Mary Carmichael

Investigators have found evidence of biological weapons in Iraq, NEWSWEEK has learned. The discovery was made south of Mosul, in the ruins of a desert fortress at Hatra.

The next time your family physician tells you to take two aspirin and call him in the morning, he might not be kidding. A new study from Kaiser Permanente shows that urinary-tract infections, which account for more than 8 million doctor's visits each year, can be managed just as easily over the telephone.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of foreign students set off for the States in pursuit of an American diploma. Most come to study the sciences. And their numbers keep growing; the Institute of International Education reports that a record 582,996 foreign students enrolled in U.S. universities last school year.

If you are a woman of childbearing age--even if you're not planning on having a baby soon--tear out this headline and stick it on the fridge. For years, doctors have been telling young women to take 400 micrograms daily of folic acid (vitamin B9), which comes in many multivitamins and can prevent spina bifida and neural-tube defects in babies.

For years the FDA has warned pregnant women about mercury, the defect-causing pollutant that builds up in fish--and the women have responded. Last Thursday, a survey reported that expectant mothers have eaten 1.4 fewer servings of fish per month since the FDA launched its anti-mercury campaign.

In print, David Sinclair comes off as a mild-mannered Harvard pathologist given to discussions of "small molecules" and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. On the phone, though, he's a bit more...

Pet Owners Have Long Believed Their Companions Love Them Back. Scientists Once Scoffed, But Now They're Coming Around.

It's been more than a year since a study linked hormone-replacement therapy to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease--and sent millions of women into a panic.

Astronomers and astrologers don't have much in common, but there's a good chance August will send both groups into a frenzy: on the 27th, Mars will loom large on the horizon, coming closer to Earth than it has in 73,000 years.

Everyone who's ever owned a pet has at least one story (usually many, actually) of an animal that seems just as emotional as any human. Take Ruth Osment, who says her two cats, Penny and Jo, feel sorry for her when she cries--running to her and drying her tears with their fur.

To Michelangelo, Eve was a lovely brunette; to Rodin, she was a voluptuous temptress. But to scientists, the human matriarch's face has always been elusive.

Last August, as the West Nile virus went on a 44-state, 284-person killing spree, Vicki Kramer found herself troubled by a single case. In California, where Kramer is the state's point person on mosquito-borne disease, the virus hadn't shown up in surveillance of birds or insects.

Schyan Kautzerhas had a rough couple of weeks. First, the 3-year-old's new pet prairie dog bit her finger. Next, a temperature of 103 landed her in the hospital.

To Michelangelo, eve was a lovely brunette; to Rodin, a voluptuous temptress. To scientists, the matriarch's face has been more elusive. In 1987 geneticists suspected that a 160,000-year-old "African Eve" of sorts was the last common ancestor of modern humans, "but without data from the fossil record, no one knew what she looked like," says University of California, Berkeley, paleontologist Tim White.Now we do.

There are 30,000 scientific journals in the world, and most of them are unreadable. Do we really need another? Yes, yes, yes, at least in the case of the Annals of Family Medicine.

How does sunscreen work? -JAMIE REED, OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA.That depends on which kind you're using. Basic sunscreen contains chemicals that absorb the energy in ultraviolet rays, then emit it back as lower-frequency heat waves.

It's a safe bet that Dr. David Barker has never craved pickles and ice cream. Still, if there's one man in the world who understands the peculiar dietary needs of pregnant women, it's him.

Fifty years ago this week, Sir Edmund Hillary went to Nepal on a mission to what was left of the unexplored world. Last Friday he returned. Flown to Katmandu for the anniversary festivities after spending a week with the family of Tenzing Norgay, his partner in conquest, an exhausted Hillary was wrapped in a blanket and spirited away from the 200-some Sherpas, admirers and reporters awaiting him at the airport.

It's a safe bet that Dr. David Barker has never craved pickles and ice cream. Still, if there's one man in the world who understands the peculiar dietary needs of pregnant women, it's him.

Getting a medical self-diagnosis at home isn't exactly new--it began with the scale in ancient Egypt. But these days, you can check a lot more than your weight.

Four years ago, Audie Leventhal's daughters sat him down and explained to him, slowly, that they were smarter than he was. Typical teenage behavior, but Leventhal took them seriously. "It wasn't that I thought they were smarter," he says, laughing. "But I wondered, was I getting stupider?" Well, maybe.

There isn't a soul in America who's more all-American than Alex. A bright, chatty college graduate, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball and basketball.

Trade: Happy TogetherAmericans have taken sledgehammers to Peugeots. Germans have boycotted McDonald's. The Iraq war may be over, but the transatlantic rancor it inspired has yet to fade.

By now, everyone knows the early signs of SARS are high fever and a dry cough. But there's a second set of symptoms: canceled business trips, the collapse of tourism and falling stock prices.

Last year the American Cancer Society asked people to list strategies for preventing cancer. Only 1 percent said "lose weight." Let's hope the other 99 percent heard last week's news.

It's one of the most maddening features of all the technology in our lives. There are so many gadgets to connect us--cell phones, e-mail, land-line phones--yet most of the gadgets aren't connected to each other.Verizon's answer is the new Digital Companion service, which marries Caller ID, Call Forwarding and the Web.

Are mildew and mold different things?--RUTH ETZEL, ANCHORAGE, ALASKAThat depends on what you mean by "mildew." As a technical term, "mildew" refers to a type of crop disease.

James Watson is having one heck of a month. On April 2 he celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Nature article in which he and Francis Crick revealed the structure of DNA to the world.

It's one of the most maddening features of all the technology in our lives. There are so many gadgets to connect us—cell phones, e-mail, land-line phones—yet most of the gadgets aren't connected to each other.VERIZON'S ANSWER IS THE NEW Digital Companion service, which marries Caller ID, Call Forwarding and the Web.

Steven Strogatz has just written a book arguing that the universe is an orderly place marked by harmony and cooperation. In an era of war, terror and chaos, his viewpoint sounds a bit curious.