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Scientists have created a life-threatening virus that closely resembles the 1918 Spanish flu strain that killed an estimated 50m people in an experiment labelled as "crazy" by opponents. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison used a technique called reverse genetics to build the virus from fragments of wild bird flu strains. They then mutated the virus to make it airborne to spread more easily from one animal to another. "The work they are doing is absolutely crazy. The whole thing is exceedingly dangerous," said Lord May, the former President of the Royal Society and one time chief science adviser to...

<p>Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" – and it's partly the government's fault.</p>

Here’s another bizarre school assignment to add to the pile, courtesy of Wisconsin-based talk show host Vicki McKenna. Students are asked to work in groups to choose seven people to save from a shipwreck. To help in their decision, they are given some rudimentary information about each passenger, such as race and religious views. Mr. Blake, for example, is a Mormon who “sympathizes with anti-black views,” while Mr. Newton is a “black power advocated” [sic] who is “suspected of homosexual activity.” You can see the educational value, especially when you take into account Father Frans, a priest who is “often...

LOS ANGELES — You drive a hybrid, eat organic, and are passionate about recycling. But how green is your love life? Think about those lovely Valentine's Day roses and the environmental costs of growing them and the carbon miles involved in flying them in from faraway lands. And what about used condoms, tossed into the toilet and making their way into sewers that perhaps pollute the ocean? If an ecologically sustainable life between the sheets hasn't crossed your mind, you're still a "total environmental neophyte," according to author Stefanie Iris Weiss.

Aftermath: Population Zero investigates what would happen if every single person on Earth simply disappeared. Explore an interactive world without humans.

Man wins divorce from wife 'too shy' to sleep with him DPA, TAIPEI Monday, Feb 12, 2007, Page 2 A Tainan court has granted a man's request for divorce because his wife was "too shy" to consummate their marriage, a newspaper said yesterday. The man surnamed Chen (’Â), a 38-year-old teacher from Tainan County was introduced to a woman surnamed Lin (—Ñ), 29, also a teacher, by a matchmaker. After the couple dated for three months, they married a year ago, but Lin refused to consummate the marriage, the Chinese-language daily China Times reported. On the wedding night, Lin slept...

I know that this may be a long read, there's a lot of content here, but I think that many FReepers will find the information here interesting and disturbing. I will appreciate any help I can get with this situation. My wife and I have been homeschooling our children since they started schooling. We have 5th, 6th, and 8th graders. Recently, we made the tough decision to enroll them in a local Charter School. In Arizona, a Charter School is a privately run, smaller, more focused public school. It provides parents with school choice and some competition between the schools....

UNITED NATIONS - Jeers and catcalls greeted the top U.S. delegate to a global women's conference on Friday as she stressed Washington's opposition to abortion and support for sexual abstinence and fidelity. After withdrawing an unpopular anti-abortion amendment from a key U.N. document, the United States joined in approving the declaration that reaffirmed a 150-page platform agreed 10 years ago at a landmark U.N. women's conference in Beijing. However, top U.S. delegate Ellen Sauerbrey drew boos from the audience, which included some of the 6,000 activists who came from around the world, when she commented on Washington's interpretation of the...

Economics: Europe has been the source of many of America's most beloved fairy tales. Not all are of ancient origin. Take the European Union's insistence five years ago that its economy would leapfrog ours by 2010. The so-called Lisbon Strategy was unveiled with much fanfare. Struck in the Portuguese capital, the deal essentially predicted the EU economy would pass up America's and leave it in the dust. At the time, it sounded reasonable. The EU was adding new members, and the common wisdom was that the U.S., though a big military power, was suffering from what geostrategists like to call...

WOMAN'S ERROR AND HER DEBT No despot ever flung forth his legions to die in foreign conquest, no privilege-ruled nation ever erupted across its borders, to lock in death embrace with another, but behind them loomed the driving power of a population too large for its boundaries and its natural resources. No period of low wages or of idleness with their want among the workers, no peonage or sweatshop, no child-labor factory, ever came into being, save from the same source. Nor have famine and plague been as much "acts of God" as acts of too prolific mothers. They, also,...