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The other day, Nelson Cardoso was heading home from work on his motorcycle along an arid stretch of highway in Brazil when something caught his eye. It was a little armadillo on the side of the road....

Three people have been diagnosed with leprosy in Florida and some of the cases are thought to be linked to armadillos. Health officials in Volusia County said that the cases are not related, though two of those who have been diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, or leprosy, since October had been in contact with nine-banded armadillos.

Armadillos blamed for leprosy A strain of leprosy found in armadillos has been identified in dozens of people in the southern United States, indicating the skin disease can be transmitted directly from animals to humans. 6:19PM BST 28 Apr 2011 The report published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the disease, most often found in India, can originate in the United States and infect humans who hunt armadillo and butcher the meat. Leprosy, sometimes called Hansen's disease after the Norwegian doctor who discovered it in 1873, is a bacterial infection that causes lesions on a person's extremities....

They're cute. They're often roadkill. Some gourmands say they're tasty, whether baked or barbecued. Now Louisiana researchers have learned something else about nine-banded armadillos. "A preponderance of evidence shows that people get leprosy from these animals," said Richard W. Truman, director of microbiology at the National Hansen's Disease Program in Baton Rouge and lead author of a paper detailing the discovery in the New England Journal of Medicine. Until now, scientists believed that leprosy was passed only from human to human. Every year, about 100 to 150 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with the malady, which is also known...

archaeologists say could be the biggest fossil find in Pinellas County in nearly a century... The jaw and tooth weigh 65 pounds and are about a yard long. Sarti-Sweeney took the bones home and, after some online research with her older brother, determined the football-sized rock was actually the tooth of a long-extinct mammoth. Paleontology and archaeology experts have confirmed the find, and recent digging at the site has turned up teeth and bones from a second mammoth, giant sloths, camels, turtles with shells up to 6-feet-long, saber-toothed cats and giant armadillos the size of Volkswagen Beetles. Scientists believe the...

AUSTIN – Yeehaw! Texans who brag they do things bigger and better are about to go faster too. State transportation officials on Thursday boosted speed limits on two stretches of rural highway from 75 mph to 80, leaving wandering armadillos and feral hogs a split-second less time to avoid becoming roadkill. It will be the highest posted speed limit in the country. New speed signs should be up in the next few days. And while state officials say the roads can accommodate it, safety and energy conservation advocates warn it will cost lives and hit drivers in the wallet at...

The latest interview in the Freeper Interview Series is now online at Patriot Paradox. The interview is with Chad Fairbanks, and here are some highlights: What are some memories you have of protests or other activist events? Well, there are so many. In my early years I was always on the side that was cracking down on Left-wing protests. In the navy I had lots of encounters with Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherds, so I would say that was the most enjoyable bit of activism I was involved in - if 'activism' is defined as "Using a fire hose on...

NEW YORK (AP) — Jessica Lynch, the former prisoner of war whose capture and rescue from an Iraqi hospital made her a national hero, has agreed to a $1 million book deal with publisher Alfred A. Knopf. "Many folks have written, expressing their support for me and for the thousands of other soldiers who serve their country," Lynch said in a statement issued Tuesday by Knopf. "I feel I owe them all this story, which will be about more than a girl going off to war and fighting alongside her fellow soldiers. It will be a story about growing up...

It's 2, maybe 3 a.m. and I'm in the passenger seat of Sam Lewis' old brown van as we hurtle toward Terlingua. We wander across the center stripe and back and back again - Sam's not near as worried about it as I am. Sensing my discomfort, Sam says, ''Oh, I just kind of aim this thing down the road.'' And he does, not steering as much as giving the steering wheel a slap every now and then when we appear to be on the verge of disaster. I'm reassured by the thought that Sam might have a few armadillos...