Free Republic

A Pima County Superior Court judge sentenced 56-year-old Dorothy Flood on Monday in the killings of Jorden and Jaden Webb last April. Flood was the guardian and sole caregiver for the boys after her daughter died in 2017. According to court documents, the twins had severe autism and were nonverbal, and detectives said Flood told a relative that they boys had become too much for her as the boys had been having trouble sleeping. Flood originally was charged with first-degree murder but she pleaded guilty last month to manslaughter as part of a deal with prosecutors. Flood will be given...

Butterflies in the Fukushima Region Plagued by “Genetic Damage” and “Severe Abnormalities” A study of the pale grass blue butterfly in the regions around the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, site of the 2011 radiation disaster, has revealed that the insects are giving birth to mutants at an alarming rate. Indeed, the butterflies collected from younger generations have more abnormalities than butterflies born directly after the power plant began leaking radioactive particles into the environment. That means the genetic damage caused by the radiation leak has been inherited by subsequent generations. Above, you can see images taken from the study, published...

A fisherman hauled an extremely rare blue lobster out of the waters off P.E.I.'s North Shore Wednesday. Blair Doucette landed the lobster in North Rustico. Only about one in four million lobsters is blue. The colour is caused by a genetic mutation. Wendy Doucette, Blair's wife, told CBC News in 30 years of fishing he has never seen a blue lobster. They are considering donating the lobster to a local aquarium.

In less than a week, a little girl from East Troy with a rare genetic condition will get on a plane with her mother, aunt and cousin and head to China to receive more than 60 million stem cells. Brooke Barels, 9, suffers from Glucose Transporter Deficiency, a condition caused by a genetic mutation of the gene that processes glucose from food into fuel for her body. As a result, Brooke suffers from cerebral palsy-like symptoms and cannot function like normal children.  She's the 83rd person in the world diagnosed with GLUT-1, as it's better known. She'll be the first...