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Instances of dementia exploded in the last five years, bringing the current number of people affected worldwide to more than 46 million, a new report shows.

The report, titled “World Alzheimer Report 2015,” says nearly 60 percent of those with dementia live in underdeveloped countries. By 2050, half of those with the disease will live in Asia. Researchers from Alzheimer Disease International, a global coalition of Alzheimer-focused organizations, expect the numbers to rise with the identification of more cases and greying of the population.

Dementia, defined as a range of symptoms associated with a decline in memory, strikes more than 3 million people over the age of 65 in the United States annually. Alzheimer’s disease accounts for at least 60 percent of the cases, making it the sixth leading cause of death domestically. The progressively degenerative disease, though currently incurable, can be managed with treatments and changes to one’s physical environment.

In a press release, Glenn Rees, Alzheimer Disease International chairperson, called on governments around the world to connect people with […]

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People place flowers and balloons at a house in Houston, Texas, on Aug. 9, 2015, where eight people were killed.
Credit: Associated Press

It felt like a summer of mass shootings.

You probably heard about the killings in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white gunman opened fire inside a historic black church, and the shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, where a man targeted moviegoers inside a darkened theater. Or the shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where an armed attacker sprayed a military recruitment center with bullets.

Here’s one you may not have heard about.

On Aug. 8, David Conley allegedly broke into his ex-girlfriend Valerie Jackson’s house in Houston, Texas, and killed her, her husband and her six children, methodically shooting each one in the head. Jackson had recently dumped Conley and reunited with her husband after Conley allegedly smashed her head into a refrigerator. When she reconciled with her husband, […]

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“Get rid of gun free zones,” Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump tweeted after a gunman massacred five in Chattanooga last month. “Gun-free zones an easy target for killers” an opinion headline on Fox News read after a white supremacist shot up a black South Carolina church and killed nine. Conservative sites also blamed gun-free zones after massacres at multiple movie theaters and other shootings.

If conservatives are so convinced that gun-free zones attract killers, then why do so many conservative places and events ban guns?

Across the country, from conservative confabs to Republican presidential libraries and even to gun shows, loaded weapons are frequently prohibited. When an explanation is given, the reason is invariably for the safety of visitors.

Here is a list of some of those conservative places that ban loaded guns:

Gun Shows- Perhaps the most surprising conservative venue that bans loaded weapons are gun shows. Crossroads Gun Show, which tours across the country, explained why even concealed carry permit holders can’t bring loaded weapons into the event: “Safety is our Number One […]

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A women sits with her son for dinner in their new sparsely furnished apartment, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2015, in New York. After leaving her husband who beat her for years, she and her little boy spent the next three years homeless because she couldn’t afford New York City rents. About one third of American children are now living in poverty.
Credit: AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews

AUSTIN, TEXAS — The financial collapse of 2008 and the absence of true economic recovery in the years since has left millions more children in poverty than before the recession. About 22 percent of American children live in poverty, and even that […]

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PACIFIC OCEAN – From the air, the Pacific algal bloom doesn’t look like much of a threat: a wispy, brownish stream, snaking up along the West Coast. But it’s causing amnesia in birds, deadly seizures in sea lions, and a crippling decline in the West Coast shellfish industry. Here’s what you need to know about it, from what this bloom has to do with the drought to why these toxins could be a real threat to the homeless. What’s causing it? The culprits are single-celled, plant-like organisms called pseudo-nitzschia, a subset of the thousands of species of algae that produce more than 50 percent of the world’s oxygen through photosynthesis. They’re a hardy variety usually found in cool, shallow oceans, where they survive on light and dissolved nutrients, including silcates, nitrates, and phosphates. “They’re sort of like the dandelions of the sea,” says Vera Trainer, who manages the Marine Biotoxin Program at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

“They’re always there in some low numbers, just waiting for nutrients to be resupplied to the ocean’s surface.” In most years, blooms in the […]

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