Burkett started his own research to find out who fought in Vietnam and to debunk some of the myths about Vietnam veterans. Through the work, he exposed more than 1,200 people, including politicians and entertainers, who lied about or exaggerated their claims of serving in the Vietnam War.

The claim that Hussein's intelligence service had contacts with al Qaeda isn't new, and by itself it doesn't prove much. In the murky world of espionage, operatives are constantly checking out potential friends and adversaries; it would be surprising, in fact, if the Iraqis and Osama bin Laden's men hadn't met.

Research from the University of Texas proves attractive people get higher raises than folks who aren't as good-looking and similar studies published in the Journal of Labor Economics showed better-looking lawyers earned more money than ugly lawyers. So they get the money, the jobs, the hot sex, and the adoring gaze of millions.

We may hate the beautiful but there's nothing more we want than to be just like them. According to a recent study conducted by Dr. Margo Maine (author of Body Wars and Father Hunger) over half of the women (age 18-25) surveyed would prefer to be run over by a truck than be fat, and two-thirds of those would rather be mean and, alas, even stupid.

"Between the pot smoking and the gay marriage, quite frankly it's a wonder there is not a giant deck of cards out there with all our faces on it."

VOCABULARY BUILDER
A tariff is an unfair obstacle to free trade in which a poor nation slaps extra charges on imports from a rich nation so the poor nation's citizens can sell their own products at home.
A subsidy is a reasonable payment from a rich nation to powerful business interests so they can undersell products made by the poor nation's citizens in the poor nation.

State Boards of Education have been under pressure to rewrite Biology textbooks to include material about Intelligent Design as an alternate explanation for evolution. In case that happens, I've been working on a rewrite of my own: "In the beginning, about 13 billion years ago, God created the quantum gravity barrier. And the weak nuclear force was upon the face of the deep. And God divided it into matter and antimatter, with a slight asymmetry in favor of matter. And God said, Let there be a Quark-hadron transition, and there was a Quark-hadron transition. And He called the particles baryons. And when the universe had cooled to 3,000 billion degrees Kelvin, God created hadrons and leptons and helium and hydrogen. And God saw that it was good." Of course it's still a work-in-progress, but kids have to learn about science somewhere!

The result was a torrent of fire and brimstone from readers who are aghast at gay marriage, and who accuse me of blasphemy for defending vile behavior that they say God is on record as denouncing. Never mind that the Bible also advises that people who work on the Sabbath should be stoned to death (Numbers 15:35) and condones the beating of slaves "since the slave is the owner's property" (Exodus 21:21). Somehow it's only the anti-gay bits that seem engraved in stone.
Yet surprisingly few readers raised the most obvious question: if homosexuality is partly genetic, why are there so many gays?
Scientists have offered a range of theories. One is that gays might not have been fecund baby-producers, but that they guarded their nephews and nieces from saber-toothed tigers and thus helped ensure the survival of closely related genes.
I hope that religious conservatives will ponder this question: If homosexuality is utterly contrary to God's law, why is it so embedded in human biology and in the rest of the animal kingdom?
A 1958 poll found that 96 percent of whites disapproved of marriages between blacks and whites (Deuteronomy 7:3 condemns interracial marriages). In 1959 a judge justified Virginia's ban on interracial marriage by declaring that "Almighty God . . . did not intend for the races to mix."

The Bush administration was yesterday involved in a desperate effort to keep alive its chances of prosecuting the only person charged over the attacks of September 11.

Life expectancy has almost doubled in this country over the past 150 years, owing to the unnaturally improved conditions of modern civilisation.
If the entire reproductive system of such worms is removed, then the animals live four times as long. Further genetic manipulation resulted in the animals living for 120 days, a six-fold increase in lifespan. This is equivalent to humans living to around 500 years old.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said: "We have no reason to believe that those were inaccurate figures. We stand by those numbers, they were provided by soldiers that were involved in the engagement and we see no reason to suggest those numbers are incorrect."

The United States has privately told Israel of three "red lines" it must not cross in its dealing with the Palestinians and the wider Middle East, according to the Israeli press.
According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, the three red lines are: not to harm the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat; not to "shock the region"; and not to create "facts on the ground" that could jeopardise the Palestinian state promised in the US-backed "road-map" for peace.