Large amounts of money are being siphoned from the multi-billion dollar cigarette smuggling trade and going right into the pockets of terrorist networks and international organized crime. 

A United Nations Security Council investigative body, the Group of Experts, has reported that millions of dollars in illicit tobacco revenues are reaching al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist organizations, and is financing Congolese rebels for the recruitment of child soldiers, mass rape and murders.

 The World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control has determined that 600 billion counterfeited and smuggled cigarettes cross national borders annually. This represents $50 billion in lost proceeds affecting nations throughout the world.

Sexsomnia may be more common than previously believed and is more common in men than women, according to new research presented today at SLEEP 2010.   Their results indicate that 7.6 percent of patients (63 of 832) at a sleep disorders center reported that they had initiated or engaged in sexual activity with a bed partner while still asleep.

The prevalence of reported sexsomnia was nearly three times higher in men (11 percent) than in women (four percent).

Are you a bold personality?  High self-esteem, action-oriented, eager, tenacious?  If so, you are more likely to be a religious extremist when anxiety occurs, according to findings by York University researchers in this month's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In a series of studies, over 600 participants were placed in anxiety-provoking or neutral situations and then asked to describe their personal goals and rate their degree of conviction for their religious ideals. This included asking participants whether they would give their lives for their faith or support a war in its defense.

Using an implicit task, scholars used two experiments, how people automatically responded to words, to predict break-ups. They showed it was easier to link words referring to their partner to words with pleasant or unpleasant meanings, a harbinger of couples about to split up.

Most of the time happiness determination in relationships involves asking people but surveys have little value there. Finland always tops 'happiest country' charts even though they aren't happy at all, they just have cultural sisu and claim they are happy when asked.

A tornado is a rotating column of air extending from a thunderstorm to the ground.  Tornadoes are capable of 250 MPH wind speeds, cutting a swath of destruction in excess of one mile width and dozens of miles in length.

If you see a dark, greenish sky or a wall cloud and hail, you might be getting a tornado.  If you have something that sounds like a freight train, you definitely are.

The Sun is the biggest external source of energy which affects Earth’s climate. Long-term variations of the Earth’s orbit lead to long-term (~20-400,000 year) variations in the total energy received from the Sun (Milankovich cycles) and respectively in the terrestrial temperature. For shorter time-scales, decades to centuries, the reason for solar-induced changes in the Earth’s climate are changes in the Sun itself.