Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
World Topics
Science & Health Sep 27, 2013
Camera trap catches rare photos of eagle attacking a deer
The eagle, caught red-handed. Remote cameras that were intended to monitor Siberian tigers in Russia instead caught a golden eagle’s fatal attack on a deer, snapping three photos as the massive bird dug its talons into the distressed animal’s back. London’s Zoological Society, which ...
Science & Health Sep 27, 2013
Fish fossil yields jaw-dropping switch in animals' evolutionary path
The ancestor of all creatures with jaws and a backbone was not a sleek sharklike beast but a toothless armored fish, according to a study that rewrites man’s evolutionary history. Scientists said they have found a 419-million-year-old fish fossil in China that disproves the ...
Science & Health Sep 25, 2013
Earth's slowdown messing with human tech
by Ivan Amato
Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead two thousandths of a second before you go to sleep tonight. Same thing goes for bedtime tomorrow. And every day after that, because that is how much slower the Earth turns on its axis each day now ...
Science & Health Sep 25, 2013
Brazen cuckoos crowd other birds' nests with their eggs
The African cuckoo finch is known for bamboozling other birds into raising its young, but new research has shown just how brazen the feathery rogue is in evading parental duty. The yellow bird, about the size of a sparrow, is a notorious freeloader. It ...
Science & Health Sep 24, 2013
U.K. vows £1 billion for AIDS, malaria, TB
Britain has announced that it is giving £1 billion ($1.6 billion) to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria over the next three years and hopes the money will lead to “some incredible results.” International Development Secretary Justine Greening made the announcement ...
Science & Health Sep 23, 2013
Transit project brings macabre past of London to the surface
by Anthony Faiola
In an open pit near the old Bedlam insane asylum, where the curious once ogled chained lunatics for the price of a shiny coin, the skeletons in London’s closet are climbing to the surface. And dead men do tell tales. Take, for example, one ...
Science & Health Sep 23, 2013
Search for Mars life to continue despite rover's findings
by Joel Achenbach
Martian life is awfully cryptic — that is a scientific term; it means life that is out of sight, below the surface, burrowed into ecological niches not easily scrutinized by robotic sentinels from the planet Earth.
Science & Health Sep 23, 2013
Smells can help dispel fear factor
It can take only an instant for fear to take hold in the brain — a fear of snakes after being bitten, or of water after witnessing a drowning — and overcoming that fear can take a long time. But now researchers are saying ...
Science & Health Sep 22, 2013
Brain-eating amoeba in city water rattles nerves near New Orleans
Sales of bottled water have gushed while officials try to pin down the source of a deadly amoeba found in the water supply of St. Bernard Parish, southeast of New Orleans. Experts say the only danger is to people who get the organism way ...
Science & Health Sep 20, 2013
E-cigarettes are popular, but do they really work?
by Kevin Mckenna
The rules governing personal conduct on the top deck of a Glasgow bus are known to international peacekeeping forces everywhere: keep your head down; do not make eye contact and on no account attempt to make polite conversation with strangers. Refrain too from making ...
Science & Health Sep 20, 2013
Royal toothbrush, toothpaste among Rio dig discoveries
An ivory toothbrush thought to have belonged to Brazilian Emperor Pedro II and a minty toothpaste made for the Portuguese queen are among more than 200,000 pieces dating from the 17th through 19th centuries that archaeologists have unearthed from a site in Rio de ...
Science & Health Sep 20, 2013
Protein linked to Alzheimer's cure
Scientists have a new lead on a possible treatment to slow Alzheimer’s disease by targeting a protein involved in limiting flexibility in the aging brain, according to a study released Thursday. Researchers led by Stanford University neurobiologist Carla Shatz discovered that eliminating a certain ...