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• "The invention of irrigation was a major technological breakthrough (but) it had unintended consequences," said Gil Stein, a professor of Near Eastern archaeology at the University of Chicago, one of the report's authors. "A more reliable food supply came at the cost of more disease," he wrote in an email.
• People can catch the flatworm parasite when they are in warm fresh water; the tiny worms are carried by snails and can burrow into human skin. After growing into adult worms, they live in the bladder, kidneys, intestines and elsewhere in the body for years. The parasites can cause symptoms including a fever, rash, abdominal pain, vomiting and paralysis of the legs. These days, the disease can be easily treated with drugs to kill the worms.
• Stein said there was evidence of wheat and barley farming in the town where the skeletons were found and that irrigation might have also spurred outbreaks of other diseases like malaria by creating pools of stagnant water for mosquitoes to breed.
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Saving Pvt. Smith: British town recalls a family's deep sacrifice in the Great War
• BARNARD CASTLE, England (AP) -- Carved into the simple obelisk commemorating the fallen are the names of five sons of Margaret and John McDowell Smith. There's a story behind the name that isn't there -- a sixth brother, Wilfred -- and a century after World War I a local historian has dug out the details from archives.
• Wilfred Smith's survival is a story of sacrifice amid a war that demanded so much of it from virtually every family in Britain.
• Because long before there was the fictional tale of "Saving Private Ryan," there was the real-life story of saving Pvt. Smith.
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• The people of Barnard Castle have long known the story of the Smith brothers and that Wilfred, or Willie as he was known, survived.
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Adopted off the books decades ago, 'Hicks babies' hope to find biological family through DNA
• MCCAYSVILLE, Ga. (AP) -- They were adopted off-the-books decades ago, scattered by a Georgia doctor who took $100 or $1,000 or something in between to send desperate couples home with new sons and daughters. Now some of the adoptees have turned to fresh DNA testing in hopes of reconnecting with the biological families they never knew, before time runs out.
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