your hoodie. But you know who isn't complaining -- this 33-year-old polar bear named Uulu who spent the last two days in this heat taking leisurely dips in her pool at the San Francisco Zoo. According to zookeepers, the elderly bear is living life like she's still a cub. Ahhh, the bourgeois life of a zoo animal.

Two Detroit teenagers were arrested Saturday in an attack on a suburban man who was brutally beaten by a mob after accidentally striking a boy with his pickup truck. Steve Utash remained in critical condition Saturday. Utash is white; Detroit is more than 80 percent black.

David Egan, a 16 year-old from Parkview High School in Lilburn, Georgia was beaten so badly in the locker room that his nose was dangling from his face. The Blaze reported: It was all over a pair of missing tennis shoes. David Egan, 16, was confronted by another 16-year-old male student in their high school locker room apparently over the missing shoes — and then Egan was beaten so severely by the unnamed student that he needed reconstructive surgery to reattach his nose to his skull. The brutal assault was captured by other students and posted on the internet. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)The...

Maine man badly injured in Torngat Mountains National Park. A U.S. hiker vividly recalls the night one of his fellow campers was pulled from his tent and attacked by a polar bear in Torngat Mountains National Park in northern Labrador. Matt Dyer, a lawyer from Maine, was badly injured during the attack at around 1:30 a.m. AT on July 24. Richard Eisenberg was with Dyer and six other hikers as part of a Sierra Club hiking trip to the remote park. He said the group woke up to the sounds of Dyer screaming as he was dragged from his tent....

Young harp seals off the eastern coast of Canada are at much higher risk of getting stranded than adult seals because of shrinking sea ice cover caused by recent warming in the North Atlantic, according to a Duke University study. "Stranding rates for the region's adult seals have generally not gone up as sea ice cover has declined; it's the young-of-the-year animals who are stranding (those less than one year old)," said David Johnston, a research scientist at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "And it's not just the weakest pups—those with low genetic diversity and presumably lower ability to...

Grizzly man Mark Dumas and Agee the polar bear do everything together. They swim together, wrestle together, roll in the grass together... even nap together. They have been polar pals since Agee was six weeks old and the colossal mammal even lived in Mark's home as a cub where she played with the family dogs and was bottle fed. Mark, 60, said: 'If anyone else tried this they would end up as Agee's dinner. ‘I have worked with bears in this way for over 40 years, so I can read Agee's body language and know how to behave safely around...