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Whenever we take a new drug, we’re concerned about possible side effects. One of the most unusual side effects ever discovered has been found with high doses of drugs for Parkinson’s disease?they caused people to become compulsive gamblers. Two patients each lost $60,000 in only three months.

Dr. Mark Stacy says, “In the same week I saw two patients with major and new gambling problems?and it was after I increased their medication.” He researched the medical records of 1884 patients and found nine who had developed gambling addictions that led to financial hardship. All the patients were taking levodopa, which increases dopamine in the brain. But their new gambling habits seemed to be associated with another drug they were also taking.
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Scientists think global warming will melt the Alps over the next twenty years, causing the mountains to collapse into piles of rubble. The mountain range is made up of rocks, with an icy crust of permafrost holding them together. This ice is melting fast, and the rocks are falling in great avalanches, making climbing dangerous. One avalanche killed 50 people 4 years ago.
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Today is August 11, 2003, and it was 96 F in Paris, 93 F in Rome, and this is coming down off record heat that reached as high as 101 in London and 103 in Paris over the last few days.

There are fires burning in eleven European countries, and this morning the Pope offered prayers pleading for relief. Meanwhile, water temperatures off the US eastern seaboard began moving back into the normal range, still with little indication of how or why they suddenly dropped to levels normally seen in April and May.

Earlier this summer, killing heat waves took temperatures in parts of India above 124 F, and the middle east has sweltered for days in weather that, even for that region, is brutally high.
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An Internet worm detected Monday is spreading around the world like wildfire. The worm has has been spreading rapidly across the Internet, according to the CERT Coordination Center, a government funded security watchdog group at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

The worm instructs infected computers to assault the Microsoft Update servers continuously after 12:01 a.m., August 16. Such an attack, launched by thousands of computers with high-speed connections, would prevent users from being able to reach the service, experts said. The worm is instructed to continue doing this until December 31, 2003, after which it will attack the update site on the 16th of every month.
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