On Wednesday, two undersea cables carrying internet cables were broken by a boat anchor. The cables stretched from Italy to Alexandria, Egypt and affected telephone and internet access throughout the Middle East. India was also affected, with its bandwidth being reduced by half, and Sri Lanka was also affected.

A third undersea cable was cut today, this time off the shores of Dubai. This cable has affected internet signal to Dubai, but officials stress that this cable could be rerouted more easily than the Italy-Egypt cables. Residents of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent have felt a major change in how they do their business and carry on their daily lives. India’s wealth of call centers will most likely be the hardest hit by this change.

This just goes to show you how hardwired we are to the internet. Without it, many of us are rendered helpless. How long will it be until we stop using land lines completely and make the final transition over to all internet all the time? Consider that most people in the United States and abroad rely more on the internet for their daily news than newspapers. If a major internet outage like this hit North America (which most experts say is unlikely due to our abundance of internet cables both on land and branching out through the Atlantic and Pacific oceans) most of us would be completely crippled.

Every year, soldiers in the armed forces face unspeakable horrors in dangerous locations. The stress of wake up day after day to the same destruction and oblivion causes many soldiers to come home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and some do not come home at all.

The U.S. Army began tracking the suicides and self injury rate of soldiers in conflicts in 1980. In 2007 there were 89 confirmed suicides and 32 deaths still until investigation. 34 of these solders died while serving tours in Iraq, and over 2,000 additional soldiers were targeted as either attempting suicide or purposely injuring themselves. The self-injury numbers are a major jump from last year where 1,500 soldiers attempted suicide or injured themselves. When compared to the number from 2001, where suicides only amounted to 52 soldiers, the ratios dwarf previous years, with 2007’s rates translating as 17.5 deaths per every 100,000 soldiers. The lowest number the past 27 years as was 9.1 deaths per every 100,000.

These results and statistics are nowhere near surprising. There has always been a stigma about needing therapy—any episode of M.A.S.H. will show you that—and the Army is just beginning to recognize that human beings need more than just a sense of duty to live, and that getting through a war unscathed is nearly impossible. If you or someone you know is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, please consult the National Center for PSTD for health care providers in your area.

Do you know what you’re eating? Better yet, do you know what your child is eating? An undercover agent from the Humane Society of the United States has revealed that a major meat packing company is manipulating cows to beat Department of Agriculture regulations.

Hallmark Meat Packing Company, a major slaughterhouse based in southern California, has been indicated as a center of animal torture and credulity. The U.S. Department of Agriculture forbids the use of contaminated or disable animals as food. In order to skirt these regulations, Hallmark Meat Packing Company would kick cows, poke their eyes, administering electric shock treatments, and spraying high-powered water sprays up their noses, all to get the cows to stand so they could be slaughtered and used.

What does this have to do with your child? Hallmark Meat Packing Company sells much of its beef to Westland Meat, a major provider of beef to the National School Lunch Program and was named supplier of the year for the 2004-2005 school year. Downed beef is more susceptible to the dangerous diseases that could harm you or your child.