A community of Costa Ricans with the world's lowest middle-age mortality rate and other longevity hot spots emphasize the importance of diet, family, and faith.

Vietnam has opened its first rescue center to house bears freed from illegal bile farms. The animals' bile purportedly cures illnesses in humans.

A girl born with two faces in India is a form of conjoined twin. Villagers are revering her as a reincarnation of a Hindu goddess.

New magnetic clues lend weight to a controversial theory that Earth became massively imbalanced in the distant past, sending its tectonic plates on a mad dash to even things out.

Proteins in the reptiles' blood have been shown to kill drug resistant bacteria and even to partially destroy the virus that causes AIDS, researchers announced.

The world's tallest man, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk, who measures 8 feet, 5 inches (2.5 meters) tall.

As oil development surges in the Peruvian Amazon, remote rain forest tribes are suffering both physically and socially as they're forced into contact with the outside world, rights groups say.

The U.S. government is tightening the amount of ozone—a main ingredient of smog—allowed in the air, but not by as much as scientists recommended.

Humans are about to become a majority urban species for the first time. Does this trend mean poverty or prosperity for the world's urban dwellers?

The powerful repellant temporarily jams an insect's sense of smell so that people don't register as food, according to a new study.

A drug-dispensing robot is filling many of the prescriptions at Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. Makers say the machine is more reliable than humans.

More than a hundred gharials found dead since December in an Indian river sanctuary likely died after eating fish carrying industrial chemicals, officials announced.

A large hole in the skull of an 1,800-year-old skeleton found in Greece is believed to be rare evidence of ancient—and failed—brain surgery.

Pollution drifting up from populated areas threatens polar bears in their formerly pristine Arctic habitat, according to Norwegian researchers.

A massage therapist in India claims she can relieve the stress of overworked elephants through massage.