More than seven years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, rescue workers still had trouble breathing after they inhaled from the cloud of dust that enveloped southern Manhattan, a new study concludes.
Doctors conducted a seven-year study of members of the New York City Fire Department who responded to the World Trade Center attacks between Sept. 11 and Sept. 24, 2001. The researchers were able to include 91 percent of the responding workers -- a total of 10,870 firefighters and 1,911 EMS workers.
By 2008, the rescuers who had significant declines in lung function a year after the attack had still not recovered, and the recorded drop in lung function was about 12 times the rate seen in normal aging. The research was published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.




A leaked videotape of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed a dozen Iraqis was unveiled on April 5 by the website WikiLeaks. To much of the corporate media, though, it was either not worth reporting at all, or an unfortunate incident to be defended.
Glacier National Park has lost two more of its namesake moving icefields to climate change, which is shrinking the rivers of ice until they grind to a halt, a government researcher said Wednesday.
Gender-bending chemicals used in food cans, shower curtains and toys may be triggering early puberty in girls - and putting them at greater risk of cancer and diabetes, researchers say.
Still operating under Bush-era policies that President Barack Obama last year called "a mess," the Pentagon will resume military commission hearings for accused terrorists Wednesday in a top secret compound originally designed for the trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
The numbers tell an upbeat story about efforts to empower and protect women in Afghanistan: The country now has around 5.7 million children in school, of whom 35 percent are girls. There are 8,000 schools, including several hundred just for girls.





























