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Voters in former DDR angered by Afghanistan troop losses, unemployment and blighted hopes after reunificationMikhail Stamm is not interested in politics. But he is interested in Afghanistan - not least because he thinks he is likely to be going there soon. Standing outside the recruiting centre in the north-eastern German town of Schwerin, the 19-year-old says he has always wanted to join the army: 'I'm happy to go to Afghanistan. I want to see the world and bring peace.'His brother, Dmitri, 24, adds that most of his friends are now in uniform. Dmitri, who is unemployed, is less idealistic. 'There are no jobs where we come from,' he said. 'It's like that everywhere around here.'In the east of Germany, three themes are dominating the lead-up to the general election on 27 September: the war in Afghanistan; unemployment and the economic crisis; and - with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November - relations between the east and west of a country, where the euphoria

Sen. Ron Wyden's name has been identified with health care on Capitol Hill for more than two years, but a health care plan the Democrat from Oregon co-sponsored with Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah has been cast aside. Wyden tells Guy Raz he thinks Congress should still pursue a bipartisan solution to the health care overhaul.

You've probably spent a lot of time sweating over your 401(k) and IRA. But have you given much thought to the way social Security will fit into your retirement plans?

Are there any mirrors in the headquarters of the Federal Reserve? If so, I think it's time for Ben Bernanke and his colleagues to look into one.

You Can Heal Your Life: Special Edition Box Set (Book & DVD Box Set) (Hardcover)By Louise Hay Buy new: $13.5711 used and new from $12.89 Customer rating: First tagged 'health' by Anna Maria Bible 'Anna Maria' Customer tags: healthy living, healing, positive thinking, enlightenment, law of attraction, health, happiness, affirmations, abraham-hicks

US President Barack Obama does not think racism is 'the overriding issue' in the fierce debate surrounding health care, but that tempers are rising over government roles in daily life, according to interviews to be broadcast Sunday.

Sarah Thomas, big-time college football's only female referee, has grown accustomed to startling players and coaches, but says it does not occur as often as one might think.

The propane trader case was not the simple slam-dunk some thought.

Retiree Rollie Crawford thought he was returning to Minnesota for some family time and wound up helping Boston Scientific test a new heart stent.

AthanasiusKircher sends in a Wired writeup on what should surely be a contender in the next Improbable Research competition: wiring a dead salmon into an fMRI machine and showing it pictures of humans designed to evoke various emotions. 'When they got around to analyzing the voxel... data, the voxels representing the area where the salmon's tiny brain sat showed evidence of activity. In the fMRI scan, it looked like the dead salmon was actually thinking about the pictures it had been shown. ... The result is completely nuts — but that's actually exactly the point. [Neuroscientist Craig] Bennett... and his adviser, George Wolford, wrote up the work as a warning about the dangers of false positives in fMRI data. They wanted to call attention to ways the field could improve its statistical methods. ... Bennett notes: 'We could set our threshold [of significance] so high that we have no false positives, but we have no legitimate results.... We could also set it so low that we end up