What’s scaly, 14 feet long, and attracts a crowd?

Meet the giant oarfish. 

This creature that lives thousands of feet below the surface has suddenly turned up on California's beaches — not once, but twice. It's not the first time the creatures have beached themselves, but its rare for two of them to show up in such close proximity in a single week.

No one is completely sure why they're beaching themselves, according to the UK's Independent.

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Still life gets moving

Have you ever wondered whether a world-renowned 17^th century oil painting could be improved with some computer animation? Neither have we.

But that didn’t stop artists Rob and Nick Carter from trying to find out for themselves.

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The games snipers play

‘The snipers were having a game … some days we would have many neck wounds, some days only groin wounds, sometimes other parts of the anatomy.’

Snipers in Syria’s civil war have found a particularly horrific new way to enliven their work — as PRI’s the World heard from a British surgeon who just returned from the front lines.

$51 a pound… for chocolate?

The availability of cocoa beans is declining and that, combined with concerns about child labor and increasing costs of other chocolate ingredients, are sending chocolate prices rising. NBC News says we could be looking at prices of $51 a pound for any chocolate — and more filler ingredients in each bar of chocolate, too.

Legacy of harm?

Is there a connection between the munitions used by western forces in Iraq and the rates of brith defects among Iraqi children? MSNBC’s Geoffrey Cowley has been assessing the evidence and says anemia and pregnancy complications have become more common. Among the complications: low birth weight, malnutrition and stunting.

What we're seeing on social

Weather around the world

Veracruz, Mexico, was drenched with upwards of 3" of rain in just 12 hours over the weekend, as a cold front stalled over the city. The situation could get worse, though, as Hurricane Raymond churns off the country's west coast. The two systems combined could lead to heavy flooding over the central part of the nation. Hurricane Raymond is expected to eventually move west, but not until dropping up to six inches of rain in an area already recovering from floods earlier this year, according to NBC News.

Three dictators walk into a bar… and a Lebanese satirist becomes famous?

Karl Sharro grew up in Lebanon listening to old Woody Allen standup routines and reading Allen's early pieces for The New Yorker. Fast forward a few decades, and Sharro found himself in London, an architect with a thriving practice. But his longing to write satire gnawed at him. Then came the Arab Spring. More from PRI's The World.