22 articles from SATURDAY 3.8.2019

Whales die in new mysterious Iceland stranding

Some 20 pilot whales have died stranded in mysterious circumstances on the south-western coast of Iceland, emergency services said Saturday, only two weeks after a similarly unexplained mass stranding had already killed dozens of the long-finned cetaceans.

Water in Hawaii volcano could trigger explosive eruptions

For the first time in recorded history, a pond of water has been discovered inside the summit crater of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, a development that could signal a shift to a more explosive phase of future eruptions. After a week of questions about a mysterious green patch at the bottom of the volcano's Halemaumau crater, the former home of a famed lava lake, researchers confirmed the presence of...

DR Congo tests 12 more patients for Ebola

Twelve people were ordered to undergo testing for possible Ebola infection in Goma in DR Congo on Saturday, only days after three patients in the densely populated city tested positive for the disease, the country's presidency said. "A total of 12 people from various centres on the outskirts (of Goma) are undergoing testing after the response team triggered the alert protocol," it said in a...

Woman undergoes quadruple amputation after being licked by pet dog

An American woman has lost her arms and legs after contracting a rare disease when an open cut was licked by one of her pet dogs. Marie Trainer complained of backache and nausea after returning home from a holiday at Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. Initially, doctors in Canton, Ohio, believed she had been laid low by a tropical disease which she picked up in the Caribbean.   Mrs Trainer...

Haider Warraich: ‘We do everything in our modern lifestyle to hurt the heart’

The cardiologist on why we should take heart disease more seriously, advances in treatment and how you really can die from a broken heartHaider Warraich is a cardiologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. His medical training began in his native Pakistan, and this autumn he will join the faculty of Brigham and Women’s hospital at Harvard Medical School and the VA...

Whales die in new mysterious Iceland stranding

Some 20 pilot whales have died stranded in mysterious circumstances on the south-western coast of Iceland, emergency services said Saturday, only two weeks after a similarly unexplained mass stranding had already killed dozens of the long-finned cetaceans. The dead whales, part of a group of 50 stranded whales, were discovered late Friday near Gardur, some 50 kilometres (31 miles) from the...

103-year-old ex-chemist to be honored for work on penicillin

The story is family lore. In 1942, chemist Robert Walton, then in his late 20s, was drafted following the attacks on Pearl Harbor and boarded a bus in Rahway, New Jersey, for basic training at Fort Dix. Walton and his legacy recently caught the eye of the Columbus chapter of the Military Order of The Purple Heart, which asked him to lay a wreath at the group's monument at the National Veterans...

Walloped by heat wave, Greenland sees massive ice melt

The heat wave that smashed high temperature records in five European countries a week ago is now over Greenland, accelerating the melting of the island's ice sheet and causing massive ice loss in the Arctic. Greenland, the world's largest island, is a semi-autonomous Danish territory between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans that has 82% of its surface covered in ice. The area of the Greenland ice...

Lessons in love from my new teenage foster daughter

As well as joys, challenges and unusual pets she brought fresh insights to our homeAbout five years ago a friend at my son’s school, a girl of 14 I’d only met once before (and liked very much, with her big eyes and cheeky smile) got herself into something of a crisis, and as a result of a breakdown in her home life, came to live with us. I hadn’t been looking to add another child to the...

Republicans fear backlash from voters over Trump’s dismissal of climate change

When election time comes next year, Will Galloway, a student and Republican youth leader at Clemson University, will look for candidates who are strong on the mainstream conservative causes he cares about most, including gun rights and opposing abortion.But there is another issue high on his list of urgent concerns that is not on his party’s agenda: climate change.“Climate change isn’t going...

Boris Johnson is the last person young Brits would vote for | Lara Spirit

It’s not just his destructive Brexit stance, his values are entirely opposed to oursThe Daily Express is calling it “the Boris effect”. Johnson’s election has reportedly caused a “record jump” in the polls for the Conservative party, with the Telegraph gleefully reporting that its prized former columnist has received the largest bounce of any Conservative leader in the past two...

First human-monkey chimera raises concern among scientists

Researchers reprogrammed human cells before injecting them in the monkey embryoEfforts to create human-animal chimeras have rebooted an ethical debate after reports emerged that scientists have produced monkey embryos containing human cells.A chimera is an organism whose cells come from two or more “individuals”, with recent work looking at combinations from different species. The word comes...