By PETER HITCHENS, Mail on Sunday
December 14, 2003
iving votes to 16-year-olds is just another part of Labour’s plan to turn this country into a permanent one-party state.
There is almost nothing this lot will not do to stay in power.
The election system is already heavily loaded in favour of Labour, with far [...]

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By PETER HITCHENS, Mail on Sunday
December 7, 2003
ho cares if Anthony Blair goes? He seems to have had enough of pretending to be Prime Minister. It is making him ill and it is not making him rich.
There is talk of him quitting before the spring.
I will gloat if he does because [...]

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By PETER HITCHENS, Mail on Sunday
November 30, 2003
he campaign to abolish marriage in this country is now close to success.
It is amazing how quickly it has happened and how a tiny faction of extremists have smashed a centuries-old institution in a few decades.
The latest blow – civil partnerships for homosexual couples [...]

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Evil strikes in Turkey, so who do we invade now?
By PETER HITCHENS, Mail on Sunday
November 23, 2003
o who do we invade now? The West attacked Afghanistan because Saudi terrorists staged a massacre in New York, perhaps the most illogical war in human history.
We occupied Iraq because of, well, what was it [...]

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To get rich is glorious
By PETER HITCHENS, Mail on Sunday
November 16, 2003
hey are building the future capital of the world here at the mouth of the Yangtze River, a city so vast, astonishing and potent that it ought to be a warning to the soft, declining West that the 21st Century may [...]

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Scaredy-rats die young
High stress life may take toll on longevity.
9 December 2003
HELEN PEARSON

As many as 15% of children may suffer from severe shyness
© GettyImages
A new study raises the prospect that shy people might die younger than extroverts.
As many as 15% of children are thought to suffer from neophobia — a [...]

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American Geophysical Union Meeting,
San Francisco, December 2003

Trees link leukaemia clusters
Ring study hints that childhood cancer could be connected to tungsten.
9 December 2003
BETSY MASON

Trees record information about environmental conditions in their annual growth rings.
© GettyImages
Three different clusters of childhood leukaemia in the western United States may be linked to high levels [...]

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Pretty faces make men reach for money.
10 December 2003
HELEN PEARSON

Men with more on offer might be better able to win the girl.
© GettyImages
Pretty ladies make men want wealth with which to impress, according to a new study – even if they’ll be worse off in the long run.
Psychologists Margo Wilson [...]

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American Geophysical Union Meeting,
San Francisco, December 2003
Agriculture may have released huge amounts of greenhouse gases into atmosphere.
10 December 2003
BETSY MASON

Clear-cutting and irrigation may have altered the planet’s climate.
© GettyImages
Humans began altering the climate 8,000 years ago, long before the industrial revolution, claims a leading climate scientist1.
Massive clearance and irrigation for [...]

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Mutant worms withstand boozy bender
Single gene linked to alcohol tolerance.
12 December 2003
HELEN R. PILCHER

Mutant worms can soak up the equivalent of twenty times the human drink-drive limit.
© SPL
Some worms can really hold their drink. A genetic twist of fate renders them immune to alcohol, new research reveals.
The study may [...]

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Humanised kidneys appear to thwart first round of rejection.
08 December 2003
HELEN PEARSON

Miniature pigs’ organs are roughly the same size as human ones
© GettyImages
Genetically modified pig kidneys have survived long after being transplanted into baboons. Researchers hope that this early success may pave the way for animal-to-human organ transplants.
The pigs used [...]

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Language tree rooted in Turkey
Evolutionary ideas give farmers credit for Indo-European tongues.
27 November 2003
JOHN WHITFIELD

Languages, like genomes, encode information.
© Corbis
A family tree of Indo-European languages suggests they began to spread and split about 9,000 years ago. The finding hints that farmers in what is now Turkey drove the language boom [...]

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Europe chooses France for nuclear-reactor bid
Spain loses chance to bring ITER jobs and investment home.
27 November 2003
DECLAN BUTLER

ITER partners are expected to vote on the final winner next month.
© ITER
France has won the long battle to be the European Union’s candidate site to host the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). [...]

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Conservation and medicine collide in the jungle.
28 November 2003
HELEN PEARSON

For every 1% rise in deforestation there is
an 8% rise in
malaria mosquitos.
© GettyImages
Destruction of the Amazon rainforest is opening the door to malaria-bearing mosquitoes, researchers are warning. They hope to highlight how environmental damage is fuelling human disease.
The team collected 15,000 [...]

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Human fertility experiment prompts wrath
Babies made by cloning-type technique die prematurely.
14 October 2003
HELEN PEARSON

The embryos contained nuclear DNA from one mother, and mitrochondrial DNA from another.
© alamy.com
Doctors have created the first pregnancies using a controversial technique related to cloning. The babies died before birth.
Other experts have condemned the procedure because [...]

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Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting,
New Orleans, November 2003

Breast-feeding promotes wound healing
Rat study may fuel breast-versus-bottle debate.
12 November 2003
HELEN R. PILCHER

Oxytocin, which prompts lactation, lowers stress hormones.
© GettyImages
Breast-feeding may help the scars of childbirth fade. Lactation speeds wound healing and lowers stress in rats, researchers told this week’s Society for Neuroscience [...]

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