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I never realized how truly unattractive turkeys are. I think i'm having second thoughts about eating one of these tomorrow. Did you know that a spooked turkey can run at speeds up to 20 miles per hour. They can also burst into flight approaching speeds between 50-55 mph in a matter of seconds. See more turkey facts here.

She looks like she has been crying in this photo. Knox and former lover Raffaele Sollecito returned to court on Wednesday to appeal their conviction for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher. Do you think she's guilty? See more on the Amanda Knox trial and a slideshow of how it all began.

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I love the floating petals in this photo. See more information about how this day is observed in India and read about how the Sikh's are divided over the change of this martydom date.

Some 100,000 Arab Bedouins live in eastern Lebanon, many of whom have been fighting for years to be recognized by the state as citizens. Read more about Bedouins here.

That looks like it would hurt.

I like how the passerby's clothing blends into the exhibit.

See this week's Animal Tracks.

See more images from this attack and read the full story from here.

News freelance photojournalist Frank Thorp V writes: As a freelance journalist based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the harsh realities of life can appear when you least expect it. I was recently traveling around the city with a colleague when we came across a team of young men who were picking up bodies of Haitians who had died from the cholera epidemic. Cholera has already killed over 1,300 people in Haiti, and this group of men have been driving around the city filling their open air truck with body after body, many of which have been left on sidewalks or in the middle of the road.

After making a stop to pick up the body of a man that had died on a sidewalk just 200 feet from a hospital, they picked up another seven cholera victims at a nearby Cholera Treatment Center and then headed towards a newly dug mass grave. While NGOs and the Haitian government are working hard to have places to treat those who have contracted cholera, the numbers continue to rise due to a lack of knowledge about the disease and the lack of sanitation and clean water in poor communities. “It’s definitely increasing,” one of the body collectors explained to me last Thursday, Nov. 18, “On Monday we had five (bodies), Tuesday we had 12, and today we have 22.”

The growing number of dead has left the morgues overflowing, so the Haitian government has decided to utilize mass graves. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning. Mass graves will be the final resting place for hundreds more cholera victims from Port-au-Prince. “We’ll keep on putting bodies in here until it’s full,” one of the team members explained, “and then we’ll cover it with dirt and dig another one.”

Click here to read more from Thorp about the Hatian cholera epidemic.

See more pictures from Haiti and the outbreak of cholera.

FROM THE SOCIETY OF NEUROSCIENCE

NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 10, 2003 - Until fairly recently, scientists believed that the information gathered by each of the senses — touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste — was processed in separate areas of the brain. Research is now revealing, however, that there is a complex interaction between the senses in the brain—an interaction that enables us to understand the world in a unified way.

“Since we perceive the world as a whole and not split up into different sensory modalities, it’s important to study how signals from the senses affect each other in the brain,” says Colin Blakemore, PhD, of Oxford University.

New research on how the senses interact is revealing some fascinating findings: What we see affects how we perceive odors. Blind people do have a superior sense of touch. And the odd mixing-of-the-senses condition known as synesthesia, in which people claim to “see” sounds or “hear” colors, is a very genuine phenomenon....

Read the whole story here.

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Recently on Photoblog, another photographer--freelance photjournalist Karim ben Khelifa--described Yemen as a "complicated puzzle." We also have a slideshow of 20 pictures of Khelifa's from Yemen, viewable here.

Read the full story here.

Muslyumovo is the only settlement left along the banks of the contaminated Techa river. Several other settlements were evacuated following huge radioactive discharges from the upstream nuclear reprocessing plant in the early 1950s.

The local government passed a resolution 1994 to relocate the residents of Muslyumovo who have suffered the most, but poor economic conditions caused no action to be taken.

A pretty cool multiple exposure image that caught my eye. See more amazing sports picture from this week here.

As a news photographer, I’ve had to cover local protests like this in the past. Shooting and editing pictures of events that happen over and over usually gets me thinking about the issues beneath those events.

Religious displays on public property have been argued over for decades. The establishment clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” However, it also says Congress can’t impede the free exercise of religion, nor can it infringe on the freedom of speech. So, understandably there is considerable confusion around this issue.

Covering Christmas manger stories always gets me thinking about the role of government, free speech and religion. It makes me wonder whether Christmas should be an officially recognized federal holiday or simply a religious holiday. At a time when city, county, state and federal budgets are painfully tight, I wonder if we’re using up precious resources to continue this argument year after year.

What do you think? Should Christmas be a federal holiday? Should religious displays be allowed on public property? If allowed, should we make distinctions between religions? If Christians can set up a Jesus manger on public property, can a coven perform Wiccan rituals on the steps of city hall? Am I favoring a religion if I participate in a Christmas giving tree, or am I helping a family during what would otherwise be a terribly painful morning on December 25th?

Related story: In 'The War on Christmas,' Christmas is winning