Not only is there a wave of obesity in the well-fed Western world, but the Earth itself is getting fatter around the middle, caused by global warming. An increase in glacier melting at the poles, along with shifts in ocean circulation, have forced water away from the poles to the Earth’s midsection. Physicist Jean Dickey of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory says, “Some people refer to it as equatorial obesity.” This is a sudden change in shape for the Earth, which, before this, had been getting rounder for thousands of years. The reversal has stunned scientists, and at first they were puzzled over why it’s happening.
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While people may differ on whether or not individuals should have access to guns, no one wants convicted criminals to have them. However, since the creation of the National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS), administered by the FBI to screen firearm sales, 10,000 people who are not allowed to own guns have bought them, according to the Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms? own statistics. The NICS fails to identify people who are prohibited from acquiring guns because the states aren’t required to computerize their criminal records and send them to NICS.
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Actor Christopher Reeve could make a full recovery from paralysis if his spinal injury can be fixed. He became paralyzed from the neck down in 1995 after damaging his spinal cord in a riding accident, but doctors at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis say his brain has retained the ability to detect feeling and movement.
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People living near Vice President Dick Cheney are hearing mysterious, earth-shaking blasts coming from the U.S. Naval Observatory, which has been the site of the vice president?s residence since 1974. The Navy says the explosions are part of a classified construction project. Navy spokeswoman Cate Mueller says it?s an “infrastructure improvement, a utility upgrade,” but it may be an underground bunker.
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