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Michael Sam will step away from professional football, he announced via Twitter on Friday night. Sam, the 25-year-old who began the season with the CFL's Montreal Alouettes, cited a tumultuous past year for leaving football at this time. The Alouettes confirmed in a release that Sam has left the club for "personal reasons" and that he has been added to the team's suspended list. Sam made the announcement in a series of three tweets.

Five more cases of Legionnaires' disease have been added to the Bronx outbreak that has claimed seven lives and sickened more than six dozen people in the last three weeks, Mayor de Blasio said Tuesday. The number of those killed stands at seven. The mayor's briefing comes a day after the city announced an increase in the death toll and the number of cases at a packed town hall meeting at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, where hundreds of residents gathered to hear what state, city and local officials had to say about the deadly outbreak. Eighty-six cases of...

New York (CNN)—The number of deaths in the New York City Legionnaires' disease outbreak is up to four. Seventy-one cases of the flu-like disease have been reported since mid-July in the South Bronx, up from 31 on Thursday, the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said Sunday.

A federal judge in California has ruled that the Obama administration’s detention of children and their mothers who were caught crossing the border illegally is a serious violation of a longstanding court settlement, and that the families should be released as quickly as possible. In a decision late Friday roundly rejecting the administration’s arguments for holding the families, Judge Dolly M. Gee of Federal District Court for the Central District of California found that two detention centers in Texas that the administration opened last summer fail to meet minimum legal requirements of the 1997 settlement for facilities housing children. -snip-...

In the early ‘90s, the Donald said he would ask his ladies to swing by the doctor for an AIDS test before he’d wine and dine them.Future American President Donald J. Trump appears to be a tad germophobic. “One of the curses of American society is the simple act of shaking hands, and the more successful and famous one becomes the worse this terrible custom seems to get,” the 2016 Republican presidential frontrunner wrote in his book The Art of the Comeback, published in 1997. “I happen to be a clean hands freak. I feel much better after I thoroughly...

Even as exotic new diseases and nearly-eradicated old ones keep popping up across the nation, the Obama administration is unconcerned, or some would say, recklessly indifferent, to the public health threat that Third World illegal aliens pose to the American public. This isn't an observation from would-be GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump or some wild-eyed rube -- it's a devastating criticism that comes from two public health experts at the government's own Centers for Disease Control (CDC). It comes as deadly diseases surface or make a comeback in the U.S. Among those ailments are tuberculosis, pneumonia, paralysis-causing acute flaccid myelitis,...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Leprosy cases in Florida are higher than normal and experts are blaming armadillos. Nine cases have been reported across Florida so far this year. On average, the state only sees 10 cases for the entire year. Action News spoke to a trapper who said he takes extra precautions because of this danger. Armadillos are very common all over Florida, and most of them live in the woods. But others could live near your home, and we learned that puts you and your family at risk. “We catch more armadillos than we do any other species,” said wildlife...

Donald Trump doubled down on his controversial comments about illegal immigration from Mexico on Monday, saying, "infectious disease is pouring across the border." Trump issued a lengthy — nearly 900 word — statement invoking the death of a San Francisco woman shot and killed last week by a suspect who had previously been deported to Mexico five times. "This is merely one of thousands of similar incidents throughout the United States," Trump said Monday. "In other words, the worst elements in Mexico are being pushed into the United States by the Mexican government." The 2016 Republican presidential candidate said Mexican...

Following the influx of illegal immigrant minors from Central America, an official at the federal agency charged with protecting public health describes Barack Obama as “the worst pres we have ever had,” an “amateur” and “Marxist,” according to internal emails obtained by Judicial Watch. JW got the records as part of an investigation into the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) activation of an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to deal with the barrage of illegal alien minors last summer. Tens of thousands of Central Americans came into the United States through the Mexican border and contagious diseases—many considered to be eradicated...

Importing a Potential EpidemicPosted By Arnold Ahlert On June 24, 2015 @ 12:24 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 2 Comments [1]By now most Americans are familiar with the Obama administration’s ongoing effort to force-feed amnesty for illegals to a largely recalcitrant American public. The most egregious part of this effort occurred during last year’s border “surge” when the administration not only embraced the admittance of tens of thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) into our nation, but the purposeful and secret dispersal [2] of them into all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. What Americans...

Last week, TV stations and wire reports began spreading an urgent warning from the Florida Department of Health: A flesh-eating bacteria was spreading in Florida's oceans, health officials warned. More than 30 swimmers have been infected in the past year, including seven in 2015. Two people have already died this year from the bacteria, which — again — literally eats human flesh. Now, the Florida DOH has released an equally vital update. "Visitors encouraged to visit Florida's beautiful beaches," reads the glowing, slightly repetitive headline. Oh, and about that whole flesh eating bacteria thing? Don't worry about it!

The choice is simple: equality and order under law or the rule of the mob The Statue of Liberty, that grande dame of Democracy who endless holds aloft freedom’s torch, must feel today more and more the burdens of Atlas, the mythical Greek Titan who held the whole world on his shoulders. This towering symbol of all things beautiful and uniquely American communicates these words of compassion: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This humanitarian ideal and these inspiring words on the statue’s pedestal—immortalized in the 1883 poem “The New Colossus” by Emma...

The rash of tough pro-vaccine bills that infected state legislatures after the Disneyland measles outbreak has largely faded, and based on the uproar in California, it’s not hard to see why. The state capitol has been flooded off and on for months with parental-choice advocates drawing thousands for protests against Senate Bill 277, which would eliminate personal belief or religious exemptions and require all children without a medical exemption to be vaccinated before entering public school. And the outcry has only grown louder as the bill nears passage, spreading beyond the issue of vaccination safety and morphing into a full-blown...

A female patient with an extremely hard-to-treat form of tuberculosis is being treated at the National Institutes of Health outside Washington D.C., and federal and state officials are now tracking down hundreds of people who may have been in contact with her. The woman traveled to at least three states before she sought treatment from a U.S. doctor. While TB is not easily caught by casual contact, extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB is so dangerous that health officials will have to make a concerted effort to warn anyone who may be at risk.

Nobody wants to find insect parts, rat hairs, mouse poop or maggots in their food. But the Food and Drug Administration does allows low levels of these nasty things along with a bunch of other icky stuff to be present in food, or the ingredients that go into it. In fact, the FDA considers such things to be "natural or unavoidable defects," and the agency maintains a "Defect Levels Handbook" to describe the acceptable levels. [snip] The FDA's handbook, which was released in 1995 and last updated in 2005, is a fun read. A person can find out acceptable levels...

Characteristics passed between generations are not decided solely by DNA, but can be brought about by other material in cells, new research shows. Scientists studied proteins found in cells, known as histones, which are not part of the genetic code, but act as spools around which DNA is wound. Histones are known to control whether or not genes are switched on. Researchers found that naturally occurring changes to these proteins, which affect how they control genes, can be sustained from one generation to the next and so influence which traits are passed on. The finding demonstrates for the first time...

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) — Coming into close contact with cats can spread a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) – also dubbed the “cat poop parasite” – which are linked to schizophrenia and other mental disorders that affect humans. The cat-carried parasite is the most common in developed countries and can infect any warm-blooded species, according to the Schizophrenia Bulletin. Although most humans don’t suffer any symptoms from the widespread parasite, it can cause the illness T. gondii, which is linked to weeks of flu-like symptoms, blindness and even death, CBS News reports. Two new studies have now linked the...

Scientists now know that our DNA is being altered all the time by environment, lifestyle and traumatic events. Genetic faults caused by trauma, poor lifestyle or environmental stress can be passed down to future generations, scientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered. Previously large studies have shown that devastating events such as famine can scar future generations, making them more prone to obesity and diabetes. However it is the first time that the biological mechanism for the effect has been seen. Although the same genes are passed down through generations, scientists now know that our DNA is being altered...

US researchers claim to have developed a single test that is able to identify past exposure to every known human virus infection, using a drop of blood.The technique decodes the infection history imprinted in our immune response. The scientists hope that the test will eventually provide important insight into how viruses contribute to development of a range of diseases. The work was published in the journal Science. During a virus infection, your immune system generates antibodies designed to fight the virus. Each antibody recognises a tiny fragment of the virus and their interaction is very specific - they fit like...

The Department of Defense has ordered a review of all labs following revelations that the number of labs that received live anthrax samples is larger than first reported."As of now, 24 laboratories in 11 states and two foreign countries are believed to have received suspect samples. We continue to work closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who is leading the ongoing investigation pursuit to its statutory authorities. The Department will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates to the public," Defense Department said in a statement.The Defense Department had previously reported labs in nine states...