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Olympic swimmers may have found a possible cure to beating the E. coli-riddled Seine River that has been one of the huge storylines at the 2024 Paris Olympics — a can of Coca-Cola. Several world-class athletes swear that the sugary soda has helped them stave off bacteria and any infection they could get from competing in the open waters. “There’s no harm in drinking a Coke after a race,” New Zealand’s Ainsley Thorpe told the Wall Street Journal after the Women’s Triathlon last week. “If you Google it, it says it can help.” Doctors say there is no medical backing...

Belgium's Olympic team forfeited from Monday's mixed competition triathlon after one of its triathletes, Claire Michel, became sick after swimming in the Seine last Wednesday — a river that's faced frequent water quality and safety concerns. "The Belgian Hammers will not start in the Mixed Relay competition at the Paris Games," the Belgian team said in a release. "Michel, one of the athletes in the mixed relay team, unfortunately has to withdraw from the competition due to illness." While the Olympic team did not describe Michel's illness nor blame the Seine, Belgium newspaper De Standaard reported that the triathlete was...

Using 2021 data, U.S. News and World Reports’ feature on the “Best States” has ranked U.S. states on several metrics, including economics, education and health care. The listing also measures natural environment, which is based on a state’s air/water quality and pollution levels. Pollution was determined based on air and water emissions from industry and utilities, and overall measures to long-term human health effects, using information from the Environmental Protection Agency. States with the worst pollution 50. Louisiana 49. Nevada 48. Indiana 47. Delaware 46. Utah 45. Ohio 44. Oregon 43. Tennessee 42. Illinois 41. Alabama 40. Texas

During the general debate on the health care legislation that recently passed the Senate, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat from Montana, took to the floor of the Senate and engaged in a drunken tirade. Oblivious to the fact that he was slurring his words and mangling his sentences, Senator Baucus shouted down opponents as he let loose a rambling, and at times incoherent, tirade against those dastardly Republicans who refused to be bipartisan. This drunk is the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, charged with overseeing our taxpayer dollars. As is clearly evident from this video, the less than honorable Baucus...

Episcopal Church leaders in Los Angeles today nominated an openly gay priest and an openly lesbian priest as bishops, becoming one of the first dioceses in the national church to test a controversial new policy that lifted a de facto ban on gays and lesbians in the ordained hierarchy. The nominations of the Rev. John L. Kirkley of San Francisco and the Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool of a Baltimore-based diocese are likely to further inflame theological conservatives in the U.S. church and their global partners in the Anglican Communion, who have repeatedly warned about the repercussions of such action....

What lies beneath the surface of New York Harbor? For starters, a 350-foot steamship, 1,600 bars of silver, a freight train, and four-foot-long cement-eating worms. The steady transformation of New York’s waterfront from wasteland to playground means more of us are spending time along the city’s edge. That can lead a person to wonder: What, exactly, is down there? Until recently, we had patchy knowledge of what lies beneath the surface of one of the world’s busiest harbors. What we did know came largely from random anecdotes, and depth soundings done the way Henry Hudson did them—by rope and lead...

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finnish engineers have poured pig manure into a contaminated pond next to an old mine, saying the bacteria in the slurry will clean up metals in the water. Mining company Outokumpu dumped 450 cubic meters of pig slurry into the waste water near the closed Kangasjarvi mine, which once produced zinc, copper and sulfur. "Pig slurry contains bacteria that bind metals that are in the mine water and they will sink to the bottom. We have used this system to clean mine waters at various mines," Eero Soininen, Outokumpu's mine reclamation manager, told Reuters. "Around 15 years...

AAMJIWNAANG FIRST NATION, Canada (Dec. 18) - Growing up with smokestacks on the horizon, Ada Lockridge never thought much about the pollution that came out of them. She never worried about the oil slicks in Talfourd Creek, the acrid odors that wafted in on the shifting winds or even the air-raid siren behind her house whose shrill wail meant "go inside and shut the windows." Now Lockridge worries all the time. A budding environmental activist, she recently made a simple but shocking discovery: There are two girls born in her small community for every boy. A sex ratio so out...

Slate's Democratic Debate Drinking Game Get drunk on political discourse! By June Thomas Posted Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2003, at 10:08 AM PT This Thursday evening, the nine remaining candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination will meet in Phoenix for the fourth debate of the year. If these events have started to blend together, why not grab a bottle or two of your favorite tipple and bring on the blurriness by playing Slate's debate drinking game. Cheers! Take one drink if: A candidate mentions an ordinary American by name A candidate mentions Bill Clinton A candidate mentions John Ashcroft A candidate...

WASHINGTON - More than one-third of the nation's lakes and nearly one-fourth of its rivers contain fish that may be contaminated with mercury, dioxin, PCB and pesticide pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) says. The EPA released a list of advisories issued by states that monitor lakes and rivers for pollution levels affecting fish caught during recreational and sport fishing but not deep-sea commercial fishing. "It's about trout, not tuna. It's about what you catch on the shore, not what you buy the shelf," Mike Leavitt, the administrator of EPA, said Tuesday. "This is about the health...