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Over a quarter of all deaths of adult beluga whales in Canada?s Saint Lawrence Estuary are caused by cancer, researchers have found. Such high rates of cancer are unprecedented in wild animals, except for fish. Industrial pollution is the most likely cause.

Belugas live entirely in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. There are approximately 70,000 worldwide and about 650 of these live in a small region of the St. Lawrence Estuary in Quebec. Between 1983 and 1999, 263 dead whales were reported. Daniel Martineau of the University of Montreal and his team conducted 100 autopsies of the whales and found that cancer, particularly cancer of the digestive tract, was the cause of death of 18 per cent of juvenile belugas and 27 per cent of the adults.
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Drought has engulfed nearly a third of the United States, which this summer may lead some of the worst water shortages in years.

It?s still far short of the 1930s Dust Bowl, when up to 70 percent of the country had no rain. However, unless there?s a rainy spring, some places in the East may face summer water problems as bad as the droughts of the 1960s, according to Harry Lins, a drought specialist at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Drought is usually defined as 70 percent of normal rain or snow for three months straight. Drought conditions now run in two vast Eastern and Western strips, each hundreds of miles across, from Maine to Georgia and Montana to Texas, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor map.
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Whitley Strieber has written a new journal entry about the evils of fundamentalist religions?of all kinds. He?s sure to stir up controversy with “Religious Fanatics and the Ruin of the World!” To read Whitley?s Journal,click here.

NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.read more

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Cocaine may not only be associated with HIV infections because it causes people to act recklessly and have unsafe sex?it may also help the HIV virus spread faster through the body, killing off more immune cells and reproducing 200 times faster than usual.

?Cocaine not only influences risky behaviors, it also has a direct and profound effect on the AIDS virus,? says Dr. Gayle Baldwin, an AIDS researcher at UCLA. The spread of the HIV virus and its effects on immune cells known as CD4 T-cells are directly related to how sick a person becomes with HIV infection.
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