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Oldest woman ever or impostor? The controversial case of Calment

24 April 2019

Jeanne Calment apparently lived to be 122, but divisive new research suggests she wasn't who she seemed. There are huge implications for our understanding of longevity

Tree rings reveal plague hit medieval Europe’s construction industry

4 October 2018

Dating timber used to build European houses between AD 1250 and 1699 reveals that building activity fell during the Black Death and the Thirty Years’ War

The big slowdown: 6 reasons why UK life expectancy growth is stalling

22 August 2018

Life expectancy has grown massively in recent decades, but in the UK the gains are starting to ease off. Could dementia, austerity, or something else be to blame?

Prolific ‘M25 serial killer’ beheading cats is an old feline foe

11 July 2018

Time to end the scare over hundreds of headless pets that sparked a police inquiry and much anguish among cat owners, says Stephen Harris

Why the UK's new opt-out organ donation plan probably won't work

26 February 2018

Plans for the whole of the UK to shift to a system where consent for organ donation is assumed may actually do very little to save lives

Copycat justice has turned US counties into execution hotspots

15 January 2018

Criminals assigned the death penalty are five times more likely to be executed in some US counties than in others – a trend that some argue is unconstitutional

Why a nasty surprise lurks 100 years on from the lethal 1918 flu

1 January 2018

As the centenary of the great flu epidemic looms, we are right to be pessimistic – especially with H7N9 bird flu virus quietly circulating in China

Did Pokémon Go really kill 250 people in traffic accidents?

28 November 2017

A surge in road accidents in Indiana has been blamed on Pokémon Go, but other apps are also likely to be contributing to a rise in crashes

Five death rituals to give you a new view on funerals

8 November 2017

Every culture has a different death ritual – some involving levels of intimacy that would be unthinkable to people in the West. Here are just five of them