Khafji, Saudi Arabia Christian roundup: Saudi authorities last week arrested an entire congregation of Christians worshipping in a private home. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Saudi Arabia’s morality police, detained 28 men and women in the home of an Indian national and seized copies of the Bible. The prisoners’ fate is unknown. Saudi Arabia […]
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A hallucinatory party drug could point the way to the first new treatments for depression in a generation. Scientists have discovered that ketamine (“Special K”), which club-goers take for dream-like highs, also improves mood disorders by repairing damaged connections in the brain. What’s more, ketamine works within hours as opposed to weeks— even for people whose mood disorders have proved […]
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Bulgarians hate old people, said Ruslan Jordanov. I’m not kidding. In a recent survey, 58 percent of Bulgarians surveyed admitted to disliking the elderly, making them even more reviled than the Roma—quite a feat in Bulgaria. No wonder “nobody ever gets up to give them a seat on the tram.” Long ago, our society revered grandparents as fonts of wisdom. […]
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Cannabis and Pregnancy – What are the potential health effects? The combination of cannabis and pregnancy can be harmful to your baby’s health. The chemicals in marijuana (in particular, tetrahydrocannabinol or THC) pass through your system to your baby and may harm your baby’s development. Although more research is needed to better understand how marijuana may affect you and your […]
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Russian teens are killing themselves en masse, and the authorities “seem oblivious,” said Alexander Tretyakov. The country has long had one of the world’s highest teen suicide rates, and in the past decade it’s gotten worse. Thousands of teens have joined “suicide forums” on Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. There they share stories of abuse and desperation and trade […]
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If you go to the beach this summer you may come home with some bacteria from the water. Studies show that the water may be contaminated with all sorts of unsafe bacteria. Before rainwater can be absorbed by the ground or evaporated back into the air it travels down to the ocean waters through sewer pipes where it can pick […]
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Researchers find that humor is a psychological process of discovery that can benefit us when we are put in a sad situation. You may laugh when you go to a tragic event which is your way of coping with the tragedy. Which is very hard to define since we don’t analyze humor in the same way. Since comedians think differently […]
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The Republicans have a euphemism for undocumented workers— illegals — said Peter Beinart. With a tone of disgust, that single, dehumanizing noun has become the GOP presidential candidates’ preferred way to describe the millions of human beings picking our produce, cooking our food, cutting our lawns, and watching over our kids. It’s “the latest in a long line of euphemisms […]
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Diego has single handedly helped to save the tortoise of Galapagos Islands from extinction. During his stay since 1976 on the island he has fathered over 800 babies to help rebuild the population on Espanola Island off the coast of South America. For his age he is doing a good job of reproducing. The 12 females on the island are […]
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Budapest Power grab: In the face of mass protests and international condemnation, the Hungarian parliament has overwhelmingly passed 15 pages of amendments to the country’s 1-year-old constitution that practically abolish all judicial checks on the government. The amendments retroactively restore a number of controversial laws that were passed by the right-wing Fidesz government but subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the courts. […]
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