■ Dogs are supposed to be man’s best friend, but a black Labrador has become the inseparable pal of an elephant living in a Myrtle Beach, S.C., safari park. The 32-year-old pachyderm Bubbles has formed a bond with Bella, a 6-year-old dog abandoned at the preserve by a contractor hired to build a pool there. Bubbles has learned to throw […]
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In Ceredigion, UK a parade of dozens of octopus decided to come out of the sea and land on a Welsh beach where they alarmed some beach goers. These octopus measured at least 20 inches in length. Some of the people decided to put the octopus back in the water and noticed that some of them had washed up on […]
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These nations have been dismissed as underdogs and weaklings. But like budding superheroes, they’ve been sitting on hidden talents. And now they’re about to fly. 1. FINLAND SUPERPOWER: INVINCIBLE TEACHERS If you’re a kid in Finland, you don’t start school until you’re 7 years old. There’s almost no homework until you’re a teenager. You don’t wear a uniform, you can […]
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Residents of rich countries are more likely to be affected by depression than those who live in poorer nations. That’s the startling conclusion World Health Organization researchers reached when they interviewed nearly 90,000 people in 18 countries about their mental health. France and the U.S. were the most depressed; 21 percent of French people and more than 19 percent […]
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Nine out of 10 Americans have a chemical called bisphenol A in their urine, said Nicholas D. Kristof. BPA, which can be found in plastic food containers, soup can linings, ATM receipts, and many other consumer products, is a proven “endocrine disruptor”—a substance that mimics or alters human hormones. Studies have already linked BPA to breast cancer, diabetes, and hyperactivity, […]
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Fewer people are being killed by lightning strikes due to better ways to get out of its way. In the United States we have learned that we can get out its way by having covers over us that don’t attract the lightning bolts. In the 1940s there was over 400 people a year that were killed by lightning and in […]
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Baluchistan, Pakistan A massive earthquake in Pakistan’s province of Baluchistan killed hundreds of people and created a new island off the coast. The magnitude-7.7 tremor flattened entire mud-brick villages. Troops deployed to fight an insurgency of separatist Baluchis were on hand to help rescue people, but the affected area is so huge that it will take days to reach some […]
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What happened to the Conservatives’ promise to roll back the surveillance state? said James Ball. The British are already the most-spied-upon people on the planet, with hundreds of thousands of video cameras recording our comings and goings. Junior-level bureaucrats have the authority to “ping” our mobile phones to find out where we are at any given moment. Now they also […]
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As humans get older, our brains shrink by about 15 percent, making us vulnerable to memory loss, dementia, and depression. But the brains of our closest relatives, chimpanzees, stay the same size throughout life, a new study has found. And while 50 percent of Americans over 85 suffer from Alzheimer’s, elderly chimps appear to have no similar problems. “The million […]
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To worship the goddess Kali sacrifices of goats, roosters, sugarcane and pumpkins are offered to celebrate the changing of the seasons. It has been reported that the sacrifice of a 25-year-old man was found in a remote village in the eastern part of India. The young man’s head had been severed and then he was adorned with red paint, dressed […]
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