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Vice President Kamala Harris stood in for President Joe Biden in the Rose Garden Monday after the White House announced the president had a root canal and was undergoing a follow-up procedure. With the president out of commission, Harris – who has spoken for the White House on abortion and voting rights issues in recent weeks – filled-in on a ceremonial duty. The White House welcomed 1,000 student athletes from around the country for the event, announced weeks in advance. Harris, 58, read from a tel-e-prompter and flashed a smile while acknowledging student athletes. She committed no evident stumbles, verbal...

President Biden is undergoing a root canal at the White House on Monday after complaining of tooth pain, his physician said in a letter released to the public. Biden’s dental team examined him Sunday and took X-rays after the president said he was experiencing pain in one of his teeth, presidential physician Kevin O’Connor said. The dental team determined a root canal would be necessary to address the issue, O’Connor said, adding they performed the initial procedure Sunday at the White House. “The President tolerated the procedure well. There were no complications,” O’Connor said.

Root canals are always fun, right? In reality, word that you need a root canal is some of the worst news most people get at the dentist. Whenever your dentist tells you that's the next procedure you're going have to go through, two things are clear beyond the pain you're about to endure: One, that your throbbing will finally soon go away, and the second is that the tooth that's getting the root canal is dead. However, researchers have come up with a new kind of biomaterial that not only encourages the natural regeneration of teeth, but also might eliminate...

TEL AVIV – As the debate over Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border continues to dominate the presidential race, Israel is reportedly planning to move ahead with a massive above and underground concrete barrier along the entire border with the Gaza Strip. The barrier was revealed on Thursday in a story splashed across the cover of Yedioth Aharonot, Israel’s largest daily newspaper. The story was published with the approval of the country’s defense ministry. Yedioth’s affiliated website, Ynetnews, has the details:

Egypt's pumping of salt water from the nearby Mediterranean into the tunnels is not only creating a mess as it rises to the surface. Palestinian officials say it is also contaminating water supplies as well as threatening to wreck farmland and spread disease. Local residents say that at the peak of the tunnel business, after Hamas Islamists seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 and Israel tightened a closure of its crossings into the enclave, nearly 2,500 underground passages snaked under the border with Egypt. The direction of traffic was mainly into Gaza. Commercial goods - and weapons smuggled in separate...

Up to 200 smuggling tunnels shut since Egyptian President Morsi took office; some 30% of all goods reach Gaza through tunnels. Egyptian forces have flooded smuggling tunnels under the border with the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip in a campaign to shut them down, Egyptian and Palestinian officials said. The network of tunnels is a vital lifeline for Gaza, bringing in an estimated 30 percent of all goods that reach the enclave and circumventing a blockade imposed by Israel for more than seven years. Reuters reporters saw one tunnel being used to bring in cement and gravel suddenly fill with water on...

Yediot Ahronot: Egypt proposes water barrier and kilometer wide sterile zone in Philadelphi Corridor Dr. Aaron Lerner 23 February 2007 Yediot Ahronot correspondent Alex Fishman reported in the 21 February edition that Egypt proposed to Israel to dig a deep trench on the Philadelphi Corridor to be flooded with water from the Mediterranean in order to prevent smuggling from Sinai into the Gaza Strip. According to Fishman, the Egyptians raised the proposal during meetings with IDF officials and U.S. General Dayton along with a proposal to create a sterile cleared kilometer wide band on the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi...

JERUSALEM, June 17 (Reuters) - Israel set in motion a plan on Thursday to dig a moat along the Gaza-Egypt border, inviting contractor bids for the project meant to prevent arms reaching Palestinian militants through tunnels. The Defence Ministry published the bid notice 11 days after the cabinet approved in principle a Gaza withdrawal plan, under which Israel would keep a narrow corridor on the Egyptian frontier pending possible security arrangements with Cairo. Inviting bids by July 12, the ministry said the southern Gaza Strip "canal" would be 15 metres (50 ft) to 25 metres (80 ft) deep and stretch...

alestinian sources report large IDF forces in the southern Gaza Strip ahead of expected operations to widen the Philadelphia corridor. Meanwhile, some 3000 Palestinians fled their homes in Rafah on Sunday following the High Court of Justice's turning down of a petition filed by 13 Palestinian residents against the IDF's decision to demolish houses adjacent to the Phildelphia Route in Rafah, Ynet reported. Advertisement The IDF revealed plans Sunday to create a 60 meter wide underground canal, 20 meters deep that is aimed at preventing the forging of arms-smuggling tunnels from the Egyptian side of Rafah to the Palestinian side....

The roadside bomb that killed four Americans recently had to have been imported into the Gaza Strip from someplace. Odds are, it came from underground tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Countless other weapons used in terrorist attacks against Israelis in recent years have also arrived via those same subterranean routes. So, while Egypt may not be directly responsible for the attacks that take place in Gaza, it has indirectly allowed Gaza's terrorists to arm themselves. In other words, it's time for Cairo to see the light, and put an end to the tunnels. Over the last ten years,...

Harrison JacobsJune 20, 2014     For Americans looking to mix in a little dental work with their vacations, there is no better place than Vicente Guerrero, a small Mexican border town better known by its nickname: Los Algodones (translation: Molar City). Mexico is a top destination for so-called medical tourists from the United States who go South of the Border for significantly cheaper dental work, eyeglasses, plastic surgery, and prescription drugs. In Los Algodones, some 350 dentists work within a few blocks of the city center, NPR recently reported.(snip)

The agony of root canal surgery and the need for tooth fillings could soon be ended after scientists discovered a way to make a rotting tooth repair itself using a laser beam. Just five minutes under a laser was enough to kickstart the healing process inside the mouth, the researchers found. The new technique—although only tested on rats so far—could prevent the need for fillings for some types of decay, and may eventually replace painful and expensive root canal treatment. Researchers, which included experts from the US government’s dental research team, found a blast of intense light from a laser...

Did the Flores Hobbit Have a Root Canal?Dental work claim challenges antiquity of hobbit skeleton By Kate Wong DENTAL WORK?: The lower left first molar of the hobbit is claimed to have a filling--an observation that other hobbit researchers say is refuted by this photograph. PETER BROWN University of New England And you thought Frodo had it hard. In what is shaping up to be a battle of Tolkienian proportions, the tiny remains from Flores, Indonesia--paleoanthropology's hobbit--have once again come under attack. Most paleoanthropologists believe that the hobbit belongs to a new species of human, Homo floresiensis. But now comes...

The promise of stem cells may someday help kids say goodbye to the dreaded root canal, scientists report.   A new, less-invasive treatment leaves the soft inner pulp intact, allowing the young tooth's stem cells to continue tooth formation.  "Removing infected tissue by root canal is invasive, and, by doing that, we stop the tooth's continuous maturation process and leave behind a child with a thin eggshell of a tooth that is weak and susceptible to fracture," explained researcher Dr. George T.-J. Huang, an endodontist (root canal specialist) and an associate professor with the University of Maryland's College of Dental Surgery. ...

ASSOCIATED PRESS CHICAGO -- Two long-awaited, government-funded studies found no evidence that dental fillings containing mercury can cause IQ-lowering brain damage or other neurological problems in children. Children with such fillings were no more likely than other youngsters to suffer such problems, the researchers found. Some experts found the findings powerfully reassuring. But the studies are unlikely to end the fierce debate over the long-term effects of what are known as amalgam fillings, and some advocates bitterly accused the researchers of conducting unethical experiments on children. Amalgam fillings, also called silver fillings, are made of mercury and other metals and...