Why Andorrans live longer than everyone else

Getting to Andorra, a tiny country wedged in the mountains between France and Spain, is no easy feat. No airport, no train station, and the nearest city Toulouse is at least a 2 hour drive away. Perhaps that’s part of the secret of this tiny principality high up in the Pyrenees Mountains: that its quiet isolation has created a relatively stress-free life-style which has made them the world champions in the global longevity sweepstakes, at least according to the latest U.S.

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Asia tumbles after Wall Street slide

Asian and Pacific markets tumbled on Tuesday, following a rocky day on Wall Street. The Nikkei average was down 3.4 percent at the midday break, while the All Ordinaries index in Australia had slipped 2.7 percent. In Seoul, the KOSPI slipped 1.9 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was off 3.9 percent

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Spotting Distant Worlds from the Backyard

It was arguably the biggest news in science this month: A graduate student in Australia discovered the continent of Africa. What makes Sally Langford’s discovery so remarkable — and worthy of reporting in the journal Astrobiology on April 6 — is not what she saw, but how she saw it. Once a month over the course of three years, Langford stood huddled against the evening chill in lonely Australian farmland and watched as the east coast of Africa shone in the midday sun

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Boycotts hit U.N. racism conference

A major United Nations anti-racism conference was thrown into further disarray Sunday when more countries joined a U.S. boycott. Australia and the Netherlands were the latest to pull out of next week’s meeting in Geneva, amid a growing dispute over a document said to single out Israel for its racism.

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Vettel ends Brawn GP’s pole domination

Germany’s Sebastian Vettel claimed his first-ever pole for Red Bull as this season”s all-conquering Brawn GP team were relegated to fourth and fifth fastest in Shanghai on Saturday. Vettel, widely regarding as one of the most promising young drivers in F1, will share front row with two-time world champion Fernando Alonso in his Renault with his teammate Mark Webber qualifying third.

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Rudd: Human smugglers ‘scum of the earth’

Australia’s prime minister Friday ripped those engaged in human trafficking after an explosion aboard a boat carrying Afghan refugees killed three people and injured more than 40 others near Ashmore Reef, off Australia’s northwest coast. The Siouxland Urology Center in Dakota Dunes has been ordered to contact nearly 5,700 former patients treated there since 2002. A routine inspection found the facility was reusing sterile saline bags, tubing and other medical supplies from cystoscopies — a diagnostic procedure that looks at the lower urinary tract

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An Anti-Iranian Enclave in Iraq Fights to Stay

The dozens of middle-aged Iranians standing in six neat, gender-segregated rows stare straight ahead from behind the chain-link fence close to the entrance of Camp Ashraf, some 40 miles north of Baghdad in Diyala near the Iranian border. “Ashraf is our home, Ashraf is our home,” they robotically chant in Iranian-accented Arabic, as they jab their right fists into the air in unison. Some of the women, who are all dressed in pantsuits with long jackets and colorful headscarves tied under the chin, carry placards in Persian

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