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Smoked out ants!

Young men in United Arab Emirates have jumped on a bizarre, and weirdly “green” addiction, passing on cigarettes and sheesha to smoking dead ants to get high. They crush local black ants (Pachycondyla sennaarensis) and blend the crumbs in tobacco, drop them into a medhwak (smoking pipe) or sprinkle them on regular smokes before lighting up, according to Gulf […]

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Pesticides kill again, now a Sharjah infant

A newborn baby boy has died and his three-year-old brother is critically ill in hospital after they inhaled a toxic pesticide used in the apartment next door to his family’s home in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Police said the neighbour sprayed his flat with the banned bug-killer, which he was given by a friend, then […]

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Arab Gulf super highrise lifestyle is killing kids

A fall from a stepladder can kill you, so what’s your chance of surviving a topple from a high-rise building? Earlier this month, a 9-year-old Syrian girl fell to her death from the eighth floor of her family’s Abu Dhabi apartment. In Sharjah last week a 4-year-old boy died after falling from a window. What’s going to […]