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Neo-Nazi group adopts a highway in Delaware

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These days, states will take any help they can get to maintain their roads.

In Delaware, a Neo-Nazi group was allowed to join the state’s Adopt-a-Highway program, but only on the condition that the word “Nazi” not appear on their highway signs over a two-mile stretch of rural Cedar Grove Road in Sussex County, The Wilmington News Journal reports.

The newspaper reports the state’s Department of Transportation blocked Edward McBride III’s application to adopt Cedar Grove Road under the name of the National Socialist Freedom Movement Nazi Party.

Here’s more from the story:

Citing concerns that the state could be seen as endorsing a hate group, DelDOT also rejected McBride’s counter-offer to have an abbreviated Adopt-a-Highway sign carry the name “NSFM88 Nazi Party.”

“His request to have the words ‘Nazi Party’ displayed on a state sign was denied because DelDOT chose not to associate the state with the term and its generally understood philosophy of advocating the denial of civil rights,” DelDOT spokesman Geoff Sundstrom said in an email.

Two Adopt-a-Highway signs have been installed on Cedar Grove Road, but they read “Freedom Party” instead, the newspaper reports. McBride, the group’s national commander,  says he plans to clean up ditches along the road during his time off from work.

The group believes white Christians should be the only race and religion allowed in the U.S. and has about 45 members statewide, according to the newspaper.

Not tonight honey, my hair is growing

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A full head of hair or a healthy sex life? You might have to choose.

A medication for male pattern baldness may cause sexual dysfunction in men, even long after they stop taking the drug, according to this Time report on a new study. The hair-loss drug finasteride, marketed as Propecia and Proscar by Merck, may cause low libido and impotency.

Here’s more from the story:

Participants had taken finasteride for 28 months on average, and reported sexual problems for an average 40 months, but the study author said that 10% of the surveyed men had used the drug for less than a month.

The medication carries a warning about persistent sexual dysfunction, along with potential psychological problems, in the U.K. and Sweden. But U.S. labeling doesn’t contain such warnings.

MSNBC explains a little bit more of the dilemma here:

Doctors have long known that finasteride can cause impotence and related sexual problems. Finasteride decreases the conversion of testosterone to the more potent dihydrotestosterone, the latter of which is related to hair loss. Yet any medication that interferes with testosterone runs the risk of also affecting sexual performance.

In fact, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, who both sell finasteride for several medical conditions, have reported that up to 8 percent of users have adverse sexual events. A review study published in 2008 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine extends that range to 38 percent, depending on dose and duration.