Mice that were raised in a sterile environment or given antibiotics early in life lacked a common gut bacteria that appears to prevent food allergies, US researchers said on Monday.

The bacterium, called Clostridia, appears to minimize the likelihood that rodents will become allergic to peanuts, and researchers would like to find out if it does the same in people.

In the meantime, they found that supplementing rodents with probiotics containing Clostridia later in life could reverse the allergy, according to the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Environmental stimuli such as antibiotic overuse, high-fat diets, caesarean birth, removal of common pathogens and even formula feeding have affected the microbiota with which we've co-evolved," said senior study author Cathryn Nagler, food allergy professor at the University of Chicago.

According to reports from Huazhong Agricultural University in China, an alleged illegal GM rice trial on the University students has led to an incidence rate of acute leukemia of up to three times the normal rate in China.

Students of the Huazhong Agricultural University have revealed that "over 10 students suffered from leukemia within a 4 year period." They listed the names of at least 7 cases.

The students also stated: "When we entered the University, the school required all students to promote genetic modification (GM), upon entering the University, our teacher told us that the rice used by our canteen is GM rice from the university's experimental base."

The normal incidence rate of leukemia among young people in China is about 2 - 3 cases/100,000 people, and the rate of acute cases is about 0.6 - 1.6 cases/100,000 people.

The leukemia incidence rate of the students at the Huazhong Agricultural University is therefore about three times the normal incidence rate.

Officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) say that a second, separate outbreak of the deadly virus has occurred in the country. Meanwhile, a Liberian doctor treated with an experimental serum against the illness has passed away.

DRC Health Minister Felix Numbi said that two of eight people who died from a "hemorrhagic fever" last week have been diagnosed with a strain of the disease in postmortem lab tests. The death toll of the sudden epidemic in the country's Equateur province has reached 13 in total.

"This epidemic has nothing to do with the one in West Africa," said Numbi. "The experience acquired during the six previous epidemics of Ebola will contribute to the containing of this illness."

DRC, then Zaire, was where the virus, which eventually kills patients by literally liquefying their organs, was first discovered in 1976. Numbi said that medical cordons have been erected around the town of Gera, where the patients were identified.

The maverick scientist has long argued that sugar is as harmful as cocaine or tobacco - and that the food industry has been adding too much of it to our meals for too long. A convert hears more about his theory

If you have any interest at all in diet, obesity, public health, diabetes, epidemiology, your own health or that of other people, you will probably be aware that sugar, not fat, is now considered the devil's food. Dr Robert Lustig's book, Fat Chance: The Hidden Truth About Sugar, Obesity and Disease, for all that it sounds like a Dan Brown novel, is the difference between vaguely knowing something is probably true, and being told it as a fact. Lustig has spent the past 16 years treating childhood obesity. His meta-analysis of the cutting-edge research on large-cohort studies of what sugar does to populations across the world, alongside his own clinical observations, has him credited with starting the war on sugar. When it reaches the enemy status of tobacco, it will be because of Lustig.

"Politicians have to come in and reset the playing field, as they have with any substance that is toxic and abused, ubiquitous and with negative consequence for society," he says. "Alcohol, cigarettes, cocaine. We don't have to ban any of them. We don't have to ban sugar. But the food industry cannot be given carte blanche. They're allowed to make money, but they're not allowed to make money by making people sick."

Lustig argues that sugar creates an appetite for itself by a determinable hormonal mechanism - a cycle, he says, that you could no more break with willpower than you could stop feeling thirsty through sheer strength of character. He argues that the hormone related to stress, cortisol, is partly to blame. "When cortisol floods the bloodstream, it raises blood pressure; increases the blood glucose level, which can precipitate diabetes. Human research shows that cortisol specifically increases caloric intake of 'comfort foods'." High cortisol levels during sleep, for instance, interfere with restfulness, and increase the hunger hormone ghrelin the next day. This differs from person to person, but I was jolted by recognition of the outrageous deliciousness of doughnuts when I haven't slept well.

A new study out of Maine suggests that residents across the New England state are regularly subjected to drinking water containing double the amount of fluoride considered to be dangerous by federal guidelines.

Residents from across the Pine Tree State were asked to voluntarily take samples from the private wells they rely on for drinking water, and ten different towns - including eight within a single county - tested higher than hoped for.

Scientific American published the results of the study last week, and the article's author, Dina Fine Maron, wrote that the details suggest many Mainers are introducing dangerous amounts of fluoride to their bodies due to an absence of regulation.

According to Maron, most of the state relies on private wells when it comes to getting water. Unlike public water sources, however, the water that Mainers drink every single day is spared stringent testing.

Last week, when we reported on the latest breakout of a mysterious Ebola-like disease, which had claimed at least 70 people's live at last check, we were skeptical by the WHO's attempts to mask the fact that an Ebola outbreak is something else entirely, in a desperate attempt to avoid the panic that would inevitably result from the confirmation that the Ebola virus has officially made its way into the fifth country, this time the second largest African nation by surface area, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As Reuters reported at the time, citing a WHO spokesman who had sent an email to the news agency, "this is not Ebola" to which we mused: "perhaps the WHO is fibbing just a bit to prevent another all out panic. If not Ebola then what? According to WHO, the deaths are the result of an outbreak of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, a disease prevalent in... dogs?

We concluded: "So is the WHO simply trying to prevent the spread of panic and deny that Ebola has now spread to the second largest country in Africa? We will surely find out soon enough, especially if the WHO, too, advises the population "to keep calm and BTFD"..."

Three days later we have the answer and sure enough, as we suspected the WHO was indeed lying.

Reuters confirms:

Democratic Republic of Congo declared an Ebola outbreak in its northern Equateur province on Sunday after two out of eight cases tested came back positive for the deadly virus, Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said. A mysterious disease has killed dozens of people in Equateur in recent weeks but the World Health Organization had said on Thursday it was not Ebola.

Nigeria's health ministry confirmed Friday two new cases of Ebola in the country, the first people to come down with the disease who didn't have direct contact with an infected traveler who brought the virus into the country from nearby Liberia.

Nigerian Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said both newly infected people are the spouses of two caregivers who contracted the virus and later died after giving treatment to Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American man who flew into the country infected with the virus last month.

Health officials continue to monitor a Bernalillo County woman showing symptoms similar to the Ebola virus.

The woman was traveling in the West African nation of Sierra Leone at the beginning of the month.

She then returned to Albuquerque and soon after began to develop symptoms on Friday. She was admitted to UNM Hospital on Saturday.

The patient is currently undergoing a series of tests and remains in isolation at the hospital -- blood samples will go to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Health officials say this is not a highly probable case of the virus, but because of the symptoms -- and her recent return from West Africa -- there's no room for guesses.

Here is a copy of a letter actor and comedian Rob Schneider sent to California Governor Jerry Brown's office Friday. It is posted at canaryparty.org.

Schneider is to be commended and supported in every possible way for stepping forward.

Schneider writes: "I have copies of the original CDC report that was later suppressed and fraudulently changed."

I urge Schneider to post that report now.

A new study of self-awareness by Kessler Foundation researchers shows that persons with multiple sclerosis (MS) may be able to improve their self-awareness through task-oriented cognitive rehabilitation.

The study was epublished ahead of print on July 2 in NeuroRehabilitation. (Yael Goverover, Helen Genova, Hali Griswold, Nancy D. Chiaravalloti & John DeLuca: Metacognitive knowledge and online awareness in persons with multiple sclerosis doi: 10.3233/NRE-141113).

Self-awareness is one's ability to recognize cognitive problems caused by brain injury. This is the first study of self-awareness in MS that includes assessment of online awareness, as well as metacognitive awareness.