■ Having been banned from every tanning salon in New Jersey, Patricia Krentcil — dubbed “a tanorexic” by the tabloids—plans to move to Britain to continue tanning. Krentcil, 44, says that since salons started turning her away she is having “to spend hours covering myself in tanning lotion to get the color I want.” She says that even though she’s […]
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The question has puzzled criminologists for decades: Why did violent crime rates start to soar across the U.S. from the 1960s, before beginning “a spectacular decline” in the 1990s—a decline that’s continued ever since? Theories abound, from improved policing strategies to the end of the crack epidemic. But a more likely possibility is a molecule, said Kevin Drum in Mother […]
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■ When Claire Johnson, 50, took her seeing-eye dog, Venice, to training classes in Stoke-on-Trent, England, the canine helper quickly became friends with fellow student Rodd, owned by 52-year-old Mark Gaffey. As the two dogs became inseparable pals, their sight-impaired owners struck up a friendship that soon turned into romance. Now, after an 11-month courtship, Johnson and Gaffey are to […]
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Eating fruits and vegetables contaminated with pesticide residue may lower men’s sperm counts, a new study has found. Researchers at Harvard University surveyed 155 men who had sought fertility treatment about their eating habits. They found that subjects who ate more soft, thin-skinned fruits and vegetables such as apples, grapes, and potatoes—foods that tend to contain high levels of pesticide […]
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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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A British teenager had to be rescued by firefighters after she got stuck in a storm drain while trying to retrieve her new smartphone. Ella Birchenough, 16, dropped her iPhone down the drain while out walking her dog. “I thought to myself, ‘I’m not leaving this,’ and I jumped down to get it,” she said. But her waist became wedged […]
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“Losing is good for you,” said Ashley Merryman. But as your children return to school and fall sports, they are stepping back into a fantasyland where everybody is a winner and everybody gets a trophy. “Trophies were once rare things,” but manufacturers now churn out $3 billion worth of them a year. In one California youth soccer league, every player […]
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A sleepwalking British woman fell 50 feet from a hotel window, but survived because her sleeping body was relaxed when it hit the ground. Amy Wigfull, 24, was on vacation in Spain when she stumbled into the hotel bathroom and crawled out of a sixth-floor window while still asleep and plummeted to the sidewalk below. Experts say that the only […]
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Jackson, Miss. Belated ratification: Mississippi officially ratified the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery—148 years late. The approval came after University of Mississippi medical professor Dr. Ranjan Batra watched the Oscar-nominated film Lincoln, and began looking into whether the state had ever endorsed the end of slavery. Batra discovered that by December 1865 the measure had been ratified by the three fourths […]
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■ A 96-year-old Indian man has been declared the world’s oldest father after his wife bore a son last month—the second in two years. Ramjeet Raghav, a farmer in a village about 30 miles from Delhi, said the doctors who delivered the healthy boy in a nearby hospital were surprised when he told them he was the father. “I think […]
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