A new British investigation into the the August 31st, 1997 death of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed reveals that the National Security Agency (NSA) was secretly bugging Diana’s phone when their car crashed in a tunnel in Paris while they were being chased by photographers. The crash killed them both.
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Some researchers think that sign language actually leads to deafness. And due to the new science of cochlear implants, which are now implanted in young children, sign language may be on the way out among the deaf. But some deaf people insist that sign language is what defines them as a unique culture.
In New Scientist magazine, Rachel Nowak quotes researcher Harlan Lane as saying, “Deaf people argue that they use a different language, and with it comes a different culture, but there is certainly nothing wrong with them that needs fixing with a surgeon’s scalpel. We should listen.”
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SARS and bird flu aren’t the only diseases that humans can catch from animals. Between 2,000 and 2,005, around 50 million people caught diseases from animals such as dogs, cattle, chickens and mosquitoes, and almost 80,000 of them died. Sometimes animals pass diseases between species. And it works both ways: some HUMAN diseases are killing animals.
Jeanna Bryner writes in LiveScience.com that diseases that humans catch from animals are called zoonotic illnesses. Netherlands researcher Jonathan Heeney says that zoonotic illnesses seem to be increasing, and there are no vaccines for most of them. Heeney thinks that doctors and veterinarians need to work together to solve this problem.
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Due to global warming, massive fires covering half a million acres are burning in the eastern part of the Australian state of Victoria. In a desperate attempt to prevent them from combining into a superfire that would rank as one of the largest conflagrations in modern history, the Australian army has been mobilized to support firefighters.
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