Drought has engulfed nearly a third of the United States, which this summer may lead some of the worst water shortages in years.

It?s still far short of the 1930s Dust Bowl, when up to 70 percent of the country had no rain. However, unless there?s a rainy spring, some places in the East may face summer water problems as bad as the droughts of the 1960s, according to Harry Lins, a drought specialist at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Drought is usually defined as 70 percent of normal rain or snow for three months straight. Drought conditions now run in two vast Eastern and Western strips, each hundreds of miles across, from Maine to Georgia and Montana to Texas, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor map.
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Whitley Strieber has written a new journal entry about the evils of fundamentalist religions?of all kinds. He?s sure to stir up controversy with “Religious Fanatics and the Ruin of the World!” To read Whitley?s Journal,click here.

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Cocaine may not only be associated with HIV infections because it causes people to act recklessly and have unsafe sex?it may also help the HIV virus spread faster through the body, killing off more immune cells and reproducing 200 times faster than usual.

?Cocaine not only influences risky behaviors, it also has a direct and profound effect on the AIDS virus,? says Dr. Gayle Baldwin, an AIDS researcher at UCLA. The spread of the HIV virus and its effects on immune cells known as CD4 T-cells are directly related to how sick a person becomes with HIV infection.
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Mars holds vast stores of water ice right near the surface and away from the permanently frozen south polar ice cap, scientists say. This means it?s possible that life may have once existed on Mars or could still be there.

?There?s a lot of ice on Mars,? says William Boynton, who made the discovery. ?We really have a whopping large signal.? What he?s spotted is hydrogen, which is one of the components of water. Boynton and his colleagues believe there is actual water ice at the surface, as well as a few feet down.
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