Why are Americans so fat—and getting fatter with every passing year? said Brian Stelter in The New York Times. Seventy percent of adults in the U.S. are either overweight or obese, and so are one third of children and teens. This week, HBO began airing a four-part documentary, The Weight of the Nation, that aims to serve as a “wake-up […]
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Prison officials in Tennessee say an inmate escaped from jail by smearing himself in grease and squeezing between the bars of his cell. Kristopher White, 23, is 5-foot-11 and 165 pounds, yet he managed to writhe his way between bars that were only four and a half inches apart. White then scaled a barbed-wire fence and led police on a […]
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Neanderthals, a sturdy hominid species closely related to Homo sapiens, lived in Europe for about 270,000 years until humans arrived on the continent, about 30,000 years ago, at which point they quickly disappeared. The latest theory for their puzzling extinction is that humans exterminated, and maybe even ate, their Neanderthal cousins. French anthropologist Fernando that the bacterial disease was present […]
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The Chinese government has revealed that it has a nationwide surveillance system to track dissidents, and it bears the same name as the evil computer network that tries to destroy humanity in the Terminator movies. Skynet, begun in 2005, has at least 20 million cameras installed across the country in public places, including on buses and streets, and outside dissidents’ […]
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■ A Georgia college student faked his own kidnapping to avoid telling his parents he was flunking English. After receiving the F grade, Aftab Aslam, 19, texted his parents on behalf of a group of make-believe abductors, warning them not to call police or he would be killed. He camped out for eight days but came home when the weather […]
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Newtown, Conn. Newtown shooter Adam Lanza may have been trying to compete with Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik when he carried out the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December. Citing law enforcement sources, CBS reported this week that Lanza wanted to beat Breivik’s “score” of 77—the number of deaths in his 2011 killing spree in Oslo and on […]
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Astronomers have discovered the largest rocky planet yet, and its existence has profound implications for our understanding of the early universe and the potential for extraterrestrial life. Kepler-10c, which was spotted by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, has a diameter of roughly 18,000 miles—more than twice that of Earth —prompting scientists to create a new class of planets, dubbed “mega-Earths.”The body’s […]
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PAKISTAN: The 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck Balochistan—killing at least 515 people—shifted enough mud and rock to create a new island in the Arabian Sea, off the port city of Gwadar. The land mass, seen here in a photo shot by the Pleiades satellite, is reportedly about 250 ft. (76 m) long and roughly 60 ft. (18 m) high. Like others […]
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Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, turn a blind eye to crimes that don’t affect them directly, suggesting that third-party punishment— the foundation of complex societies governed by laws s and courts—is a uniquely human development. German researchers trained chimpanzees to 1 play one of three roles while facing one another in cages: One was given access to food within reach of […]
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The more time you spend on Facebook, the more unhappy you become. A new study by University of Michigan researchers has strengthened a growing body of research showing that frequent use of the social-networking site leads to feelings of envy, sadness, loneliness, and anger. Researchers gauged the mood of 82 young study subjects by texting them five times a day, […]
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