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Even an occasional glass of wine or beer increases the risk of health problems and dying, according to a major study on drinking in 195 nations that attributes 2.8 million premature deaths worldwide each year to booze. "There is no safe level of alcohol," said Max Griswold, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, Washington and lead author for a consortium of more than 500 experts. Despite recent research showing that light-to-moderate drinking reduces heart disease, the new study found that alcohol use is more likely than not to do harm. "The protective effect of...

No amount of alcohol, sausage or bacon is safe according to a new global blueprint on how to beat cancer. Even small amounts of processed meats and booze increase the risk of a host of cancers outlined in World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) guidelines updated every decade. The respected global authority has unveiled a 10-point plan to cut your risk of getting cancer by up to 40%. Brits have been told to banish favourites such as ham, burgers and hot dogs from their diets by experts who say they are a direct cause of bowel cancer. Processed meats also cause...

Facebook is asking British users to send naked photos of themselves to the social network, to try to stop revenge porn. If you're worried an intimate photo of you could be shared by someone else, the idea is to get it blocked before it appears online. Similar technology is used to try to stop the spread of child abuse images. Facebook's been testing the system in Australia and is extending the trial to the UK, the USA and Canada. A spokesman told Newsbeat the idea is open to people in the UK now. Facebook hasn't revealed any details about how...

SACRAMENTO - DNA is back in the spotlight, cracking cold cases. But questions are being raised after the state spent decades collecting the DNA of infants without parents realizing it. California has been collecting newborn blood samples since 1983. Many parents were shocked to hear their children’s blood is being stored in a state database, and possibly even sold to outside researchers. Pricking the toes newborns, to test their blood for certain disorders. The remaining blood becomes “property of the state,” and could be shared with outside researchers. “I feel like that’s something that should have been discussed with us,...

Facebook is not a privacy company; it’s Big Brother on PCP. It does not want to anonymize and protect you; it wants to drain you of your privacy, sucking up every bit of personal data. You should resist the urge to let it, at every turn. There’s a new menu item in the Facebook app, first reported by TechCrunch on Monday, labeled “Protect.” Clicking it will send you to the App Store and prompt you to download a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service called Onavo. (“Protect” shows up in the iOS app. Gizmodo looked for it on an Android device...

I woke up very early this morning with the tortured picture of an infant running through my mind. Charlie Gard has a tube through his nose into his lungs, connected to a machine that breathes for him. He has all the latest electronics monitoring his status. But he is unable to provide any indication of his pleasure or pain at the process. He is dying from a horrendous genetic disease that robs his body of the ability to move, breathe, or respond. Next I saw his parents. Their expression conveyed the pain that Charlie cannot. But their pain is not...

Let me just say this at the outset: Mildred Dresselhaus, who died in February at the age of 86, was an amazing woman. An accomplished physicist who won just about every scientific award short of the Nobel Prize, Dresselhaus was by all accounts a pioneer, patriot and great American. Nonetheless, I still find GE's commercial in her honor to be profoundly creepy. If you haven't seen the ad, which debuted at the Oscars and is omnipresent on MSNBC, you can find it on YouTube. It opens with a little girl unwrapping her birthday present. "A Millie Dresselhaus doll!" she exclaims...

No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years. The entire market for land transport will switch to electrification, leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century. This is the futuristic forecast by Stanford University economist Tony Seba. His report, with the deceptively bland title Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030, has gone viral in green circles and is causing spasms of anxiety in the established industries. Seba’s premise is that people will stop driving altogether. They will switch...

TULSA, Oklahoma, April 12, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — An Oklahoma mother allowed her daughter to go on an educational field trip only to have her return with a three-year chemical contraceptive implant inside her arm. Langston Hughes Academy hosts an annual sex-ed class by Youth Services of Tulsa. When Miracle Foster's daughter wanted to learn more, she allowed her to visit the clinic. But Youth Services of Tulsa is part of the Tulsa Area Teen Pregnancy Prevention Collaborative, whose PregNOT program began in 2010 with $1.5 million in tax funding from the Obama Health and Human Services' Office of Adolescent Health....

From Friday restaurants in France will be breaking the law if they offer unlimited fizzy drinks to customers, as the government takes another step to fight the problem of obesity. The new law was published in the government’s Journal Officiel website on Thursday and will come into effect on Friday. It specifically states that it’s illegal to sell soft drinks at a fixed price for an unlimited amount of drink, and illegal to offer unlimited amounts for free. The ban applies to all soft drinks or soda “fountains” in places open to the public, including fast food-chains and restaurants. It...

MOSCOW, November 13. /TASS/. Russia’s government has refused to support a bill on re-introducing a progressive income tax drafted by A Just Russia Party, the Izvestia newspaper reported on Friday. Russia’s Economic Development Ministry believes that switching to this system may lead to resuming the use of the so-called shady schemes of avoiding to pay the tax, including by lowering the real salary figures, according to the newspaper. "Now there is stability in collecting this tax what is a rather important argument in favor of preserving the current income tax scale," a ministry representative, Elena Lashkina, told the newspaper. Russia’s...

The new report issued Monday is the first to tackle LGBT rights since Jordanian Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein was named U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, called for all countries to provide legal protections for same sex couples and their children in a report issued Monday. Hussein stopped short of recommending countries to call those protections “marriage,” but the report suggested that whatever these partnerships are called, they should make all the same protections available to same-sex couples. “States should address discrimination by: …. Providing legal recognition...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is helping fund the creation of an implantable antenna for health care, which could be used for “long-term patient monitoring.” The government has so far given $5,070 for a graduate fellowship to work on the project, which begins June 1. The project is being financed in collaboration with the National Research Foundation of Korea to create a high frequency antenna that can be permanently implanted under a person’s skin. “Antennas operating near or inside the human body are important for a number of applications, including healthcare,” a grant for the project said. “Implantable medical devices...

Dear EarthTalk: What is the best way to measure how close we are to the dreaded "point of no return" with climate change? In other words, when do we think we will have gone too far? — David Johnston, via EarthTalk.org While we may not yet have reached the “point of no return” - when no amount of cutbacks on greenhouse gas emissions will save us from potentially catastrophic global warming - climate scientists warn we may be getting awfully close. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution a century ago, the average global temperature has risen some 1.6 degrees...

While childhood vaccination rates are well over 90%, adults are far more likely to be behind on vaccinations http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/national_adult_immunization_plan_final.pdf Think you're up to date on your vaccinations? You might be surprised at how many vaccinations are now recommended for American adults -- and the federal government plans to start tracking which of those vaccines you're behind on. The Department of Health and Human Services released its preliminary draft of a new five year plan to increase adult vaccinations this month. The newly revised 52-page National Adult Immunization Plan says: While the NVP provides a vision for improving protection from vaccine-preventable...

<p>Why won't they release the rules?!?!</p> <p>It's been less than 24 hours since the Federal Communications Commission voted to approve strict new regulations on Internet providers, but that's the leading question coming from its critics.</p> <p>Conservatives are demanding that the FCC release a full copy of the regulations that it's planning to impose on companies such as Comcast and Verizon — and taking the agency's silence as evidence of a cover-up. Readers of an FCC blog post  have suspiciously mused that "these new regulations should have been published by now." It's much the same over on Twitter.</p>

Rand Paul: Most vaccines should be ‘voluntary’ By ADAM B. LERNER 2/2/15 2:42 PM EST Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) waded into the debate over vaccinations Monday, telling conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham that he thinks most vaccines should be “voluntary.” Paul, an ophthamologist and likely 2016 White House hopeful, expressed particular concern over mandatory vaccinations for sexually transmitted diseases. He criticized former Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his executive order mandating that Texas children receive the HPV vaccine. “I’m not anti-vaccine at all,” Paul said, but “I think that’s a personal decision.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/rand-paul-vaccines-114834.html#ixzz3QhA3J7zr

The U.S. Department of Justice secretly spies on millions of cars by gathering and storing information about motorists in order to build a national database to track movements, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. The database was originally used by the Drug Enforcement Administration to hunt vehicles involved in drug crimes by tracking license plates, but according to the WSJ, the program expanded to hunt for criminals sought for crimes that were non-drug related. DEA officials have been on record saying they track vehicles near the U.S.-Mexico border to help fight drug cartels, but the new...

The United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA,Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’ The origins of this ingenious strategy trace back to a secret Pentagon-sponsored group, that for the last two decades has functioned as a bridge between the US government and elites across the business, industry, finance, corporate, and media sectors. The group has allowed some of the most powerful special interests in corporate...

President Obama was not the only member of his household that fought to improve the P-20 education system in 2014. Michelle Obama carried out an impressive education agenda that rivaled her husband's in many respects. It seems that the two are a tag team for the ages, and P-20 education is lucky to have this duo championing it. Michelle Obama spent 2014 front and center for education -- in more ways than one. 1. First Lady endorses arts education. This past spring, First Lady Michelle Obama joined the stage with middle- and high-schoolers who performed in the first ever White...