Home  »  Headline News

On:

Because it’s so far north, Alaska is showing the effects of global warming long before any of the other 49 states. Forests that should be green are brown, due to the spruce bark beetle. Over the past 15 years, it’s killed more trees in Alaska than any other insect in North America’s recorded history. Ecologist Ed Berg blames the high beetle population on the weather. He says, “We had a really long run of warm summers.”

John Whitfield writes in nature.com that in Prince William Sound, boats have to navigate through the large number of icebergs calving off the Columbia Glacier. Alaska is already famous for its mosquitoes, so big they’re referred to as the state bird. Now they’ve spread farther than ever.
read more

On:

We’ve written before about the mysterious deaths from pneumonia of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Now it’s been discovered that unexplained blood clots are another reason soldiers are dying there?and they’re dying from the same thing here in the U.S. Soldiers, and their families, blame this on smallpox and anthrax vaccines.

In April, NBC News correspondent David Bloom also died from a blood clot in his lung after collapsing in Iraq. He had gotten both anthrax and smallpox vaccines and complained of pain in his legs before he died.
read more

On:

We recently wrote about a spam vigilante who identified the spammer who was making his life miserable. Now we’ve discovered a “reformed” spammer who’s quit the computer game and owns a nightclub in New Hampshire. As head of the junk e-mail company Cyber Promotions, he was “cyberspace’s most hated person in the 1990s.”

Brian McWilliams writes in wired.com that Sanford Wallace, known as “Spamford,” is now known as “DJ MasterWeb” at Plum Crazy in Rochester, NH. He says, “Now, instead of making money near a bunch of computers, I make money near a bunch of beautiful women.”
read more

On:

If you want to be happy, move to someplace where more people report feeling that way. However, the happiest countries may not be the ones you want to go to. And don’t get breast implants, unless you want to become seriously depressed.

An analysis of happiness in more than 65 countries by the World Values Survey shows Nigeria has the highest percentage of happy people, followed by Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico, while Russia, Armenia and Romania have the fewest. They say, “New Zealand ranked 15 for overall satisfaction, the U.S. 16th, Australia 20th and Britain 24th?though Australia beats the other three for day-to-day happiness.”
read more