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Why did SARS only become an epidemic in China and in Toronto, the part of Canada where many Chinese emigrants live? Scientists have found a genetic susceptibility to SARS that explains this puzzle.

Maggie Fox writes that a variant in an immune system gene called human leukocyte antigen, or HLA, makes certain patients much more likely to develop the life-threatening symptoms of SARS. This gene variant is common in people of southern Chinese descent.

“After the outbreak of SARS coronavirus infection in the Guangdong Province of China, it was surprising to observe that the spreading of the disease was mostly confined among southern Asian populations (the Hong Kong people, Vietnamese, Singaporeans and Taiwanese),” researchers write.
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Due to increased carbon dioxide emissions, the world’s oceans are becoming more acidic, affecting marine life. And whaling is reducing the number of giant whales that were once eaten by killer whales, leading step by step to a huge increase in the number of sea urchins. These sea urchins are munching their way through the kelp forests of the ocean, destroying the food that supports the fish that provide one of the world’s main food supplies.
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China bans “evil cults” and forbids belief in anything but the Communist Party, but research into UFOs is not only allowed, it’s encouraged. There’s a government-approved China UFO Research Center with 50,000 members and a 20-year-old UFO magazine with a circulation of 200,000. “We have so many visitation reports that if people don’t have pictures, we won’t bother investigating,” says Zhang Jingping, director of the Beijing UFO Research Association.

UFOs are nothing new there?Matthew Forney writes in the Asia edition of Time.com about a 4th century Chinese text called the Collected Legacies, which describes a “moon boat” that floated above China every 12 years.
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The administration has thrown out hints that we’d like to invade Iran, which harbors many of the terrorists we chased out of Afghanistan and Iraq, but we can’t afford to extend our military any farther. Now Israel says they may do the job and destroy Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.

Israel is alarmed by the failure of the international community to move against Iran. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom says, “Iran is fast approaching the point of no return in its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons capability. It’s urgent that the international community act to ensure that this nightmare scenario is prevented.”
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