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Special Reports

Thursday, 05 May 2016 01:33

The world's top grammarian fears that this punctuation error is becoming standard English

Does this sentence read OK to you? It's the way I'm wired, I'm not about to change. If you said no, you're right. It's a kind of run-on sentence or "run-together sentence." It's an example of a comma splice. That's when you join two sentences with a comma. And that's wrong, at least in standard English. Each of those two independent clauses can stand alone because each has a subject and a verb: It's the way I'm wired. I'm not about to change. In standard English, instead of using a comma to join those two sentences, it's better to use…

Wednesday, 04 May 2016 01:10

Forget phones, your car RADIO is just as distracting

Listening to traffic reports on the radio can be bad for your driving - so much so it could cause you to miss an elephant standing by the side of the road. Researchers studying people's driving ability while listening to traffic reports found that almost three quarters missed hazards when distracted by the radio. The experts said road safety campaigns are so focused on telling people to keep their eyes on the road, and this research reveals that this isn't enough. Researchers studying people's driving ability while listening to traffic reports found that almost a quarter missed hazards when distracted…

Tuesday, 03 May 2016 00:20

What cocaine does to your body and brain

Whether it's snorted, smoked, or injected, cocaine enters the bloodstream and starts affecting the brain in a matter of seconds. Once there, it interferes with the brain's normal process of absorbing and recycling certain hormones, including those that play key roles in pleasure, desire, and drive. Users feel this excess as intense euphoria. But the high is short-lived, and in most cases lasts anywhere from five to 30 minutes. Regular, heavy use can have negative consequences, from nose bleeds to permanent lung damage and even death. One part of the brain that appears to be most acutely affected by cocaine…

Monday, 02 May 2016 02:08

Bin Laden was in dispute with brothers looking after him

As the fifth anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden approaches, President Barack Obama has said that he hopes the terror mastermind understood in his final moments that the ‘American people hadn’t forgotten’ and wanted revenge for the atrocities of September 11, 2001. Obama spoke to CNN’s Peter Bergen about the raid that killed the Al-Qaeda leader on May 2, 2011 – almost 10 years after the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. During the interview, Bergen said that ‘the last person bin Laden saw on Earth was an American.’ And Obama replied: ‘And hopefully, at that moment,…

Sunday, 01 May 2016 02:09

The 9 reasons why people snap, according to a neurobiologist

R. Douglas Fields, a very calm government scientist in his 50s, was emerging from a Barcelona metro stop with his daughter when a man tried to rob him. The next thing Fields knew, he had the guy in a choke hold on the ground. "Now I'm on the ground in a street fight, realizing that this signal never went to my cerebral cortex. There was no consciousness involved," Fields, a neurobiologist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said at a talk at New York University on April 20. "And then I realized that if there's something…

Saturday, 30 April 2016 01:43

How Rolex became the king of watches

Play a simple word association game with anyone — say "watches" and the reply you get will most likely be "Rolex." The Rolex brand is so ingrained in the minds of much of the world, it's hard to believe watches even existed before Austrian national Hans Wilsdorf started the company in the early 1900s. It now stands as the most powerful watchmaker in the world, consistently ranking at the top of lists of the globe's most reputable companies. Rolex does not actually release sales numbers, but experts estimate that it makes roughly 1 million watches a year, presumably more than…

Friday, 29 April 2016 02:12

Amazing true story of Muslim playboy who joined Islamic State

One morning in mid-January 2015, a small, furtive-looking man in a black hooded parka stood alone on the Turkish side of the Akçakale border crossing with Syria. The man glanced around uneasily, and finally approached a street sweeper in a blue jumpsuit. 'I want to cross to the other side,' he said. 'What can I do?' The street sweeper demanded 75 Turkish lira and pointed to a small hole in the fence, not far from the main gate. The man paid him but hesitated. He had come a long way, and was now barely 10 metres from his destination: the…

Thursday, 28 April 2016 02:09

How healthy is YOUR diet? Take this test to find out

Want to put the spring back into your step and get set to sizzle in summer? Then now's the time to take stock of your diet and make sure you're getting all the nutrients you need for maximum health and vitality. In an earlier era, when our diet was dictated by the seasons, spring brought an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables after the long and gloomy winter, and an opportunity to replenish reserves of important nutrients. Back then, there was a clear link between nutritional status and the availability of fresh foods. But even now, when food miles mean…

Tuesday, 26 April 2016 01:48

Nigeria's missing girls: Infiltrating the forest Boko Haram calls home

As night falls, the curfew comes into effect. Nobody is allowed on the streets. Anxiety hangs in the air. Those unable to make it home before sunset are shepherded to roundabouts to wait until day breaks. This is Maiduguri -- a city on the edge. The capital of Borno state, it is at the heart of the Nigerian Army's battle to retake Boko Haram territory. A place where no one is above suspicion. Where young girls, packaged as suicide bombers, are sent by militants to realize the group's brutal jihad. Boko Haram using kidnapped girls as bombers 03:00 Teenagers outside…

Monday, 25 April 2016 02:37

Cannabis leads to early death

Smoking marijuana heavily during teenage years may lead to an early death, a new study has revealed. The study analyzed more than 45,000 men who underwent mandatory military training in Sweden between 1969 and 1970. Scientists from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm followed them on the National Cause of Death Register until 2011. During the 42-year study, around 4,000 of the men died. Research published by the American Journal of Psychiatry found that the men who used marijuana heavily in their late teens were 40 per cent more likely to die by the age of 60 than those who never…

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Saturday, 23 April 2016 02:41

You will never forget to brush your teeth again!

They may look more like the grasping fronds of sea anemones on an underwater coral reef, but these brightly coloured creatures actually live in your mouth. Using a scanning electron microscope, scientists have been able to capture images of the bacteria living in the darkest crevices of the human mouth. Magnified by up to ten thousand times and highlighted using false colouring, these microbes can be found growing on the inside of your cheeks, gums and your teeth. While they might look like an underwater sea anemone, these long strands are actually bacteria growing inside of the human mouth. Captured…

Friday, 22 April 2016 02:23

Scientists have figured out why hundreds of thousands of antelope died last year

Late last year, news trickled in about the horrific mass dying of the saiga antelopes of central Kazakhstan, of which it has been estimated that over 200,000 of the animals dropped dead over a matter of days, with scenes of entire herds of the antelope, made up of mothers with calves, littering the landscape. What caused this sudden widespread mortality initially baffled biologists and zoologists who struggled to find the culprit. It now seems that the mystery is finally over, with the cause being narrowed down by the Saiga Conservation Alliance to a normally benign bacteria suddenly becoming deadly —…

Thursday, 21 April 2016 03:15

Einstein ate two fried eggs every day and got his wife to cut his hair

Albert Einstein let his wife cut his hair because he did not want to pay for a barber and ate fried eggs for breakfast every day, a new book has revealed. The Noble Prize winner, who developed the theory of relativity, also wore shoes with holes in them in a bid to save money and only drank caffeine-free coffee. The fascinating details of the scientist's life have been revealed in Einstein at Home, which will be published in English for the first time next month. Albert Einstein let his wife cut his hair because he did not want to pay…

Wednesday, 20 April 2016 02:29

Babies born to poor mothers TWICE as likely to die before turning one

Babies more to poor mothers are more than twice as likely to die before turning one, official data revealed today. Still births are also much more common to women doing 'routine and manual' jobs compared to those in 'higher managerial, administrative and professional' work. The figures from the Office for National Statistics showed a continuing downward trend in overall infant deaths but the continued gap between poorer and wealthier households provoked concern. Tory MP Will Quince said it was crucial to make clear the link between bad diet and smoking in pregnancy to the chance of a new baby facing…

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