Category: News

Komodo dragon gives birth to 8 children: Flora has never mated, or even mixed, with a male dragon, and fertilized all the eggs herself, a process culminating in parthenogenesis, or virgin birth.

So much for that amendment. Congrats to Iceland, Ireland, Finland and Netherlands at #1. The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext […]

Rebecca does some fun analysis of Newsweek reportage inside the US and globally: Last week if you bought or subscribed to Newsweek outside the United States, you received a magazine (the October 2nd issue, to be precise) with this cover story, "Losing Afghanistan," about how U.S. efforts to keep the Taliban out of power may […]

A blogger on DailyKos, combs the archives of his local Freecycle and muses: Of the 674 messages posted in the last week, over 50 of them were pleas for basic household necessities- not recycling, not carrying it forward- people whose kids needed coats. People looking for beds, clothes, carseats- all the things that’s so much […]

Scanning the database, the grandsons, both in their 20s, discovered an entry erroneously stating their grandmother had perished half a century earlier. That entry led them to other surviving relatives, who eventually brought about the siblings’ emotional reunion Friday. "After 65 years, I have found the sister who I love," Simon Glasberg said … his […]

Kevin send this in: Most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn’t already have a fundamentally public–that is, tax-supported–health care system. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population […]

Ah Thursday! Instead, one year after Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, none of the money given to the federal government has made its way to evacuees. With debris still choking New Orleans streets, a levee system still in need of basic upgrades (even as another hurricane season is upon us), and tens of thousands of […]

This is a very important post from Metafilter and if you have any new moms or parents in your life you need to send them this excellent thread of advice and information: My baby is six weeks old. Increasingly, I have the feeling she’s not very fond of me, which isn’t unexpected since I’m coming […]

Wow: Approximately half of all bus and streetcar routes are back up and running, while only 17 percent of buses are in use, a level of service that has not changed since January. Gas and electricity service is reaching only 41 and 60 percent of the pre-Katrina customer base, respectively.