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More than 40% of the swimming pools in the Netherlands contain the bacteria that causes Legionnaire’s Disease. Government tests also found the bacteria in 9% of hotel swimming pools. Pool owners in the U.S. test their pools for many kinds of bacteria?but not for the kind that causes this sometimes fatal disease.

Testing began in the Netherlands after a deadly outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease in 1999 killed 32 people and made more than twice that number ill. Legionnaire’s was first discovered in an air conditioning unit in Philadelphia in 1976, when American Legion members staying at an infected hotel got sick and died.

The bacteria can be found in water that is warm enough for it to grow (90
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Even those who are passionately pro-choice may find this new innovation disturbing: eggs from aborted female fetuses can now be kept alive and grown in a lab, for later implantation into an infertile woman’s uterus. This means that even though a fetus has never been born, she can still be a mother.

This may be illegal in the U.K. Suzi Leather, of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, says, “It would be difficult for any child to come to terms with being created by aborted fetuses.”

Researcher Tal Biron-Shental says, “I am fully aware of the controversy about this, but probably, in some places, it will be ethically acceptable.”
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We recently wrote about a wave of cat mutilations in Salt Lake City. Now Jason Felch writes in The Denver Post that mutilated cats are being found almost every day in Denver. Some of them have even been mutilated before they’ve been killed. Police see a link between the Denver and Salt Lake City mutilations.

“The Utah and Colorado cases are on almost exactly the same time schedule,” says Temma Martin, of the Salt Lake County Animal Services. “Somehow they seem to be linked. The timing is similar; the injuries are similar.”
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Hira Ratan Manek is a 64-year-old mechanical engineer from India who says he’s survived on only liquids and sunlight for eight years. He’s now in the U.S. being studied by NASA, so they can figure out how he does it.

Manek began disliking food in 1992, and in 1995, after a pilgrimage to the Himalayas, he stopped eating completely. His wife Vimla says, “Every evening he looks at the sun for one hour without batting an eyelid. It is his main food. Occasionally he takes coffee, tea or some other liquid.”

A year ago, NASA scientists verified that Manek had survived for 130 only on water. NASA wants to use his techniques to solve food storage and problems on space flights. They may also want to know how he can stare at the sun without being blinded.
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