WHEN thousands of young Iranians took to the streets in June 2009 to protest against the apparent rigging of the presidential election, much of the coverage in the Western media focused on the protesters’ use of Twitter, a microblogging service. ‘This would not happen without Twitter,

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Two former Democratic representatives from Arizona reportedly received numerous threats during their time in office after being placed on Sarah Palin’s ‘crosshairs’ map.

‘I cannot tell you how much I wish a panty bomber would come in and just fucking blow your place up,’ one constituent told former Arizona Congressman Harry Mitchell, a Democrat who lost his reelection bid last year.

Another former Arizona representative, Ann Kirkpatrick, received emails calling her a ‘whore’ and had a sewer cap thrown through her office window, The Daily Best reported.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was shot in the head Saturday in Tucson, was among 20 other members of Congress who were on a ‘target list’ published by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Six people were killed and at least 14 others were injured in the attack.

A map of the US, published on Palin’s Facebook page, featured targeting crosshairs over individual congressional districts Palin had urged supporters to focus on. While her note called for ‘pink slips,’ she added that supporters should fire a ‘salvo’ at those lawmakers.

‘We’re paying particular attention to those House members who voted in favor of Obamacare and represent districts that Senator John McCain and I carried during the 2008 election,’ Palin’s […]

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Spending more than four hours a day sitting in front of a television or computer more than doubles your risk of dying from or being hospitalized for heart disease, according to a new study.

And even those who exercise can’t overcome the detrimental effects of too much screen time, said study researcher Emmanuel Stamatakis, of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University College London.

Many people have sedentary jobs, and spend five to seven hours sitting at their desk or in their cars during their daily commute, he said. Tack on two to four hours of leisure time spent sitting, and the total can balloon to 10 hours a day spent parked in a chair.

‘This is excessive,’ Stamatakis told MyHealthNewsDaily.

The study is published in the Jan. 18 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Death and risks

Stamatakis and his colleagues studied 4,512 adults who answered questions as part of the 2003 Scottish Health Survey. Researchers asked how much leisure screen time the people took in each day, which included watching TV or DVDs, playing video games and using the computer. After 4.3 years, there were 325 deaths from all causes and 215 cardiac events.

The researchers found that […]

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When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?

Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 - an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence.

Conservatives denounced that report. But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has.

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having […]

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New research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

has found that another vitally important pollinator, the bumblebee, is in serious decline. According to the figures, there has been a shocking 96 percent decline in four major species of the bumblebee, and an up to 87 percent decrease in their overall geographic coverage.

‘We provide incontrovertible evidence that multiple Bombus species have experienced sharp population declines at the national level,’ explained researchers in their report. And in a phone interview with Reuters, study author Sydney Cameron from the University of Illinois, Urbana, explained that these bumblebee species are ‘one of the most important pollinators of native plants.’