The Greatest Places to Explore the World's Best-kept Secrets

These are 10 great places to explore: Isla de Margarita Venezuela One of the largest islands in the Caribbean remains largely undiscovered by Americans. Yogerst says it offers a huge variety of landscapes and culture in a small area. "It's all of Latin America on one island. It has rainforests, deserts, fabulous beaches and little Spanish colonial towns." margarita-travel.com Colca Canyon Peru The "Grand Canyon of South America" is more than twice as deep as its Arizona counterpart. It's also one of the best places to see Andean condors. "You can go and watch them ride drafts up the canyon wall. It's a majestic desert landscape that goes on forever and ever," Yogerst says. tours.peru.travel/Colca/index_ing.php Wrangell-Kluane Wilderness  Alaska...

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Animal-friendly Movies with Award Aspirations

Listen up, Oscar: These animals are naturals This winter's film slate features a zoo full of creatures, a War Horse and a pack of adorable dogs. The movie world is all a-Twitter over Uggie's acting in 'The Artist.' "It's amazing how many animals there are this year," marvels Mathilde de Cagny, the lead animal trainer for Hugo and Beginners, two animal-friendly movies with award aspirations. "Animals add such character to a movie, and people just automatically relate to them. They bring such warmth." "Besides," she says, "they are a lot cheaper than actors." Four-legged thespians have long been unappreciated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But in this year of banner performances, here are five animals worthy...

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The effects of Sugar Binge on Our Body

Here are 5 effects of a Sugar Binge 1. Your Teeth The remnants of candy and other sticky-sweet treats cling to molars, where the sugar begins mixing with bacteria in your mouth, creating an acid that can start breaking down protective tooth enamel, explains Kimberly Harms, D.D.S., a spokeswoman for the American Dental Association. 2. Your Stomach and Gut After about 15 minutes in your stomach, the goody passes to the small intestine, where your body metabolizes sugar into glucose and fructose molecules, says Suzanne Hendrich, Ph.D., professor of food science at Iowa State University. Both are then broken down further, enabling them to pass into the bloodstream. 3. Your Blood A surge of glucose enters your bloodstream, with levels...

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Torching Cars Called Common Crime in Germany

A German man whose mother was threatened with deportation is accused of a crime that has become a popular way in Germany for young people to express anger: burning cars. A car owner tries to retrieve possessions from his vehicle as it burns in an arson fire early Monday in a parking lot in Los Angeles. Harry Burkhart, 24, watched as his mother was arrested last week on a warrant from their native Germany on fraud charges that include not paying for breast-augmentation surgery. Two days later, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck alleges, Burkhart began a nighttime rampage of arson attacks that terrorized the city. Authorities have yet to disclose why they believe Burkhart, whom Sheriff Lee Baca called the "most...

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Look Back at Selena & Justin's Year of PDA

JUSTIN AND SELENA CELEBRATE NEW YEAR It's been a whirlwind of a year for teen lovebirds, Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber. Rumors of a romance between the teen sensations started in the fall of 2010, and in early 2011, the couple finally went public with their romance. Since then, they've adopted a puppy together, engaged in red carpet PDA, and taken steamy beach vacations to the Caribbean, Hawaii and Mexico. Check out the best photos of them meeting each other's families, canoodling on water skis, and demonstrating the all-around cuteness of a young couple in love over the course of the year. Long before rumors of romance between these two started, Justin and Selena showed just how good their chemistry was when they performed together...

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NASA Probe Circling Moon on 2012 Eve

(PASADENA, Calif.) — As planet Earth rang in the new year, a different kind of countdown was happening at the moon. After a 3 ½-month journey, a NASA spacecraft flew over the moon's south pole, fired its engine and dropped into orbit Saturday in the first of two back-to-back arrivals over the New Year's weekend. NASA probe circling the moon on New Year's Eve Mission control at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers and applause after receiving confirmation that the probe was healthy and circling the moon. An engineer was seen on closed-circuit television blowing a noisemaker to herald the New Year's Eve arrival. "Everything went just as we hoped. The burn was spot-on," chief scientist Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts...

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Facebook Could Be Route to New Kidney

SEATTLE — Here's another reason for holdouts to join the social media site Facebook: It's a great place to find a kidney. Between the kid photos and reminiscences about high school, more and more pleas for help from people with failing kidneys are popping up. Facebook and other social media sites are quickly becoming a go-to place to find a generous person with a kidney to spare, according to the people asking for help and some national organizations that facilitate matches. Damon Brown found a kidney on Facebook after telling his story on a special page the Seattle dad created under the name, "Damon Kidney." His friends and family forwarded the link to everyone they knew and on Jan. 3 a woman his wife has known for years, but not someone...

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Spacecraft Twins Arrive at the Moon

The Moon is like an aging boxer, its face scarred and distorted by a lifetime of powerful blows. In the boxer's case, those blows are delivered over the course of a few decades. In the case of the Moon, the punishment has been going on for billions of years, courtesy of comets and asteroids that carved out craters and piled up mountains all over the lunar surface. The very birth of the moon was violent: planetary scientists are pretty sure our companion world was created when a Mars-size object slammed into Earth and ripped off a Moon-size chunk. Artist concept of GRAIL mission. Much of our understanding of that violent history comes from rocks hauled back by the Apollo missions four decades ago. But the astronauts who gathered that...

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