GLOBAL HEALTH CARE
The Commonwealth Fund ranked health care systems in 11 wealthy nations according to criteria such as quality and access. Below, a sampling of the rankings:
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Ratio of Shootings In Our Own Communities
Ratio of shooters in the U.S. who attack their own communities: 2 in 3
Read moreTo Delay Aging, Spend More Time Standing Up
To delay aging, spend more time standing up. That’s the surprising conclusion of a new study by Swedish scientists, reports The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Researchers at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm took blood samples from a group of sedentary, overweight men and women, all 68 years old, and measured the length of their telomeres—caps on the ends of DNA that […]
Read moreDog Saves A Man’s Life
A homeless man suffering a medical emergency in Washington state attached a note to his dog and sent it for help. Not long after, a local resident found the dog walking along some railroad tracks, read the note, and dialed 911. The note didn’t give a location, but police had received reports of a homeless man with a dog living […]
Read moreStudent With Down Syndrome Voted Homecoming Queen
Students at a Bolivar,Tenn., high school last week elected a classmate with Down syndrome to be homecoming queen. Kara Marcum, 19, easily beat three other candidates in a victory one teacher chalked up to her considerable personal charm. Kara also has a life-threatening heart defect, but both her family and classmates say she doesn’t let her disabilities get in the […]
Read moreIt’s Not Easy Being Green
City officials in Chengdu, China, have been painting the city’s grass green to make residents think spring is here.The ruse came to light when some residents noticed unpainted patches of yellowish winter grass, and others found the green paint coming off on their shoes. The city was then forced to admit its deception, but an official said the goal was simply […]
Read moreParalympic Medal Winner Regains Use of Her Legs
A Paralympic medal winner who spent half her life in a wheelchair has made a miraculous recovery, and now hopes to represent her country in the Olympics. Monique van der Vorst had been paralyzed from the waist down since the age of 13, and won two silver medals as a hand-cyclist in the 2008 Paralympic Games. But the 27-year-old Dutch athlete […]
Read moreDefying your parents
12-year-old Jaxxyn Wood of Kentucky stayed up to 3 a.m. playing computer games and smelled an electrical fire in the kitchen. He woke his family and got all nine people to evacuate, thus saving their lives.
Read moreCollapsing Bridges
The odds are 1 in 4 million that you’ll be on a bridge when it collapses at some time during your life.
Read moreVolcano Disaster
A volcano in the Galapagos Islands erupted for the first time in 33 years, threatening the unique ecosystem that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The island is home to the world’s only colony of pink iguanas; officials said they were not in immediate danger.
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