Over the past decade, more Americans died from overdoses of prescription painkillers than from heroin and cocaine use combined, according to government health officials. Most of the deaths were due to misuse of the medications— not to treat pain but to achieve a narcotic high. Recreational abuse has fueled a 300% surge in sales since 1999 of drugs like oxycodone, […]
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Anti-Semitism is sweeping Hungary, said Colin Freeman. It’s so bad that the World Jewish Congress held its annual conference in Budapest to express solidarity with beleaguered Hungarian Jews. The Jobbik party, which is openly anti-Roma and anti-Semitic, is now the third-largest party in parliament, and its rise has coincided with a sharp uptick in anti-Semitic attacks and incidents. Jewish leaders […]
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About 98% of the female elephants are now showing up without tusks. There were only 2% – 6% born on average a few years ago. Poachers target the elephants with tusks for the best ivory and now that they have been doing this for so long, they have altered the gene pool. In the past ten years they have slaughtered […]
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Research has concluded the main cause of America’s obesity epidemic is that food has become too cheap and easy to get. The findings challenge conventional wisdom about obesity in the U.S., shifting the focus from sedentary lifestyles to the economics of eating. “It isn’t just the fact that we may be eating more high-calorie food, but we are eating more […]
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Tbilisi, Georgia Orthodox priests led a mob of some 20,000 people in an attack on a small gay-rights rally in the Georgian capital last week. On a new crusade Television images showed priests throwing rocks, punching people, and pounding the buses that were trying to evacuate the marchers. Dozens of people were injured. “I am not able to either condemn […]
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Why do chimpanzees kill one another? For years, many studies have shown that chimps that were observed killing one another had become more aggressive only when humans encroached on their environment. But new studies have lent weight to an alternative theory: Chimpanzees are, like humans, natural-born killers who use violence as a means of expanding their territory and increasing their […]
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If you want to go for a walk but don’t want to go alone, you can call Chuck McCarthy and he will come walk with you for $7 a mile. While you are walking you have someone to talk to that will listen and you don’t need a leash. Since he is an underemployed actor, he thought “what can I […]
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Major depression is not only psychologically crippling but can also age a person’s body on a cellular level. That’s the conclusion of a new study that examined blood samples from more than 2,400 people with and without depression. Researchers at the Free University of Amsterdam measured the length of telomeres, the small caps at the ends of chromosomes that protect […]
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Researchers have found that in some women who take calcium supplements and have had a stroke may suffer from dementia as they grow older. Women who suffer from cerebrovascular disease which is a disorder that effects the blood flow to the brain are also at a risk to develop dementia. Strokes are the fifth leading cause of death in women. […]
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La Habra, Calif. Quake fears: The magnitude-5.1 earthquake rattled Southern California, raising fears that the tremors could presage the long-dreaded “Big One”—a catastrophic quake that could devastate the region. The temblor and its more than 100 aftershocks originated in La Habra, Calif., along the Puente Hills thrust fault that stretches from the suburbs of northern Orange County into Hollywood. Residents […]
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