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Most anybody in the mortgage business will tell you that August was a month that will live in infamy: The market was in turmoil, as doubts about the stability of subprime loans spread to other sectors of the mortgage world. How bad was it? A survey of mortgage brokers suggests that one in three consumers who recently signed purchase contracts canceled in August -- up from just 4 percent three years ago, according to the research firm that conducted the survey for Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade journal. The cancellation rate undoubtedly was fed by two scenarios playing out: Many...

PHOENIX - It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die. Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future. "This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water...

Northern Rock customers withdraw £1bn By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 10:13pm BST 14/09/2007 About £1 billion was withdrawn by panicking Northern Rock customers on Friday, as fears for the bank's future sent shock waves through the City and caused its shares to crash. The company's phone lines were jammed for most of the day, its website crashed and the 72 branches were besieged by thousands of worried customers after it admitted having to ask the Bank of England for emergency funding. The scenes came as the financial turmoil that has engulfed the money markets in the past...

NEWARK, N.J. - Hovnanian Enterprises Inc., struggling like other home builders, is offering six-figure discounts on some of its properties this weekend as it attempts to draw interest in a slumping market. The sales blitz involves dropping prices by more 20 percent on some of its prime real estate. The largest discounts are on the most expensive homes, including a 3-bedroom condominium by the Hudson River in West New York, which has been reduced $240,000, or 22 percent, to $862,000 this weekend. A 25-percent discount is being offered on a 2-bedroom home in Jackson Township, N.J., which lowers its price...

Thousands of people in northern Norway were left without telephone and internet connections earlier this week after a clumsy moose destroyed a switching station.

State Sen. Carole Migden caused a panic among fellow drivers last May when she drove out of control in her state-issued SUV for 30 miles on Interstate 80, according to 911 tapes released late Friday. A series of callers between Berkeley and Fairfield, where Migden's wild ride finally ended after she rear-ended another car, described her as coming perilously close to hitting other vehicles, weaving back and forth across multiple lanes of traffic, and careening repeatedly off the center median barrier. One caller described motorists putting on their vehicles' hazard lights in an apparent attempt to warn others away from...

Man Claims Panic Led Him to Chop Up Dead Pal's Body, Stuff It In Barrel Wednesday, July 25, 2007 BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A man charged with improperly disposing of a corpse claims he chopped up his friend's body, stuffed the parts in a metal drum and rolled it into a river in a panic after the friend died of a drug overdose, police said. The drum, with the body parts inside, was found floating in the Pequonnock River in Bridgeport last week. Felix Rivera, 23, was charged Tuesday with improper disposal of a dead body after he told police his...

May 25, 2007 - Before getting fired up over your Memorial Day barbecue, take a moment to contemplate the capacity of your grill. It might be stainless steel and heat tolerant, but it may also be a conduit for cancer, E. coli, salmonella and unhealthy doses of sodium. Bottom line: barbecue chicken may be great for holiday get-togethers, but it's only healthy if you properly prepare and cook the meat, eat in moderation and have some fruits and vegetables on the side.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks plunged Tuesday as troubles for subprime lenders kept piling up and U.S. retail sales came in weaker than anticipated, leading investors to brace for a wilting economy. The Dow Jones industrials fell more than 150 points.

Two new reports indicate that the global warming problem may be more widespread than heretofore thought. One report from National Geographic News asserts that temperatures on both Earth and Mars have been rising. Data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey mission in 2005 disclosed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps” near Mars’ south pole are shrinking. The other report indicates that cosmic rays from exploded stars are decreasing. This is causing fewer clouds to form and allowing more sunlight to hit the planet, raising temperatures. Former vice-president and internationally acclaimed climate expert, Al Gore, cited the reports as further...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's drugs laws are driven by "moral panic" and should be replaced by a more flexible approach that recognises most drug users harm neither themselves nor those around them, a two-year study concluded on Thursday. Drug use should be treated as a health issue and not just as a matter for police and courts, said a commission formed by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). It said the current Misuse of Drugs act was "not fit for purpose" and should be scrapped. "Current policy at best gives mixed messages and at worst is dishonest ... It is...

Martians Attack Boston! By J. Neil Schulman It’s a history lesson worth remembering today. On October 30, 1938 on the CBS Radio Network, Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater of the Air presented a dramatic Halloween radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic science-fiction novel, The War of the Worlds. Howard Koch’s audio-play updated Wells’ classic story from Victorian England to contemporary America, and used the medium of radio to best effect by telling the story as if it were a series of radio news broadcasts. It was brilliant radio theater. Unfortunately, late-tuning-in listeners scanning across the radio dial and finding a...

Humans have already left such a deep footprint on the environment that the effects of global warming will last for the next 1,000 years, according to a draft copy of a new report. The Globe and Mail obtained an early version of the climate change study being prepared by the world's leading scientists, and reported that little doubt remains that the planet is getting hotter. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release the report on Friday at a news conference in Paris, while a simultaneous conference will be held in Ottawa.The report says heat waves, droughts and rain storms,...

Deadly fever spreads Kenya panic Butchers now display health certificates Panic has gripped parts of Kenya after 53 people died in the past week of Rift Valley Fever, with the disease spreading to densely populated areas. Medical officials say 148 people have died since the outbreak began in December. Infections are now being confirmed in central Kenya. The fever is common in livestock but is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes and consuming infected animal products. The last epidemic in Kenya was reported during the El Nino floods in 1998. The government has, however, moved to allay fears that the disease...

Posted: 9:22 AM, Jan. 15, 2007 BOISE, Idaho (P) - Five-hundred high school students will be able to attend for free the January 22nd speech by former Vice President Al Gore in Taco Bell Arena at Boise State University. SunCor Idaho made a two-thousand five-hundred dollar contribution to The Frank Church Institute, which is sponsoring the event. Students from area high schools can present a school activity card at the Select-A-Seat box office at the arena to get a ticket. One ticket per student will be given for the sold out speech. SunCor Development Company is based in Arizona and...

New York's Worst Hurricane Fears Confirmed in New Study NEW YORK, New York, October 26, 2006 (ENS) – The 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow painted an apocalyptic vision of a New York City battered by hurricanes, tidal waves and floods induced by global warming. A new study being presented at a science meeting this week provides a detailed picture of sea level rise around New York by the 2050s and paints a scenario similar to that dramatized by the big budget blockbuster. Rising sea levels combined with the storm surge of a category three hurricane would leave much of...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 — New electronic voting machines have arrived in Yolo County, Calif., but there is one hitch: the audio program for the visually impaired in some of them works only in Vietnamese. “Talk about panic,” said Freddy Oakley, the county’s top election official. “I’ve got gray-haired ladies as poll workers standing around looking stunned.” As dozens of states are enforcing new voter registration laws and switching to paperless electronic voting systems, officials across the country are bracing for an Election Day with long lines and heightened confusion, followed by an increase in the number of contested results. In...

Anyone and everyone — Republican or Democrat – who is involved in the effort on Capitol Hill to purge gay Republican staffers using “The List” needs to cease this outing witchhunt immediately. Please call the Capitol Hill offices of House Speaker Hastert, Senate Majority Leader Frist as well as House Minority Leader Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Demand that they issue a statement calling on all House and Senate Members and their staff to stop this outing campaign immediately. This type of behavior is un-American. If the Human Rights Campaign, Log Cabin Republicans or the National Gay &...

In new ads, ski company says global warming could dry up snow during the next century... The Aspen Skiing Co. hopes potential customers are ready for a snow job. On Wednesday, the company unveiled a new advertising campaign for the 2006-07 season that centers around the message that snow — and skiing — will disappear around 2100 if humans don’t take drastic action to slow global warming. Three full-page ads, which show a melting snowflake imposed over Highland Bowl, will run in SKI and Outside magazines in the next few months. One ad portrays a “certificate of death” for snow....

Sept. 21, 2006 — The average temperature of the water near the top of the Earth's oceans has cooled significantly since 2003. The new research suggests that global warming trends are not always steady in their effects on ocean temperatures. [SNIP]Lyman said the recent cooling is not unprecedented. "While global ocean temperatures have generally increased over the past 50 years, there have also been substantial decadal decreases," he said. "Other studies have shown that a similar rapid cooling took place from 1980 to 1983. But overall, the long-term trend is warming."[SNIP]Lyman said the cause of the recent cooling is not...