The guns have been silent in Iraq for years, but in Basra and Fallujah the number of birth defects and cancer cases is on the rise. Locals believe that American uranium-tipped munitions are to blame and some researchers think they might be right.
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It sounds at first as if the old man were drunk. Or perhaps as though he had been reading Greek myths. But Askar Bin Said doesn’t read anything, especially not books, and there is no alcohol in Basra. In fact, he says, he saw the creatures he describes with his own eyes: ‘Some had only one eye in the forehead. Or two heads. One had a tail like a skinned lamb. Another one looked like a perfectly normal child, but with a monkey’s face. Or the girl whose legs had grown together, half fish, half human.’

The babies Askar Bin Said describes were brought to him. He washed them and wrapped them in shrouds, and then he buried them in the dry soil, littered with bits of plastic and can lids, of his own cemetery, which has been in his family for five generations. It’s a cemetery only for children.

Though they are small, the graves are crowded so […]

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Election Day in Florida became a nightmare due to several changes to election law, resulting in marathon lines and more provisional ballots. Now that the election is over, Florida Republicans are beginning to admit the mess was intended to suppress votes.

State Rep. Dennis Baxley (R-FL) and GOP chair of Alachua County, Stafford Jones, cooked up one of Florida’s many new laws specifically to keep college students from voting in the 2012 election. The vote-suppressing measures were inspired by the 2010 victory of Gainesville’s first openly gay mayor, Craig Lowe, which Republicans claim was stolen by Florida college students.

Baxley’s law prevented people from voting if they did not change their address a month before Election Day. Many of the people affected were college students or young people who were moving for a new job. Jones explained this vote suppression was intentional and accused liberals of bringing in students to swing the election:

Baxley said Jones told him that voters from Tampa and other cities shifted their voter registrations to Gainesville for a day to vote in the city’s 2010 mayoral election in which Craig Lowe became the city’s first openly gay mayor by a 42-vote margin.

[…]

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BIRMINGHAM — An invasive species has the potential to drastically alter Antarctic ecosystems that have been isolated for millions of years, research suggests.

A species of midge was able to release large volumes of nutrients into the soil, changing the way native species had lived and evolved, a UK team found.

They added the species was well-suited to thrive in the extreme conditions.

Details of the research were presented at the British Ecological Society’s annual meeting in Birmingham.

A team from the British Antarctic Survey said the invasive species, the non-biting midge Eretmoptera murphyi, effectively removed one of the brakes on the way that the native community had developed.

‘In terms of function, their job is litter turnover – they help things decay in the soil – and the population density of this thing in the area where it has been introduced is responsible for more litter turnover than the community that was already there,’ explained co-presenter of the research Peter Convey, of the British Antarctic Survey.

‘So basically it is bringing a function into an ecosystem that is not very active already. In principle, it can be a fundamental change in the way that ecosystem works.’
Extinction fears

Speaking to BBC News before the presentation, Prof […]

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Regular aspirin use has been linked to a significantly increased risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), according to a recent study published in JAMA.

Macular degeneration is a condition which largely affects the elderly and results in a progressive loss of vision. It occurs when the retina becomes damaged, leading to a slow decline in retinal function. A recent study stated that age related macular degeneration is set to increase, with 20% of people above the age of 60 already presenting early signs of the condition.

According to background information in the study:

‘Aspirin use in the United States is widespread, with an estimated 19.3 percent of adults reporting regular consumption, and reported use increases with age. The results of cross-sectional studies of aspirin use and its relation to age-related macular degeneration (AMD) have been inconsistent.

AMD is a potentially blinding condition for which prevalence and incidence are increasing with the increased survival of the population, and regular use of aspirin is common and becoming more widespread in persons in the age range at highest risk for this disease. Therefore, it is imperative to further examine this potential association.’

The study, led by Barbara E. K. Klein, […]

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James Dobson, the founder of the social conservative Focus on the Family, joined Mike Huckabee and Bryan Fischer in blaming the shootings in Newtown, Conn., on Americans who have ‘turned our back on God,

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