A Paralympic medal winner who spent half her life in a wheelchair has made a miraculous recovery, and now hopes to represent her country in the Olympics. Monique van der Vorst had been paralyzed from the waist down since the age of 13, and won two silver medals as a hand-cyclist in the 2008 Paralympic Games. But the 27-year-old Dutch athlete […]
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Italy and Switzerland have agreed to redraw their border because global warming is melting the Alpine glaciers that mark their respective boundaries. The border had been fixed since 1861.
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Pope Francis has declared Oscar Romero a martyr of the faith, paving the way for the murdered Salvadoran archbishop to be beatified, a step toward sainthood. A right-wing death squad executed Romero in a hospital chapel in 1980 while he was celebrating Mass just a day after he preached a sermon asking government soldiers to stop their repression. No one […]
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An Icelandic public broadcast station aired 24 hours of live sheep birthing, part of its “slow TV” campaign, which also featured chess, knitting, and wood-burning.
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Chance that a Russian believes the sun revolves around the earth: 1 in 3
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Estimated number of cases pending in India’s court system: 30,000,000
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Portion of men in China who say they have raped a woman: 1/5 Percentage of those men who said they did it because they were bored or wanted to have fun: 57
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The species of bacteria that dominate our guts may strongly affect whether we’re thin or fat. Researchers at Washington University collected samples of gut bacteria from pairs of twins in which one was obese and the other thin. Then they transplanted the bacteria into mice. The mice that received the bacteria from the obese twins became obese; the mice that […]
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Twenty-five pilot whales beached themselves on Kice Island off southwest Florida in 2014. Sickness related to environmental problems can trigger beachings, which are on the rise.
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Number of U.S. States that allow the death penalty: 31 Proportion of U.S. police departments that are using body cameras: 1 in 3
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