The annual monsoon transforms Bali. Rain sweeps across slumbering volcanoes. Moss thickens on ancient temple walls. Rivers swell and flush their trash and frothing human waste into the sea off Kuta Beach, the island's most famous tourist attraction, where bacteria bloom and the water turns muddy with dead plankton. "It happens every year," shrugs Wayan Sumerta, a Kuta lifeguard, who sits with his love-struck Japanese girlfriend amid dunes of surf-tossed garbage. So why, in early March, did the Bali authorities warn tourists that swimming ...

Any kid can dream up a roller coaster. But those who visit a new exhibit at Walt Disney World's Epcot theme park can actually take a ride on their fantasy creations. Epcot on Wednesday opened a new attraction called "Sum of All Thrills," which lets kids use computer tablets to design a virtual roller coaster, bobsled track or plane ride. After inputting their designs, kids climb into a robotic carriage that uses virtual-reality technology to help them experience the ride ...

What makes a woman want to have sex? Is it physical attraction? Love? Loneliness? Jealousy? Boredom? Painful menstrual cramps? It turns out that woman have sex for all of these reasons and more, and that their choices are not arbitrary; there may be evolutionary explanations at work. Psychologists Cindy Meston and David Buss, both professors at the University of Texas at Austin, decided that the topic of "why women have sex" deserved a book of its own. They've woven ...

A wildfire in Yellowstone National Park has grown to 9,300 acres and closed a section of the main road through the park, but Yellowstone is still open and National Park Service officials said Monday there was no danger to travelers. Snow could fall this week at Yellowstone, which sprawls across parts of three states, and end the park's fire season, officials said. National Park Service officials said the lightning-sparked wildfire started on September 13, but wasn't noticed until 10 days ...

He looks like President Barack Obama, speaks like him, and even gestures like him, but he is not exactly the president of the United States. This president is an audio-animatronic Obama surrounded by the 42 other U.S. presidents at Walt Disney World's newly revamped Hall of Presidents in Orlando, Florida. Disney gathered a team of what it calls "Imagineers," each trained in various disciplines such as artistry, design and engineering, to update the attraction that has been around since 1971. ...