Hint: It’s not the flu.

Tuberculosis (TB) is one the world’s most common diseases mainly because it is so highly infectious-it’s spread with a mere cough or sneeze. It’s second only to HIV as the leading infectious killer of adults worldwide, and it is the third largest cause of death among women aged 15 to 44.

The World Health Organization estimates that two billion people-that’s one-third of our planet’s population-are infected with the bacteria that cause TB. Ten percent of these carriers will become sick, and if left untreated, half of those will die from the disease.

Conventional medicine is panicking because TB is becoming resistant to multiple drugs and fear it may become ‘virtually untreatable.

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: ‘Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK — If Americans stick to their eating and exercise habits, future historians will look back on the early 21st century as a golden age of svelte.

Using a model of population and other trends, a new report released on Tuesday by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation projects that half of U.S. adults will be obese by 2030 unless Americans change their ways.

The ‘F as in Fat’ report highlights the current glum picture of the U.S. obesity epidemic, in which 35.7 percent of adults and 16.9 percent of children age 2 to 19 are obese, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported earlier this year.

But for the first time, the report builds on state-by-state data from the CDC to project obesity rates. In every state, that rate will reach at least 44 percent by 2030. In 13, that number would exceed 60 percent.

Obesity raises the risk of numerous diseases, from type 2 diabetes to endometrial cancer, meaning more sick people and higher medical costs in the future, the report said.

It projects as many as 7.9 million new cases of diabetes a year, compared with 1.9 million new cases in […]

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In January I sued President Barack Obama over Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorized the military to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely, strip them of due process and hold them in military facilities, including offshore penal colonies. Last week, round one in the battle to strike down the onerous provision, one that saw me joined by six other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, ended in an unqualified victory for the public. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, who accepted every one of our challenges to the law, made her temporary injunction of the section permanent. In short, she declared the law unconstitutional.

Almost immediately after Judge Forrest ruled, the Obama administration challenged the decision. Government prosecutors called the opinion ‘unprecedented’ and said that ‘the government has compelling arguments that it should be reversed.’ The government added that it was an ‘extraordinary injunction of worldwide scope.’ Government lawyers asked late Friday for an immediate stay of Forrest’s ban on the use of the military in domestic policing and on the empowering of the government to strip U.S. citizens of due process. The request for a stay was an attempt by the government to get the judge, pending […]

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Two southeast companies that make U.S. military uniforms are shedding hundreds of jobs, as the government looks to federal inmates for the fatigues.

American Power Source makes military clothing in Fayette, Ala., but its government contract expires in October. Federal Prison Industries – which also operates under the name UNICOR will snag the work, and leave the task to inmates. FPI has the first right of refusal for U.S. Government contracts, under a 1930 federal law.

American Apparel, the Selma, Ala., based military clothing manufacturer closed one of its plants and continues to downsize others due to the loss of some of its contracts to FPI. According retired Air Force colonel and spokesman Kurt Wilson, the company laid off 255 employees and cut the hours of 190 employees this year alone. So private workers end up losing their jobs to prisoners.

‘The way the law is – Federal Prison Industries gets first dibs and contracts up to a certain percentage before they have to compete against us,’ Wilson, the executive vice president of business development and government affairs, said. ‘The army combat uniform, for instance, is an item that they take off the top. As a result American tax payers pay more for […]

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