When communities like San Francisco and Seattle began banning plastic bags, said Ramesh Ponnuru, it seemed like a public-spirited thing to do. But’ benign-seeming laws often have unintended consequences— and the plastic-bag ban is now producing a sickening result. The reusable shopping bags that people now use to bring groceries home turn out to be breeding grounds for bacteria carried […]
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Of the world’s billion Internet users, one in three logs on in English. That’s no surprise. The technology got its start in the U.S., most Web pages are English, and more than 60 percent of the U.S., Canadian, U.K., and Australian populations are online. But China is catching up. The number of Chinese speakers using the Internet is five times […]
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Chinese scientists have been modifying certain brain genes to create a new kind of monkey. Chinese researchers have incorporated the MCPH1 human brain gene into monkey embryos, in an experiment with hopes of crossing the wires of human and animal intelligence.A study based on the MCPH1 gene experimentation (PDF available below) was published in Beijing’s National Science Review journal describes […]
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Saturn’s moon Titan may be light-years away from Earth, but the two bodies have many characteristics in common: Wind, rain, volcanoes, tectonics and other Earth-like conditions all sculpt features on Titan, but act in an environment many times colder than Antarctica. “It is really surprising how closely Titan’s surface resembles Earth’s,” said Rosaly Lopes, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet […]
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Arjona, Colombia Killed at bullfight: Spectators were gored to death and dozens injured at a bullfight in northern Colombia. One man was gored through the heart, while another was tossed on a bull’s horns and then dragged around the ring. It is not uncommon for participants or spectators to be gored to death at bullfights. Unlike Spanish bullfights, in which […]
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The richest counties got richer and the poorer got poorer in the last decade, according to census reports. The poorest county turns out to be in the heart of Appalachia — Owsley County, Ky. Owsley had the lowest median household income outside of Puerto Rico, according to census results. In Owsley, the median household income is $19,351. Over 41 […]
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A Michigan man has taken revenge on his ex-wife and her new lover by buying the house next door and erecting a giant yard sculpture of a hand flipping the bird. Detroit strip club owner Alan Markovitz spent$7,000 on the 12-foot-tall bronze statue,which is illuminated by a spotlight at night. But Markovitz says the middle-finger salute is aimed not at […]
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Researchers have found some 200 million termite mounds that stretch for thousands of miles across northeastern Brazil. The area measures 88,000 square miles an area larger than the state of Minnesota. They stand about 10 feet tall, about 30 feet wide, and may be up to 4000 years old. The only way to see these mounds is by using a […]
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Ghana has sold its soul to China, said Alex Bossman Baafi. Small-scale gold-mining permits are reserved by law for native-born Ghanaians only. Yet Chinese immigrants are operating illegal gold mines all over the country, with expensive machinery and guards armed with illegal guns. These miners hurt the environment by razing our forests and dumping toxic mining by-products like cyanide into […]
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■ A Missouri couple have used their record lottery winnings to improve their hometown. Mark and Cindy Hill have spent chunks of their $293 million fortune on the town of Camden Point buying it a new firehouse and baseball field, refurbishing the town’s waste-water system, and topping up the high school scholarship fund.The Hills’ gifts amounted to 25 years of […]
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