Nearly half of us could be infected with a virus which makes us more stupid, scientists have found. The startling discovery suggests that millions may be carrying a long-lasting infection which dulls the brain. Scientists found the virus living in the throats of 44 per cent of patients tested in a small US study.
Cynthia and Robert Gifford are caught in a same-sex nightmare. They’ve been forced to defend themselves against claims that they’re lesbian-hating homophobes. “We respect and care for everyone!
A Wiccan priest opened an Alabama city council meeting with an invocation to the ‘gentle goddess and loving god’ this past week in an effort to make the prayers that open each session more diverse, appeasing church-state separation groups. “O gentle goddess and loving god, we thank you for the beauties and the wonders of the day that you have given to us, and for the opportunity we have this evening to assemble here and work together to make Huntsville a better city for all of its residents,” Blake Kirk led those in attendance at the Huntsville City Council meeting on Thursday. (Read the rest of the story here…)
There are a lot people in America right now who are under the delusion that the Republican Party will be their savior from the perfect storm of a convergence of catastrophic events like ISIS coming through our Southern border, economic crisis or collapse, a major terrorist attack inside the U.S., skyrocketing food prices, an Ebola pandemic, American troops deployed into the Ukraine region in a conflict with Russia, American troops sent to regions like Iraq and Syria, the prospect of a regional thermonuclear war and the beginnings of World War III, Russia invading Alaska and other remote U.
Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Saddleback megachurch leader Rick Warren will team up with Roman Catholic Pontiff Francis later this month for an interfaith Vatican conference on marriage and family. “Complementarity of Man and Woman,” will be held Nov. 17-19 at the Vatican, and is expected to feature more than 30 speakers from over 20 countries.
The foundation of America’s nuclear arsenal is fractured, and the government has no clear plan to repair it. The cracks appear not just in the military forces equipped with nuclear weapons but also in the civilian bureaucracy that controls them, justifies their cost, plans their future and is responsible for explaining a defense policy that says nuclear weapons are at once essential and excessive. It’s not clear that the government recognizes the full scope of the problem, which has wormed its way to the core of the nuclear weapons business without disturbing bureaucracies fixated on defending their own turf.
An overwhelming majority of Catalans have said “yes” to independence and secession from the central Spanish government in Madrid in a highly-anticipated but symbolic referendum poll on Sunday. Some 80.72 percent voted to form a state independent of Spain, Joana Ortega, vice president Catalonia said shortly after midnight, with over two million Catalans reportedly turning out for the unofficial referendum.
As the battle for the food supply rages on with over 96 plus percent of the nation in full support of GMO labeling, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced that it is throwing public opinion to the wayside and green lighting the first genetically modified potato for commercial planting. Continuing the intensely documented relationship between major branches of the U.S.
Kenya’s Catholic bishops are charging two United Nations organizations with sterilizing millions of girls and women under cover of an anti-tetanus inoculation program sponsored by the Kenyan government. According to a statement released Tuesday by the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, the organization has found an antigen that causes miscarriages in a vaccine being administered to 2.3 million girls and women by the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
In a newly uncovered video, Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber admits that a “lack of transparency” was key in getting the Affordable Care Act passed because “the stupidity of the American voter” would have otherwise killed the bill. From 2009-2010 Gruber, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, served as a technical consultant to the Obama Administration during which time he helped craft the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare. During a recent panel discussion, Gruber explained that the characterization of the individual mandate as a tax, which led to the Supreme Court upholding it as such, was not actually a tax at all.
The winter pros in Minneapolis often make it until a few days before Christmas before the first 4-inch snowfall of the season. This year, they could get triple that by Monday night alone, as an icy blast dipping out of Canada brings an early load of snow across the upper Midwest. Along for the ride:
A gay couple are to become parents to three children by three women they met via surrogacy websites. For the past 15 years, Daryl Lee, 41, and Luke Harris, 50, had longed to have children and joined a number of online forums in an attempt to find a suitable surrogate. They made contact with one of the women, Becky Harris, 27, and through her met Bex Harris, 32, and Viktoria Ellis, 32.
On its official website, the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (yes, that’s really a thing and yes, it is housed right here in the United States) announced that the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) “will enter into force on 24 December 2014.” Merry Christmas! It is ironical that on the day before the world’s 2.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is ramping up its acquisition of protective gear for U.S. hospitals that may have to handle Ebola patients, following a “sudden increase” in demand on its current national stockpile.
A massive storm packing arctic air moved eastward Sunday, promising a deep chill for two-thirds of the U.S. and heavy snow from Montana to Michigan, according to meteorologists.
Ukraine’s military accused Russia on Friday of sending a column of 32 tanks and truckloads of troops into the country’s east to support pro-Russian separatists fighting government forces. Thursday’s cross-border incursion, if confirmed, is a significant escalation of a conflict that has killed more than 4,000 people since the separatists rose up in mid-April and would call into question Russia’s commitment to a two-month-old ceasefire deal. The truce has looked particularly fragile this week, with each side accusing the other of violations after separatist elections last Sunday condemned as illegitimate by the West.