Category: News

Attention everyone. If I could have all of your eyes looking forward please, I have an announcement to make: the pirating of music on the internet has officially ended.

Researchers studied the brains of male and female rats, focusing on two regions known to play a role in learning and stress: the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure located deep within the brain, senses stressful situations. The prefrontal cortex, in the front of the brain, is necessary for higher cognitive functions.

“These two structures are intimately connected to one another,” says Tracey Shors, a professor of psychology at Rutgers, who is lead author of the study reported in the Journal of Neuroscience. “Therefore, we examined whether they communicate with one another to influence learning after stress.”

Fortunata Kasege was just 22 years old when she arrived in this country 13 years ago from Tanzania. A newlywed with a baby on the way. She knew her life was about to change. What she didn’t know was how much. A visit to a prenatal clinic in Houston, Texas, revealed that she was HIV positive.

“I was horrified,” she remembers. “I felt dizzy–and fell out of my chair. And then I started to cry. I thought about my unborn baby and I cried for her. How would she survive?”

The billionaire founder of social network Facebook Inc. has agreed to give the majority of his wealth to charity, part of a broader group of rich entrepreneurs committing to philanthropy earlier in their lives.

Mark Zuckerberg has signed onto the “Giving Pledge,” which asks its signatories to commit publicly to give away the majority of their wealth. The 26-year-old is one of 16 billionaires new to the pledge, which now totals more than 50 donors. New names include AOL co-founder Steve Case, investor Carl Icahn and former junk-bond king Michael Milken.

They join existing pledges made by wealthy individuals and families including Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, film director George Lucas and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

China on Thursday awarded a newly created “peace prize” to a man who had no intention of accepting it one day before a Chinese professor was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for trying to bring democracy to the communist dictatorship.

The awarding of the Confucius Peace Prize comes amid a campaign by China to vilify the dissident who was awarded the Nobel and delegitimize the Norwegian prize itself. Dissident Liu Xiaobo, a literary critic imprisoned in a Chinese jail, will not be allowed to appear in Oslo today to accept the Nobel.

Westboro Baptist Church, famous for protesting against gays and picketing at military funerals, has stated it plans to hold a protest at the public memorial of Elizabeth Edwards on Saturday. The service will be held at the Edenton Street United Methodist Church and begins at 1 p.m. in Raleigh, N.C.

USA Today reports the church plans on protesting for 90 minutes before the memorial starts. Edwards passed away Tuesday after a long battle with cancer in her home in Chapel Hill. Edwards was a supporter of gay marriage after a speech she gave in San Francisco in 2007.