Valletta, Malta Traffickers drown refugees: As many as 500 people, including scores of children, drowned off the coast of Malta when human traffickers rammed one of their boats. The traffickers had taken the group—which included Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians, and Sudanese—by boat from Egypt and passed them to increasingly smaller boats during the journey. When the exhausted refugees refused to board […]
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Marijuana may now be legal in Colorado, said Jordan Weissmann, but do purchasers really know what they’re buying? New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd highlighted that problem last week by describing what happened when she went to Denver to sample edible marijuana. Dowd ate too much of a weed-laced candy bar, which had no dosing instructions, and spent eight hours […]
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Prague, Okla Tremors from fracking: Scientists have linked Oklahoma’s largest earthquake—a 5.6 magnitude quake near the town of Prague, in 2011—to hydraulic fracturing, supporting claims that the process increases seismic activity. Fracking, as it is known, injects water and chemicals into petroleum deposits in order to extract trapped gas. This week, researchers at the University of Oklahoma, Columbia University, and […]
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Training for a marathon and other extreme workouts may be more harmful than healthy. After reviewing over 50 studies, researchers at the Mayo Clinic found that more than an hour of intense aerobic activity per day put runners and cyclists at heightened risk of serious heart problems, including an irregular heartbeat, clogged arteries, and scarring. Habitual marathon runners and professional […]
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Human beings appear to be genetically engineered to be happiest and healthiest when we spend a lot of time selflessly helping others—and unhealthy when we’re mostly devoted to self-gratification. That’s the eye-opening conclusion of University of North Carolina researchers, based on a study of 80 volunteers. The study subjects were asked how often they felt hedonic pleasure—the kind of happiness […]
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A century ago Albert Einstein predicted that two neutron stars collided over 130 million years ago in his Theory of General Relativity. He said that when it happened it caused gravitational waves (a ripple in the universe) that travel at the speed of light at the same time as gamma rays. When gamma rays burst, they send out deadly radiation […]
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Researchers have found that if the patient with Alzheimer’s is treated for any bacteria or infections it may help in the reduction of this condition. The immune system is being researched more to see if it can be the key factor in treatment for Alzheimer’s. If it is found out that infections are what may be causing Alzheimer’s then we […]
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Beijing Mass arrests: In one of the biggest crackdowns on civil society groups in decades, Chinese authorities have detained and questioned at least 238 lawyers and human rights activists over the past two weeks. At least 20 activists remain incarcerated, and the whereabouts of six of them are unclear. Maya Wang, a researcher with Human Rights. Watch, said those still […]
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Berlin The Nazis maintained more than 42,000 camps and ghettos across Europe, far more than had previously been identified, Holocaust researchers now say. For more than 10 years, historians at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum have been compiling records of all the slave-labor camps, brothels, death camps, and ghettos set up from 1933 to 1945, mostly in Germany and Poland. […]
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Earthquakes are the result shifting plates in the crust of Earth. When there is frictional stress building of the plates it causes failure at a fault line an earthquake happens. The shaking of the ground happens when the energy is released, and waves radiate. Research has found that they predict where major seismic activity may happen, but they cannot forecast […]
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