Living With Swine Flu: Mexico City Under the Cloud

It’s hard to read Reyna Hernandez’s distress behind her blue surgical mask. But you can hear it. “This is a very difficult time especially for our children,” the Mexico City housewife says as she waits outside the National Institute for Respiratory Diseases on the metropolis’ south side

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Head-banging parrot proves birds can dance

(CNN) — A head-banging parrot who became a YouTube sensation has demonstrated that an ability to appreciate music and keep a rhythm is not unique to humans, scientists say. Snowball the cockatoo, who appears to bop his head, tap his claws and squawk enthusiastically to the Back Street Boys’ “Everybody” is one of several birds apparently capable of dancing to a beat, according to two studies published in the latest edition of the journal Current Biology.

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Can green cellphones ring the changes in mobile industry?

The next time you go to throw away your old mobile phone, Gert-Jan van Breugel hopes you bury it in a garden instead tossing it in a garbage can. That is of course if the cellphone you’re using is the biodegradable bamboo handset he’s designed with bamboo seeds implanted in its case that should start to sprout when the mobile disintegrates in the ground.

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Bombings kill more than 70 in Iraq

Suicide bombers in Iraq launched two deadly attacks Thursday, killing at least 45 people in Diyala province and at least 28 in Baghdad, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said. An attacker set off a suicide vest at a restaurant in Imam Wais, a Diyala provincial security official said.

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With anti-addiction pill, ‘no urge, no craving’

A no-frills bar called Goober’s, just north of Providence, Rhode Island, is probably the last place you’d expect to find a debate over cutting-edge addiction therapy. But this is where Walter Kent, a retired mechanic, spends his Fridays. He helps in the kitchen and hangs out in the bar, catching up with old friends

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2 dead after twister hits Arkansas town

A tornado ripped through Mena, Arkansas, on Thursday, killing at least two people and damaging more than 100 homes, authorities said. Ferguson, who has won the Champions League twice with Manchester United, also revealed how he craves more European success and feels that United have not won all that they could have during his more than two-decade reign at Old Trafford

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Indonesia’s parliamentary elections begin

Voting has begun in Indonesia’s parliamentary elections, with 38 parties vying for one of 700 parliamentary seats. The outcome of the election will determine which parties can field presidential candidates for the July election. Damin Sada, from the Islamic-based United Development Party, is one from among 12,000 election candidates

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