Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester’s buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago...
Wild Bird Club of the Philippines President Michael Lu asked a question that naturally came to my mind: “What if this was the last of its species?”
He told the Agence France-Press news agency that it’s unfortunate that the locals aren’t more conscious of the threatened wildlife around them.
"I did it, I caught a rat the size of a cat!" he shouted out afterward, according to the reports. Mr Xian is believed to still be in possession of the animal, after stuffing into a bag and departing the scene.
The local forestry unit in the city identified the nightmarish creature as a bamboo rat from initial photographs, but said that it would need to examine the rat more closely before making a final identification.
Kindt and her colleagues showed subjects a photograph of a spider, which was accompanied by an electric shock, conditioning the participants to have a fearful memory of the image. Later, some participants were given a beta-blocker drug, propranolol, and others were given a placebo before being exposed to the image again. The beta-blocker group’s fear response was greatly reduced or even eliminated when the subjects were shown the spider photograph 24 hours after taking the drugs. “The people did not forget seeing the photograph of the spider,” Kindt says. ”But the fear associated with the image was erased.”
The researchers think beta-blockers work by changing the way the frightening memories are stored. Each time a memory is recalled it changes a little, and the new version is recorded in the long-term memory stash via brain chemical fluctuations in a process called reconsolidation. The beta-blockers could interfere with the brain chemicals, blocking reconsolidation of the emotional component of the memory, but leaving the rest of the memory intact, the scientists suggest.
An intruder broke into a pasture and unevenly cut off the hoof-length tails of half a dozen Belgian draft horses and ponies.Other horse owners in Elbert County, Colorado, have also reported tail thefts, while similar cases have been recorded in recent years in Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida.
While the animals were not injured, as the tails were cut off below the fleshy dock, horses rely on their tails to swat away flies in summer and owners say they will take 10 years to grow back.
But police are puzzled as to the motive behind the crime. Horse owners said it would not make commercial sense to steal tails in such limited quantities, as horsehair fetches no more than $80 a pound.
Officers said they arrived at the Country View Market at about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday to find the woman's boyfriend had allegedly shot out the back window of a car, KSHB-TV, Kansas City, reported Thursday.
Investigators said the woman wasn't injured after her hair weave stopped the bullet and her boyfriend was taken into custody.
That headline alone makes the story worth posting! And there will be some armorers wanting to know the lady's hairdresser's name, to find out just how tight she wove that weave!
A 17-year-old with mental and physical disabilities is in protective custody after police say his mother admitted to making the teen sleep on the front porch in a tent in 30-degree weather.
When the mother and her son went to Catawba Family Center for an appointment Tuesday, the mother gave the center’s director a four-page, handwritten letter that said she’d made her son sleep on the back porch in a tent the night before because he’d been banging on the wall and on his bed, according to a Rock Hill police report.
The boy also said he’d been beaten several times, the report states.
The mother said she gave her son a tent, sleeping mats, blankets and a sleeping bag the night she made him sleep on the porch, the report states. The teen was taken into emergency protective custody, according to the report.
Rock Hill police are investigating.
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Momma should be horse-whipped! Irregardless of the boy's disabilities no one should be forced to sleep in 30 degree temperatures.
A new study from Northwestern University offers precise electrophysiological evidence that such decisions may sometimes not be guesswork after all.The research utilizes the latest brain-reading technology to point to the surprising accuracy of memories that can’t be consciously accessed.
During a special recognition test, guesses turned out to be as accurate or more accurate than when study participants thought they consciously remembered.
“We may actually know more than we think we know in everyday situations, too,” said Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern. “Unconscious memory may come into play, for example, in recognizing the face of a perpetrator of a crime or the correct answer on a test. Or the choice from a horde of consumer products may be driven by memories that are quite alive on an unconscious level.”
The study links lucky guesses to valid memories and suggests that people need to be more receptive to multiple types of knowledge, Paller said.
The mails themselves were perhaps not up to the woman’s waking standard; each was in a random mix of upper and lower case characters, badly formatted and containing odd expressions. One read: “Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm. Bring wine and caviar only.” Another said simply: “What the…”
The writers of the report have dubbed this new variation of sleepwalking ‘zzz-mailing’. They say: “We believe writing an email after turning the computer on, connecting to the Internet and remembering the password displayed by our patient is novel. To our knowledge this type of complex behaviour requiring coordinated movements has not been reported before in sleepwalking. She was shocked when she saw these emails, as she did not recall writing them. She did not have any history of night terrors or sleepwalking as a child.”
Unlike simple sleepwalking, they argue, the activities the woman engaged in required complex behaviour and coordinated movement, as well being able to remember her login details. She had no memory of the events next day. It’s thought that the somnambulistic episode may have been triggered by prescription medication.
But "the worst is yet to come," according to Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, who believes American's standard of living is undergoing a "permanent change" - and not for the better as a result of:
"The average American used to be able to borrow to buy a home, send their kids to a good school [and] buy a car," Davidowitz says. "A lot of that is gone."
Going forward, the veteran retail industry consultant foresees higher savings rate and people trading down in both the goods and services they buy - as well as their aspirations.
The end of rampant consumerism is ultimately a good thing, he says, but the unraveling of an economy built on debt-fueled spending will be painful for years to come.
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So, keep who did this to our country in mind come the next elections!
Abu Qatada, who was jailed in 2002 over allegations he played a key role in raising money for extremists and advised militants planning terror attacks, has previously been convicted in Jordan for his role in two bombings. But lower courts said he couldn't be deported because of the torture risk — rulings reversed Wednesday by Britain's Law Lords.
Britain's Home Office moved immediately to expel him.
"I have signed Abu Qatada's deportation order, which will be served on him today," Britain's Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said in a statement. "I am keen to deport this dangerous individual as soon as I can."
Read more here.
Dreams might mean nothing, but many people take them seriously nonetheless, as Sigmund Freud did, new research finds.
People in at least three countries, including the United States, believe dreams contain important hidden truths, said researcher Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
In six different studies, Morewedge and his colleagues surveyed nearly 1,100 people about their dreams. The results are detailed in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Read the rest here.
The best opportunity is just before dawn one-third of the way up the southern sky. It should be near Saturn and two bright stars, Spica and Regula.
On Monday next week (February23rd) at 10:43 p.m. EST, it will be 38 million miles from Earth, the closest it will ever get, according to Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object program.
The story behind the comet is more intriguing than its appearance — the greenish tinge may be hard for many to discern. The color comes from a type of carbon and cyanogen, a poisonous gas.
Lulin was discovered by a Chinese teenager two years ago. It still has many of its original gases — gases that are usually stripped away as comets near the sun. Unlike most comets viewable from Earth, this one hasn't been this close to the sun before, Yeomans said.
While all the planets and most of the other objects in the solar system circle the sun counterclockwise, Lulin circles clockwise, said NASA astronomer Stephen Edberg. And thanks to an optical illusion, from Earth it appears as if the comet's tail is in the front as the comet approaches Earth and the sun.
"It essentially is going backwards through the solar system," he said.
It came from the outskirts of the solar system, 18 trillion miles away. Once it's made the journey around the sun, Lulin will gain enough speed to escape the solar system, Edberg said.
"If you are interested in comets, make sure you see it," he said. "But it's not going to be a real great blast for the general public."
Among the finds is a near-intact mammoth skeleton, a skull of an American lion and bones of saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, bison, horses, ground sloths and other mammals.
Researchers discovered 16 fossil deposits under an old parking lot next to the tar pits in 2006 and began sifting through them last summer. The mammoth remains, including 10-foot-long tusks, were in an ancient riverbed near the fossil cache.
Officials of the Page Museum at the tar pits plan to formally announce their findings on Wednesday. The discoveries could double the museum's Ice Age collection.
Such a rich find usually takes years to excavate. But with a deadline looming to build an underground parking garage for the next-door art museum, researchers boxed up the deposits and lifted them out of the ground using a massive crane.
"It's like a paleontological Christmas," research team member Andie Thomer wrote in a blog post in July.
The research dubbed "Project 23" — because it took 23 boxes to house the deposits — uncovered fossilized mammals as well as smaller critters including turtles, snails and insects. Separately, scientists found a well-preserved Columbian mammoth that they nicknamed Zed.
An examination reveals Zed, which is 80 percent complete, had arthritic joints and several broken and re-healed ribs — an indication that he suffered a major injury during his life.
"It's looking more and more as if Zed lived a pretty rough life," Thomer blogged in December.
Some scientists not connected with the discovery said this is the first significant fossil find since the original excavations at the tar pits more than a century ago.
"Usually these things are either lost in the mixing or not recovered in the processing of the oily sand and soil they occur in," paleontologist Jere H. Lipps of the University of California, Berkeley wrote.
La Brea Tar Pits ranks among the world's famous fossil sites. Between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago, mammoths, mastodons,saber-tooth cats and other Ice Age beasts became trapped by sticky asphalt that oozing upward through cracks and fissures in the ground. The newly recovered fossils were also in asphalt.
Since 1906, more than a million bones have been unearthed from the sticky ponds.
Diamond will always be a girl's best friend, but it may soon lose favor with industrial drillers.
The gemstone lost its title of the "world's hardest material" to
Zicheng Pan at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and colleagues simulated how atoms in two substances believed to have promise as very hard materials would respond to the stress of a finely tipped probe pushing down on them.
The first, wurtzite boron nitride has a similar structure to diamond, but is made up of different atoms.
The second, the mineral lonsdaleite, or hexagonal diamond is made from carbon atoms just like diamond, but they are arranged in a different shape.
Only small amounts of wurtzite boron nitride and lonsdaleite exist naturally or have been made in the lab so until now no one had realized their superior strength. The simulation showed that wurtzide boron nitride would withstand 18% more stress than diamond, and lonsdaleite 58% more. If the results are confirmed with physical experiments, both materials would be far harder than any substance ever measured.
Doing those tests won't be easy, though. Because both are rare in nature, a way is needed to make enough of either of them to test the prediction.
Rare mineral lonsdaleite is sometimes formed when meteorites containing graphite hit Earth, while wurtzite boron nitride is formed during volcanic eruptions that produce very high temperatures and pressures.
If confirmed, however, wurtzite boron nitride may turn out most useful of the two, because it is stable in oxygen at higher temperatures than diamond. This makes it ideal to place on the tips of cutting and drilling tools operating at high temperatures, or as corrosion resistant films c on the surface of a space vehicle, for example.
Paradoxically, wurtzite boron nitride's hardness appears to come from the flexibility of the bonds between the atoms that make it up. When the material is stressed some bonds re-orientate themselves by about 90º to relieve the tension.
Although diamond undergoes a similar process, something about the structure of wurtzite boron nitride makes it nearly 80% stronger after the process takes place, says study co-author Changfeng Chen at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, an ability diamond does not have.
Natalia Dubrovinskaia from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, has carried out similar research.
"This is important because any attempt to give an insight into the mechanism that improves a material's property, especially hardness, is technologically extremely significant," she told New Scientist.
The more that is understood about what influences the hardness of materials, the more it will become possible to design hard materials to order, she explains.
However, she points out that in order to prove the theory, single crystals of each material would be needed. So far there are no known ways to isolate or grow such crystals of either material.
NASA's Phoenix lander may have captured the first images of liquid water on Mars - droplets that apparently splashed onto the spacecraft's leg during landing, according to some members of the Phoenix team.
The controversial observation could be explained by the mission's previous discovery of perchlorate salts in the soil, since the salts can keep water liquid at sub-zero temperatures. Researchers say this antifreeze effect makes it possible for liquid water to be widespread just below the surface of Mars, but point out that even if it is there, it may be too salty to support life as we know it.
Read the rest at New Scientist.
A research team led by geographer Thomas Gillespie of the University of California-Los Angeles used geographic analytical tools that have been successful in locating urban criminals and endangered species.
Basing their conclusion on nighttime satellite images and other techniques, the scientists suggest bin Laden may well be in one of three compounds in Parachinar, a town 12 miles from the Pakistan border.
For Lei Sanjun, 25, who spent seven years making sneakers in the coastal factory city of Dongguan in Guangdong province, government help will take too long to transform Bamboo Pole. "My hometown is backward. Just look at the poor roads and few factories here," he says.The average income for Chinese farmers is about $690 a year — less than a third of what is paid in urban areas. The shortage of well-paying jobs explains why as many as half of the laborers in Bamboo Pole, population 50,000, decided to seek factory jobs — and why their return is so problematic now.
"It'll be a troubling year," predicts Victor Shih, a Northwestern University professor who researches China's economy.
Many of the jobless migrant workers will stay in cities to try their luck, possibly at smaller salaries.
For those who go home and stay, Shih says, rural life will come as a shock. "These young people were farmers, but they have lived in big cities, and their expectations are now a lot higher."
Chen Xiwen, a top rural planner for the Chinese government, says new arrivals will face entrenched rural problems such as pollution and land expropriation. He encourages government officials not to use force to break up protests.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, Dame Stella said: "Since I have retired I feel more at liberty to be against certain decisions of the Government, especially the attempt to pass laws which interfere with people's privacy."In the interview, published in the Daily Telegraph, she continued: "It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state..."
"Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect: there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification."
As a result of the latest court decision, anyone who was a Seattle Public Utilities water customer between March 2002 and December 2004 is due a refund under a court order issued in October. But current water customers will be the ones paying the bill.Eligible water customers will get their full rebate in May or June. The surcharge and tax will be spread over 21 months.
Evidence of Ancient Hot Springs on Mars Detailed in Astrobiology Journal
Data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) suggest the discovery of ancient springs in the Vernal Crater, sites where life forms may have evolved on Mars, according to a report in Astrobiology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Several key papers in the issue are available free online at www.liebertpub.com/ast
Hot springs have great astrobiological significance, as the closest relatives of many of the most ancient organisms on Earth can thrive in and around hydrothermal springs. If life forms have ever been present on Mars, hot spring deposits would be ideal locations to search for physical or chemical evidence of these organisms and could be target areas for future exploratory missions.
In the research paper entitled, “A Case for Ancient Springs in Arabia Terra, Mars,” Carlton C. Allen and Dorothy Z. Oehler, from the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate at the NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, propose that new image data from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on MRO depict structures in Vernal Crater that appear to have arisen as part of a major area of ancient spring activity. The data suggest that the southern part of Vernal Crater has experienced episodes of water flow from underground to the surface and may be a site where martian life could have developed.
“Hot spring deposits are key target areas for future Mars missions,” says Sherry L. Cady, PhD, Editor of Astrobiology and Associate Professor in the Department of Geology at Portland State University. “Such deposits on Earth preserve evidence of the fossilized remains of the microbial communities that inhabited the hot springs over a wide range of spatial scales. The potential to find key evidence indicative of life––biofabrics, microbial remains, chemical fossils in minerals––is high when sedimentary deposits form from hydrothermal fluids. Hot spring fluids are typically laden with dissolved mineral ions that, when they precipitate out and create the hydrothermal deposit, enhance fossilization of all types of biosignatures."
Astrobiology is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published bimonthly in print and online increasing to 10 issues per year in 2009. The Journal provides a forum for scientists seeking to advance our understanding of life’s origins, evolution, distribution, and destiny in the universe. A complete table of contents and a full text for this issue may be viewed online at www.liebertpub.com/ast
Astrobiology is the leading peer-reviewed journal in its field. To promote this developing field, the Journal has teamed up with The Astrobiology Web to highlight one outstanding paper per issue of Astrobiology. This paper is available free online at www.liebertpub.com/ast and to visitors of The Astrobiology Web at www.astrobiology.com
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com) is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry’s most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm’s 60 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available at www.liebertpub.com
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Interesting, isn't it?!
As thousands of firefighters battled six remaining blazes in Victoria state, a Singapore-owned power company also said it would fight compensation claims over one of the fires.
Lawyer Julian McMahon expressed concern for accused arsonist Brendan Sokaluk, 39, saying hate messages were posted on social networking sites after he was named in court on Monday.
McMahon told Victoria's Supreme Court that at least one relative of Sokaluk, who is in protective custody to guard him from vigilante attacks, had been threatened.
"Not only is there the understandable community anger which suddenly has a focus point, there's also vicious hatred appearing in another kind of medium," McMahon said, arguing for a ban on his photograph to remain in place.
Facebook groups were showing my client's photo and calling for his torture and death."
"The safety of my client is of concern. There have been threats made to one family member at least that I'm aware of," McMahon added.
Sokaluk is accused of starting one fire that killed 11 people and razed 151 homes around Churchill, east of Melbourne, on February 7. He faces up to 25 years in jail if convicted.
Meanwhile power utility SP AusNet said Tuesday it would "vigorously defend" a claim against it for compensation over one of the fires.
Survivors have reportedly launched a lawsuit claiming a downed power line sparked a blaze that killed more than 100 people and destroyed about 1,000 homes in the Kinglake area of Victoria earlier this month.
The claim against SP Ausnet, part of the Singapore Power Group, is expected to run to hundreds of millions of dollars, media reports said.
The company said only that it had been notified a writ was filed in the Victoria Supreme Court on Monday alleging that "faulty and/or defective power lines" caused loss and damage.
"SP AusNet believes the claim is both premature and inappropriate," the company said in a statement to the Australian stock exchange.
"However, SP AusNet will vigorously defend the claim," it said. "If the claim is pursued, SP AusNet advises that it has liability insurance which provides cover for bushfire liability."
A commission of inquiry into the fires has been charged with providing an interim report by August 17.
Eleven more bodies were discovered in the charred remains of homes as firefighters continued to pick through the wreckage, taking the toll to 200.
A Red Cross disaster relief fund has topped 100 million Australian dollars (65 million US dollars), with US pop singer Pink donating 250,000 dollars, joining other musicians such asLeonard Cohen who have also contributed.
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While I am all for letting the man get what he gave upon conviction calls for his torture and his death are over the line. Note, I said, upon conviction ... he may be innocent - doubtful, but he may be. It should also be noted that Australia does not have the death penalty in the first place.
The rage and outrage people are expressing should be spent working on the relief of the suffering of the victims of the fires and not making what amounts to catcalls calling for the torture and death of one man who is accused of setting one fire among many fires.
And, as a final note, if the time and energy being spent to vent the outrage was spent seeking those responsible for the rest of the fires (be they natural or arson) it would be time and energy well spent in lieu of the waste it is now.
A 200-pound domesticated chimpanzee that badly mauled a woman in Connecticut had been given the the anti-anxiety drug Xanax because it had been agitated.
The chimp, which once starred in TV commercials for Old Navy and Coca-Cola, was shot dead by police after the violent rampage.
Sandra Herold, who owned the 15-year-old chimp named Travis, wrestled with the animal and stabbed it after it inexplicably attacked her friend Charla Nash.
Nash had gone to Herold's home Monday to help her coax the chimp back into the house. Nash is hospitalized in critical condition.
Authorities say there was no known provocation.
Stamford, Connecticut police Capt. Richard Conklin says Herold gave Travis the Xanax in some tea. Conklin also suggested the animal may have attacked Nash because she was wearing her hair differently and wasn't recognized.
The Rev. Andy Langford, the pastor of Central United Methodist Church in Concord, is one of the participants in the study. His pride as a Duke alumnus is one of the reason's he chose to volunteer.
“This is a gift that people in our community can give not only to ourselves, but also to our children and our grandchildren,” Langford said. "We have no clue what they are going to discover."
MURDOCK stands for Measurement to Understand the Reclassification of Disease Of Cabarrus and Kannapolis. In October 2007, billionaire and Research Campus Developer David Murdock donated $35 million to launch the extensive study. Research will be done at the Core Lab of the North Carolina Research Campus.
Dr. Ashley Dunham, one of the many leaders conducting the study, said doctors will use the lab's technology "to look at response to disease at a molecular level." That means using science to personalize health care to the individual, instead of a one-pill-fits-all type of medicine.
”Hopefully with care that's more individualized, your response will be better, you'll get better faster and you'll stay healthy,” said Dr. Dunham.
The Cabarrus Health Alliance is one of the places around the county that is helping enroll participants in the MURDOCK study. This is a major undertaking because the goal is to have 50,000 people enrolled in the multi-million dollar health research initiative.
“We hope to have 50,000 people enrolled in four years. And we'll follow them over time. So it will be a longitudinal health study. And we'll collect that sample of blood when they join and that will be used for future research that comes out of the Core Lab and other things that Duke is doing,” said Dr. Dunham.
The health study will examine all major chronic diseases and illnesses.
It will take at least 50 years, so volunteers like Langford may never know the full impact of their participation.
"I'm not sure we'll ever actually see the results of that, but if we can contribute to somebody else, actually helping them, that might make a significant difference,” said Langford.
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If you're a Cabarrus County resident, find out more about how to get involved with the MURDOCK study here.In a statement issued about 36 hours after base emergency personnel responded to a 911 call early Sunday morning, Fort Lewis spokesman Joe Piek said a Madigan Army Medical Center doctor declared one girl dead at the scene. The second teen was taken to Madigan for emergency medical care and was reported in stable condition Monday.
There were no outward signs of physical trauma on either girl, Piek said. He said Army doctors at Madigan were performing an autopsy on the dead girl, but results might not be available for at least a week.
The Army is investigating what the girls were doing in the barracks and whether drugs or alcohol were involved, he said. The presence of the two civilian girls "in the barracks at 3:30 a.m. is likely a violation of any of the units' barracks visitation policies," he said. (Like, Duh!)
Civilians entering and leaving the base are supposed to be carefully tracked.
A civilian entering the base has to show ID, Army spokesman John Norgren told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, adding, "You have to have a reason to be on the installation and you have to be sponsored" by a member of the military on base.
"It's quite a comprehensive system," Norgren said.
Piek said the Army would not be releasing the names of the girls because they were minors and civilians. The Fort Lewis Criminal Investigation Division was investigating both the circumstances and cause of death.
A Fort Lewis soldier who was "allegedly acquainted with the two girls" has been questioned, but no arrests have been made, Piek said.
The Army didn't release information about the incident until Monday because it took place during a holiday weekend and officials needed to notify the teens' families, the spokesman said.
The reason for it to have such a strange look is because it was used later by Russian army to test the influence of Russian alternative to napalm inside of the brick houses.Due to very high temperature of napalm the bricks started melting just like ice melts in the spring forming the icicles, but those icicles are of red brick.
Today, she couldn’t buy a toy truck. The combination of a weak economy, which forced her to close her private counseling practice and caused her husband to lose a lucrative contract, has taken her family from a six-figure income to barely any income at all. To add to the constant barrage of debt collectors calling them, her husband hasn’t been able to obtain a job. "He’s only gotten two interviews and one offer," says Brooke, who lives in the Dallas area with her husband. "But when they ran our credit, they told him they couldn’t hire him."
The current financial crisis has brought about many economic anomalies, including throwing a whole new subset of the population on the radar of debt collectors – upper-middle class and affluent consumers like Brooke.
Read the rest here.
Fixing these common mistakes will help many people be healthier, says Dr. Phillip Snider, a family physician in Virginia Beach, Va.:
-Not enough breakfast. One recent study showed that obese dieters who had a 600-calorie breakfast with healthy proteins and carbohydrates - such as scrambled eggs, diced turkey, fruit and whole-wheat toast or oatmeal - lost significantly more weight than those who ate only half as much. They also ate less at other meals and had fewer junk food cravings.
-Not enough fruit. Eat fruit at least twice a day. On average, one serving is a half-cup of chopped fruit, a baseball-sized apple or orange, half a banana or 10 grapes.
-Not enough vegetables. The goal for fruit and veggies should be a minimum of five servings a day; nine is ideal. Aim to have vegetables covering at least a third of your dinner plate.
-Too much hidden sugar. Juices, meal bars, low-fiber cereals and snack foods often are more sugary than people think. Read labels and try to limit your daily intake to 100 grams.
-Too much hidden trans fat. Any food with "partially hydrogenated oil" on its ingredient list contains these unhealthy fats. Even if the label says zero grams of trans fat, there may still be some because companies can round down if there's less than half a gram. As little as two grams a day is harmful.
-Hidden saturated fats. Limit full-fat dairy products, high-fat meats - especially beef and pork - and foods cooked with butter or cream. Go for broth-based soups, for example.
-Extreme dieting. Pick one bad eating pattern to tackle each week, not all of them at once. You're more likely to have long-term success.
Josh Ellis sums it up: “Guy founds a TV network to show Muslims in a more positive light then beheads his wife when she files for divorce.”
The founder of a U.S. Muslim television network has been arrested and charged with murdering his wife by beheading her, the network’s Web site and local media reported.
Muzzammil Hassan, founder and CEO of Buffalo, N.Y.-based Bridges TV which launched in 2004 with a mission to show Muslims in a more positive light, was charged after reporting the death of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, 37, on Thursday night.
After Hassan, 44, told police his wife was at the Bridges TV offices, in the village of Orchard Park, they found her body there, beheaded, The Buffalo News reported.
Authorities said Aasiya Hassan, with whom Hassan had two children, had recently filed for divorce and had an order of protection mandating that he leave their home as of February 6.
Police on Long Island say a convicted drunken driver whose car was equipped with anti-drunken driving technology has crashed a rented vehicle while intoxicated.
Suffolk County police say Marvin Rice Jr. lost control of his rental car and hit a utility pole Sunday morning in Brentwood.
Police say the 27-year-old driver agreed after a previous DWI conviction to have his car equipped with a device that tests for alcohol in a driver's breath before starting the car.
It was unclear when he rented another car that had no such device.
Police say Rice is being treated for multiple injuries. He is expected to be arraigned on a DWI charge.
Blackwater Worldwide is still protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq, but executives at the beleaguered security firm are taking their biggest step yet to put that work and the ugly reputation it earned the company behind them.Blackwater said Friday it will no longer operate under the name that came to be known worldwide as a caustic moniker for private security, dropping the tarnished brand for a disarming and simple identity: Xe, which is pronounced like the letter “z.”
It’s a rare surrender for a company that cherished a brand name inspired by the dark-water swamps of northeastern North Carolina, one that survived another rebranding effort about a year ago, following a deadly shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. The decision to give it up underscores how badly the Moyock-based company’s brand was damaged by that incident and other security work in Iraq.
Residential renewable energy system workers in North Carolina.
In coming days, there will be hundreds of state and local newspaper stories just like this one, in the North Carolina "News & Observer" - "From the $6.1 billion that is headed for the state, nearly $113 million will be designated for low-income families and senior citizens to weatherize their homes. The State Energy Office, meanwhile, is expecting at least 12 times its typical federal allocation of less than $1 million a year, and perhaps as much as $77 million, for efforts to boost energy efficiency and alternative energy."
Patrick Rosario was in the basement of his Bellevue home on Tuesday when he heard the burglars upstairs.
The Seattle Times says the 32-year-old Rosario, who had been laid off from his job as a Washington Mutual manager, called 911 while he sneaked out of the house.
He saw a white van sitting in front of his house with the motor running and the keys in the ignition, and he got in and drove it to a friend's house.
Police say the burglars left the televisions, a laptop computer and a jewelry box by the door and took off on foot.
The sheriff's office said no arrests had been made.
Hoping to get the weapons off the streets with the "Guns for Roses" program, authorities in two central South Carolina cities set up a program where anyone who turned in a gun received a free rose and a Best Buy gift card.
At a Columbia church, five cars lined up to give away guns before the exchange had even started. At the end of the day, Columbia area police had collected 191 weapons and police in Sumter collected 32.
"We've got a great turnout so far," Richland County sheriff's spokesman Lt. Chris Cowan said.
A handgun was worth a $100 gift card, while a rifle or shotgun netted a $50 gift certificate. Cowan said one man turned in six handguns, worth $600 in gift cards.
Cowan did not immediately have a total value for gift cards given out. Sumter Police Chief Patty Patterson said her program gave out $550 in gift cards for long guns and $2,100 for handguns.
There was no amnesty for those turning in the guns. The weapons were being checked to see if they were stolen, names and addresses were jotted down and ballistics tests would also be done to see if the firearm was used in a crime.
Both Cowan and Patterson said there were no incidents and no arrests made Saturday.
Cowan said the idea was spawned in part by Columbia Police Chief T.P. Carter and Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, who has made headlines recently for investigating Michael Phelps after a photo surfaced showing the Olympic swimming champion smoking a marijuana pipe. The program was modeled after a California one; similar exchanges have been done in New York and San Francisco.
Cowan said gun donors were young and old, men and woman. Many had a big smile and some said it was a relief to get rid of the weapons.
And did they even care about the rose?
"Most of them have taken it," Cowan said.
Inmates at the Des Moines County jail in Burlington may have to begin paying for toilet paper. The county is facing a more than $1.7 million deficit in this year's budget and the Board of Supervisors gave department heads the option of cutting costs or facing the possibility of unpaid furloughs or layoffs.
The county also is moving forward with a $1 million bond issue later this month, leaving department directors to make up the balance.
County Budget Director Cheryl McVey says billing inmates for toilet paper could save more than $2,300.
*****
Everyone is making sacrifices!
From the "Karma is a bitch" Department:
Authorities in Florida said they arrested a man who apparently forgot to fill up when he was robbing a gas station.
The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office said a 23-year-old man used a Bowie knife to rob a Cape Haze gas station early Sunday.
Deputies said the man pulled the 12-inch blade and demanded money.
But when he left, a customer followed him and called 911.
While deputies were looking for signs of the robber, a newspaper carrier told them that a man in a car matching the one from the robbery had run out of gas nearby.
The man was arrested several hours after the robbery and charged with robbery with a weapon and loitering/prowling.
