Currently, assisted suicide is legal in only four states, but D.C. could soon join that list.

Under the proposed “Death with Dignity Act of 2015,” a mentally competent patient suffering from a terminal illness that's "likely to result in death within six months" can request medication that would allow them to choose the time, place, and circumstances of his/her death."

Should Cheh's bill make it through the Council and signed by Mayor Muriel Bowser, D.C. would be one of the few places in the country to legalize assisted suicide.

The Islamist sect has been carrying out almost daily killings and kidnappings across northeast Nigeria in a campaign of violence now in its sixth year.

These came just days after a week-long killing spree by Boko Haram, in which the group torched at least 10 towns leaving around 2,000 people unaccounted for.

It is not clear if the girls were coerced or were even aware they were strapped with explosives, which may have been detonated remotely. But experts say that Boko Haram appears to be using the children it kidnaps

George Church, a Harvard University geneticist who is also working on de-extinction of mammoths, suggests that reintroducing the mammoth to tundra regions could help bring back the ancient dry, grassy "mammoth steppe" ecosystem shaped by their grazing.

Herds of woolly mammoths could be lumbering across the Canadian tundra in the near future if a Korean company's project works out.

While some scientists think bringing back mammoths is an exciting possibility that could benefit the environment, others have reservations.

Secret official documents about the searching of three trucks belonging to Turkey's national intelligence service (MIT) have been leaked online, once again corroborating suspicions that Ankara has not been playing a clean game in Syria.

According to the authenticated documents, the trucks were found to be transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition.

When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prime minister, he had said, “You cannot stop the MIT truck. You cannot search it. You don’t have the authority. These trucks were taking humanitarian assistance to Turkmens.”

Yevgeny Savostyanov, the head of Russia's Coordination Council on Intellectual Property Protection, said in an open letter that he was "ashamed" of Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky and no longer wished to work with his ministry.

Savostyanov, a former FSB official and deputy chief of the Kremlin staff, condemned Medinsky and his ministry for turning a blind eye to the frequent disruptions of concerts, exhibitions, and shows of artists critical of the government. 

At the rate things are going, the Earth in the coming decades could cease to be a “safe operating space” for human beings.

The paper contends that we have already crossed four “planetary boundaries.” They are the extinction rate; deforestation; the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorous (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean.

“What the science has shown is that human activities — economic growth, technology, consumption — are destabilizing the global environment,” said Will Steffen, who holds appointments at the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Center and is the lead author of the paper.

Around 7,000 years ago the Earth was enjoying a warm climate. Now glaciers and patches of perennial ice in the high mountains of Southern Norway have started to melt again, revealing ancient layers.

He is an archaeologist working for Oppland County, and has for many years done fieldwork in glaciers and ice patches, finding things our ancestors discarded or lost.

The summer of 2014 was hectic in this respect. In Oppland County alone, Pilø and his colleagues found 400 objects, now emerged from the deepfreeze.

Ilya Rogachev, who heads the Foreign Ministry's department for modern challenges and threats, told Ekho Moskvy radio Friday that those who have joined the group include people from the Russian province of Chechnya and some other regions in the volatile North Caucasus.

He said precise numbers of Russians among ISIS fighters are hard to measure, as they include some Chechen refugees who had moved to Europe, as well as some ethnic Chechens from Russia's ex-Soviet neighbor, Georgia.

High-resolution images taken from orbit have identified its landing location, and it looks to be in one piece.

The UK-led probe tried to make a soft touchdown on the dusty world on Christmas Day, 2003, using parachutes and airbags - but no radio contact was ever made with the probe.

Many scientists assumed it had been destroyed in a high-velocity impact.

It is unclear exactly how long the Winchester rifle had been left there, but it was long enough to leave the stock cracked and buried in dirt.

"But it probably is a story that could have happened to almost anyone living this sort of extraordinary existence out here in the Great Basin Desert".

The gun will be preserved in its current state and put on display at the park.

A number of protesters burned the French flag at the holy site

The protest concluded without incident.

The most recent issue of the controversial publication showed a cartoon image of the prophet on the front page of the magazine holding a sign that says “Je Suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), a slogan made popular following the January 7 attack on the satirical weekly’s Paris headquarters by two jihadist gunmen that killed 12 people.

Russian rocket maker Energia has signed a $1 billion deal with U.S. space firm Orbital Sciences to deliver 60 RD-181 Russian rocket engines to the U.S., Energia said in a press release Friday.

The deal comes two months after an Antares rocket using a Russian engine exploded above a NASA launch pad in Virginia, fueling calls for the U.S. to free itself of its reliance on Russian equipment.

But far from abandoning Russian gear, Orbital Science — which is contracted to deliver supplies to the International Space Station for NASA — will simply switch the Soviet models it had been using for the newer Russian engine.

The Defense Department destroyed nearly half a billion dollars worth of defective Italian aircraft that U.S. taxpayers bought for Afghanistan and then sold the scrap for $32,000, according to an agency watchdog.

In a letter last week to James, Sopko expressed concern that defense officials “may not have considered other possible alternatives in order to salvage taxpayer dollars.”

The attack took place near El Arish, the main town in the north of the restive peninsula. Three more died in a shooting in the town itself.

The area has become increasingly lawless since President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in 2011.

Militants further stepped up their attacks after Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was ousted by the army last year.

MARYSVILLE, Wash. -- Two people were found dead, including the shooter, a male, and a female victim, inside Marysville-Pilchuck High School north of Seattle. Three other students were critically injured and the shooter, a student at the school, killed himself, according to police, student and hospital reports.

There is no evidence so far that a gunman who attacked Canada's parliament had links to Middle Eastern Islamist extremists, the government has said.

It has also emerged that Prime Minister Stephen Harper hid in a cupboard in parliament for about 15 minutes during Wednesday's attack as MPs sharpened flagpoles to use as spears against the gunman.

"Reports suggest that well in excess of 100 Canadians have gone to fight jihad in the Middle East and that's a huge concern," he said.

Sixty women and girls have been kidnapped from two towns in north-east Nigeria, according to reports, dealing a fresh blow to government claims of a truce with the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

Lazarus Baushe, an elder of the Wagga community, said: “They left 1,500 naira (£5.67) and some kola nuts in each home where they seized a woman, apparently as a bride price.”

The raids will intensify scepticism over a government announcement last Friday that it had achieved a ceasefire with Boko Haram, ending a five-year insurgency that has left more than 10,000 people dead. A senior aide to the president, Goodluck Jonathan, claimed the extremist group, which has been seeking to create an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, had agreed to release the 219 schoolgirls.

(Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Friday of endangering global security by imposing a "unilateral diktat" on the rest of the world and shifted blame for the Ukraine crisis onto the West.

In a 40-minute diatribe against the West that was reminiscent of the Cold War and underlined the depth of the rift between Moscow and the West, Putin also denied trying to rebuild the Soviet empire at the expense of Russia's neighbours.

"We did not start this," Putin told an informal group of experts on Russia that includes many Western specialists critical of him, warning that Washington was trying to "remake the whole world" based on its own interests.

DAKAR/NEW YORK, Oct 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Leroy Ponpon doesn't know whether to lock himself in his flat in Monrovia because of the deadly Ebola virus, or because he is gay. Christian churches' recent linking of the two have made life hell for him and hundreds of other gays.

"Since church ministers declared Ebola was a plague sent by God to punish sodomy in Liberia, the violence towards gays has escalated. They're even asking for the death penalty. We're living in fear," Ponpon told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone from Monrovia.

Ebola has infected almost 10,000 people in West Africa since March, killing around half its victims. Liberia is the worst hit country where poverty, corruption and civil war have left a weak health system unable to cope with the exponential spread of the disease.

A Nigerian drug smuggler at Madrid's international airport who started shivering after the cocaine bags he was carrying inside his body burst was left to die after airport authorities activated an emergency Ebola alert