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An Austrian woman contaminated a sewerage treatment plant with high levels of mercury after traveling to India and bringing back a cream billed as a healing ointment that was loaded with the toxic heavy metal, local authorities announced on Wednesday. Routine monitoring at a sewerage treatment plant in Upper Austria revealed alarmingly high levels of mercury earlier this year. Workers then started to trace the source of the mercury, which was almost double the allowed limit. The Department of Water Management first inspected sewer lines from industrial and commercial enterprises in the Vöcklabruck district as well as dental practices but...

Conservatives may be less likely to buy energy efficient light bulbs if they're packaged as environmentally friendly, new research suggests. In one study, participants were given $2 to spend on a light bulb with a choice between a 50-cent incandescent bulb and a $1.50 compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb. They were told the CFL bulb would last 9,000 more hours and reduce energy costs by 75 percent compared with the old-fashioned bulb. Both liberal and conservative participants were more likely to choose the CFL bulb, the researchers found. But if the CFL bulb was marked with a sticker that said...

HANOVER, Germany – A German man has died almost a year after being struck in the backside by a mysterious stranger wielding a poisoned umbrella, The Local Germany reported Friday. The Local quoted the newsmagazine Der Spiegel as saying an autopsy and toxicological tests carried out on the victim were expected to suggest mercury poisoning as the cause of death. The unidentified 40-year-old man was diagnosed with mercury poisoning several weeks after he was attacked in Hanover by a man he described as a slim stranger with a Band-Aid on his face. He spent months in a coma, then seemed...

Mercury affects the behaviour of white ibises by "turning them homosexual", with higher doses resulting in males being more likely to pair with males.Scientists in Florida and Sri Lanka studied the effect of mercury in the birds' diet. Their aim was to find out why it reduced the ibises' breeding. Mercury pollution can come from burning coal and waste, and run-off from mines. The report, in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that wetland birds are particularly badly affected by it. > When a wetland is warm all year round, like the Everglades, it is an ideal environment for...

Police in France are investigating the suspected poisoning of a leading Russian human rights lawyer, it emerged today. The attempt to poison Karinna Moskalenko using mercury carries an eerie echo of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, using the radioactive substance polonium-210.

"Opposite to the first is Atheism in profession & Idolatry in practise. Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that all birds beasts & men have their right side & left side alike shaped (except in their bowells) & just two eyes & no more on either side the face & just two ears on either side the head & a nose with two holes & no more between the eyes & one mouth under the nose & either two fore leggs or two wings or two arms...