The Stars Hollow Gazette – Page 2356 – Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left

Aug 29 2010

Rant of the Week: Jon Stewart on Glen Beck’s ‘I Have A Scheme’

By arlethamaselli0

Aug 29 2010

Still Missing New Orleans

(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

I posted the following on September 4, 2005 at The Dream Antilles and I cross-posted it in various places. Five years later, there’s really very little I can add to this, so I am re-posting it:

A Huge Loss

I’m one of those people who knows New Orleans, and though I don’t live there, I feel the enormity of the present crisis deeply.

I lived in Jackson, Mississippi for more than 6 years in the 70s. I, and other members of the civil rights law community, loved to go to New Orleans. It was civilized. It was relaxing. It had good food and music. Not only wasn’t it Mississippi, it made Mississippi and its stridency, divisiveness, violence and stress seem far, far away. It was to me actually the City that Care Forgot. It was like heaven.

It was a city that seemed to embrace what we were trying to accomplish up the highway. When Mississippi’s federal judges made decisions that were predictably against us or just plain wacky, the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans seemed ever willing to grant a stay, to enjoin the craziness, to require that it be corrected. So traveling to New Orleans with a briefcase full of papers on the famous train, the City of New Orleans, was a mixed blessing: it meant you lost as expected in Jackson or Biloxi or Gulfport, but soon things would be set aright by wise men who understood the future.

New Orleans was also a refuge for me from exhaustion, from burnout, from crank phone calls, from police surveillance, from the petty difficulties of living in Mississippi, from fighting hard, from adversity, from judicial hostility. It was only a few hours drive away. It was possible to visit over a weekend. It was the destination to escape to. So I learned its music venues, its bars and restaurants, its ways of being, and I enjoyed its ambience, the slow, humid, deliberate way the City moved and breathed, its cosmopolitan civilization, its stories, its pace.

Yet New Orleans was not really paradise. It had no signficant middle class: it had the very rich and the black poor. It had its share of historical, urban racial discrimination. It had the incessant violence and pervasive discrimination that gnawing poverty breeds. It had an enormous crime rate, and its homicides were all too frequent. It had its monument to the Confederacy at the end of Canal Street. It had all of the troubled corruption and unnecessary violence of other big American cities. It had an ability to be overwhelmed by drunken conventioneers, who could be found talking to horses drawing carriages. But for me, and I think for a huge number of other people, it displayed a comfort, a sweetness, a sensuality, and a joyfulness that I felt simply as relief. It embraced us. It welcomed us.

Others have written their tributes to New Orleans this week. I heard two on the radio this afternoon, and Anne Rice has written in the New York Times today. Reminiscence isn’t really my purpose here. I just feel profound grief at what has happened. In the pit of my stomach and in my heart, there is a deep aching. A City I love and its people, a City I hold in my heart as a refuge and the people who have made it so, are suffering and dying.

It would be easy for me to join the chorus blaming George W Bush and his administration for their gross incompetence and the huge and unnecessary loss of life, but that seems to be others’ work. Instead, for me, there’s not much to do. It’s important, of course, to make donations to the appropriate organizations. And I urge each of you to do so. And it’s also important to feel in my heart the enormity of my and our nation’s loss. To me, it is as if something akin to paradise in my inner world has been despoiled.

Five years later, as so many others have written, the New Orleans diaspora continues for many, the City hasn’t been rebuilt, the Federal Flood was an opportunity to displace New Orleans’ poor from public housing and schools. Yes, many have struggled valiantly for a just, fair restoration. But I’d be lying if I said they were winning. Battles, yes; the war, well, the war just continues. Along with our pain and loss. Along with our hope.

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles and simulposted at docuDharma and dailyKos

Aug 29 2010

The Week In Review 8/22 – 28

By rustymancuso581

261 Stories served. 37 per day.

This is actually the hardest diary to execute, and yet perhaps the most valuable because it lets you track story trends over time. It should be a Sunday morning feature.

Economy- 30

Monday 8/23 1

9 HP sparks bidding war with Dell over 3PAR

Friday 8/27 10

Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran- 38

International- 47

Friday 8/27 10

7 Some Chile miners despondent as drilling rescue gets ready

Pakistan Flooding- 18

National- 82

Friday 8/27 16

Gulf Oil Blowout Disaster- 6

Sunday 8/22 1

25 AP Enterprise: Spill bound BP, feds together

Monday 8/23 1

18 Oil spill investigators focus on communication

Tuesday 8/24 1

40 Govt. says Gulf seafood safe, now consumers decide

Wednesday 8/25 1

28 Gulf waste heads to landfills, some with problems

Science- 20

37 Salmonella find links 2 Iowa farms to egg recall

Saturday 8/28 1

17 Admin. official: FDA to inspect large egg farms

Sports- 19

Sunday 8/22 1

23 Busch sweeps all 3 Bristol races

9 Contador absence leaves Tour of Spain wide open

Arts/Fashion- 1

Wednesday 8/25 1

25 Henson donates original Kermit to Smithsonian

Aug 29 2010

Punting the Pundits

By arlethamaselli0

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Bob Herbert: America Is Better Than This

America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants – Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?

Consider a brief sampling of their rhetoric.

Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

King: “Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter.”

Beck: “I think the president is a racist.”

Washington was on edge on the morning of Aug. 28, 1963. The day was sunny and very warm and Negroes, as we were called in those days, were coming into town by the tens of thousands. The sale of liquor was banned. Troops stood by to restore order if matters got out of control. President John F. Kennedy waited anxiously in the White House to see how the day would unfold.

It unfolded splendidly. The crowd for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” grew to some 250,000. Nearly a quarter of the marchers were white. They gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where they were enthralled by the singing of Mahalia Jackson and Joan Baez. The march was all about inclusion and the day seemed to swell with an extraordinary sense of camaraderie and good feeling.

Frank Rich: The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.

Vive la révolution!

There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.

Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch’s, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News. The country will be in for quite a ride should these potentates gain power, and given the recession-battered electorate’s unchecked anger and the Obama White House’s unfocused political strategy, they might.

Dana Millbank: Civil rights’ new ‘owner’: Glenn Beck

There is a telling anecdote in Glenn Beck’s 2003 memoir about how the cable news host was influenced by the great fantasist Orson Welles. To travel between performances in Manhattan, Beck recounts, Welles hired an ambulance, sirens blaring, to ferry him around town — not because Welles was ill but because he wanted to avoid traffic.

Most of us would regard this as dishonest, a ploy by the self-confessed charlatan that Welles was. Beck saw it as a model to be emulated. “Welles,” he writes, “inspired me to believe that I can create anything that I can see or imagine.”

I was reminded of Beck’s affection for deception as he hyped his march on Washington — an event scheduled for the same date (Aug. 28) and on the same spot (the Lincoln Memorial) as Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic march 47 years ago. Beck claimed it was pure coincidence, but then he made every effort to appropriate the mantle of the great civil rights leader.

Beck as the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream? And you thought “War of the Worlds” was frightening.

It’s been just over a year since Beck famously called the first African American president a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” And now, accused of racial pot-stirring, he apparently has determined that the best defense is to be patently offensive.

Nicholas D. Kristof: Obama’s Failure in Sudan

When President Obama was seeking the White House, he criticized Republicans for not doing enough on Darfur and insisted that he would make Sudan a priority.

“What we have done has not been enough,” he told me in a 2006 interview when I was guest host for a “Charlie Rose” segment on Sudan. He added that Washington needed “a sustained diplomatic effort to put pressure on Sudan.”

Yet these days, Mr. Obama is presiding over an incoherent, contradictory and apparently failing Sudan policy. There is a growing risk that Sudan will be the site of the world’s bloodiest war in 2011, and perhaps a new round of genocide as well. This isn’t America’s fault, but neither are we using all of our leverage to avert it.

Granted, Mr. Obama has a multitude of other priorities. Granted, Sudan is a mess with no perfect solutions. Nobody expects Mr. Obama to devote much time to Sudan. But the problem isn’t that the administration is too busy to devise a policy toward Sudan but that it has a half-dozen policies, mostly at cross-purposes.

Marc Ambinder: Party Down

Intraparty scrimmages are by no means new to American politics. But during this election cycle, a suspiciously large number of candidates with thin résumés and barely formed political identities are beating well-financed, better-established opponents. What’s more, these upstarts are winning primary races, in no small part, by running against the notion that their opponents were endorsed by the party – by running, that is, against the parties themselves.

snip

Indeed, conservatives and liberals alike will continue to insist on nominating unadulterated candidates and will become more successful in doing so. And those candidates are likely to distrust their own establishments as much as they ideologically oppose the people at the other end of the political spectrum. In such an environment, the parties will be useful to help raise money, set the presidential nominating calendar and organize conventions, but that’s about it.

Whither the national parties? They’re already withered.

Gail Collins: Mr. Simpson Has a Cow

What are we to make of Alan Simpson, the co-chairman of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission, who recently referred to Social Security as “a milk cow with 310 million tits”?

Personally, I would love for us to have a national cow with that sort of milk-giving capacity. But Simpson, who gets very impatient with people who want to preserve current Social Security benefits, did not mean it as a compliment. Now, his remark is getting a lot of attention, and that is only partly because the rest of the news has been so depressing that Bristol Palin’s rumored agreement to compete on “Dancing With the Stars” was a high point of the week.

Simpson, 78, is a former Republican senator known for his outspokenness – he once called the American Association of Retired Persons “the greedy geezers of America.” In appointing him co-chairman of the president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, the White House broke an important political rule, which is to keep away from anyone who considers himself a colorful old codger.

Open Thread, Opinion, Politics, Punting the Pundits

Aug 29 2010

On This Day in History: August 29

By arlethamaselli0

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

August 29 is the 241st day of the year (242nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 124 days remaining until the end of the year.

We are all aware that on this day, 5 years ago, a category 4 hurricane named Katrina slammed into the Gulf coast. Much of the news this past week and today has been, and will be, devoted to that catastrophe and its aftermath which is as much of a disaster as was the original event.

But other important things happened on this day as well.

On this day in 1533, the 300 year old Inca civilization ended when Francisco Pizarro’s conquistadors strangled the last Inca Emperor, Atahuallpa.

High in the Andes Mountains of Peru, the Inca built a dazzling empire that governed a population of 12 million people. Although they had no writing system, they had an elaborate government, great public works, and a brilliant agricultural system. In the five years before the Spanish arrival, a devastating war of succession gripped the empire. In 1532, Atahuallpa’s army defeated the forces of his half-brother HuÁscar in a battle near Cuzco. Atahuallpa was consolidating his rule when Pizarro and his 180 soldiers appeared.

In 1531, Pizarro sailed down to Peru, landing at Tumbes. He led his army up the Andes Mountains and on November 15, 1532, reached the Inca town of Cajamarca, where Atahuallpa was enjoying the hot springs in preparation for his march on Cuzco, the capital of his brother’s kingdom. Pizarro invited Atahuallpa to attend a feast in his honor, and the emperor accepted. Having just won one of the largest battles in Inca history, and with an army of 30,000 men at his disposal, Atahuallpa thought he had nothing to fear from the bearded white stranger and his 180 men. Pizarro, however, planned an ambush, setting up his artillery at the square of Cajamarca.

On November 16, Atahuallpa arrived at the meeting place with an escort of several thousand men, all apparently unarmed. Pizarro sent out a priest to exhort the emperor to accept the sovereignty of Christianity and Emperor Charles V., and Atahuallpa refused, flinging a Bible handed to him to the ground in disgust. Pizarro immediately ordered an attack. Buckling under an assault by the terrifying Spanish artillery, guns, and cavalry (all of which were alien to the Incas), thousands of Incas were slaughtered, and the emperor was captured.

Atahuallpa offered to fill a room with treasure as ransom for his release, and Pizarro accepted. Eventually, some 24 tons of gold and silver were brought to the Spanish from throughout the Inca empire. Although Atahuallpa had provided the richest ransom in the history of the world, Pizarro treacherously put him on trial for plotting to overthrow the Spanish, for having his half-brother HuÁscar murdered, and for several other lesser charges. A Spanish tribunal convicted Atahuallpa and sentenced him to die. On August 29, 1533, the emperor was tied to a stake and offered the choice of being burned alive or strangled by garrote if he converted to Christianity. In the hope of preserving his body for mummification, Atahuallpa chose the latter, and an iron collar was tightened around his neck until he died.

708 – Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708).

1350 – Battle of Winchelsea (or Les Espagnols sur Mer): The English naval fleet under King Edward III defeats a Castilian fleet of 40 ships.

1475 – The Treaty of Picquigny ends a brief war between France and England.

1498 – Vasco da Gama decides to depart Calicut and return to Portugal.

1521 – The Ottoman Turks capture Nandorfehervar, now known as Belgrade.

1526 – Battle of Mohacs: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.

1541 – The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom.

1655 – Warsaw falls without resistance to a small force under the command of Charles X Gustav of Sweden during The Deluge.

1756 – Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years’ War.

1758 – The first American Indian Reservation is established, at Indian Mills, New Jersey.

1786 – Shays’ Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.

1825 – Portugal recognizes the Independence of Brazil.

1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.

1833 – The United Kingdom legislates the abolition of slavery in its empire.

1842 – Treaty of Nanking signing ends the First Opium War.

1861 – American Civil War: US Navy squadron captures forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina.

1862 – Second Battle of Bull Run

1869 – The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world’s first rack railway.

1871 – Emperor Meiji orders the Abolition of the han system and the establishment of prefectures as local centers of administration. (Traditional Japanese date: July 14, 1871).

1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the world’s first motorcycle.

1898 – The Goodyear tire company is founded.

1903 – The Russian battleship Slava, the last of the five Borodino-class battleships, is launched.

1907 – The Quebec Bridge collapses during construction, killing 75 workers.

1910 – Japan changes Korea’s name to Chosen and appoints a governor-general to rule its new colony.

1911 – Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.

1915 – US Navy salvage divers raise F-4, the first U.S. submarine sunk in accident.

1916 – The United States passes the Philippine Autonomy Act.

1918 – Bapaume taken by the New Zealand Division in the Hundred Days Offensive

1922 – Turkish forces set fire to Smyrna in Asia Minor.

1930 – The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland.

1943 – German-occupied Denmark scuttles most of its navy;Germany dissolves the Danish government.

1944 – Slovak National Uprising takes place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Nazis.

1949 – Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1958 – United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

1966 – The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

1970 – Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, East Los Angeles, California. Police riot kills three people, including journalist Ruben Salazar.

1982 – The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.

1991 – Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.

1991 – Libero Grassi, an Italian businessman from Palermo is killed by the Mafia after taking a solitary stand against their extortion demands.

2003 – Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.

2005 – Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing more than 1,836 and causing over $80 billion in damage.

2007 – 2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident: six US cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads are flown without proper authorization from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base.

History, News, On This Day in History, Open Thread

Aug 29 2010

F1: Spa

By rustymancuso581

Spa is race 12 of 18 and the next to last one in Europe this year. As I mentioned yesterday it’s been kind of hard to tell if teams have made any improvements during the 3 week summer break because of the weather which is again forecast for showers though it is clear and dry as I write.

If it rains it’s going to put some pressure on the teams, most of whom have used 2 of their 4 sets of Intermediate rain tires. Many teams are also experiencing engine shortages. You’re only allowed 8 for the entire season and Ferrari powerplants have proven less than reliable. Some teams are on their 7th while the Renault factory team is only on its 5th.

The penalty for going over the limit is you lose starting grid position and there were a number of changes to that in this race from the Qualifying finish for racing infractions at the last race in Hungary that I hope are included in the table below. I used the latest and greatest info from Speed.

I’ve also included tables for Team and Drivers standings. You can follow Speed’s Commentary here.

Grid	Driver	Team	Q Time	Laps	Change
1	Mark Webber	RBR-Renault	01:45.8	21
2	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	01:45.9	18
3	Robert Kubica	Renault	01:46.1	19
4	Sebastian Vettel	RBR-Renault	01:46.1	23
5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	01:46.2	18
6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	01:46.3	20
7	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	01:46.6	19
8	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	01:46.7	18
9	Nico Hulkenberg	Williams-Cosworth	01:47.1	20
10	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	01:47.4	21
11	Jaime Alguersuari	STR-Ferrari	01:48.3	17	+2
12	Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India-Mercedes	01:48.7	14	+2
13	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Cosworth	01:51.0	12	+3
14	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP	01:47.9	16	-2
15	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Cosworth	02:01.5	–	+3
16	Sebastien Buemi	STR-Ferrari	01:49.2	16	-1
17	Kamui Kobayashi	BMW Sauber-Ferrari	02:02.3	–	+2
18	Bruno Senna	HRT-Cosworth	02:03.6	–	+2
19	Sakon Yamamoto	HRT-Cosworth	02:03.9	–	+2
20	Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	01:52.0	–	-3
21	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes GP	01:47.9	16	-10
22	Pedro de la Rosa	BMW Sauber-Ferrari	02:05.3	–
23	Lucas Di Grassi	Virgin-Cosworth	02:18.8	–
24	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	–	–

There are only 5 teams that have collected a meaningful number of points-

1	RBR-Renault	312
2	McLaren-Mercedes	304
3	Ferrari	238
4	Mercedes GP	132
5	Renault	106

Meaningful in this case being over 100. The gap to the 6th place team, Force India-Mercedes, is 59 points.

Likewise there are only 8 drivers who’ve been consistently successful-

1	Mark Webber	Australian	RBR-Renault	161
2	Lewis Hamilton	British	McLaren-Mercedes	157
3	Sebastian Vettel	German	RBR-Renault	151
4	Jenson Button	British	McLaren-Mercedes	147
5	Fernando Alonso	Spanish	Ferrari	141
6	Felipe Massa	Brazilian	Ferrari	97
7	Nico Rosberg	German	Mercedes GP	94
8	Robert Kubica	Polish	Renault	89

Michael Schumacher in 9th place is 51 points behind that.

Aug 29 2010

Morning Shinbun Sunday August 29

Sunday’s Headlines:

US right claims spirit of Martin Luther King at Lincoln Memorial rally

Deepwater Horizon fears resurface as rigs probe for oil under Arctic ice

USA

Five years later, large New Orleans family ‘still walking through Katrina’

For Obama, Steep Learning Curve as Chief in Time of War

Europe

Sublime to the ridiculous: new cases in the extradition courts

Central bank exec triggers fresh storm with views on the “Jewish gene”

Middle East

A U.S. ‘legacy of waste’ in Iraq

Asia

Thousands flee Indonesia volcano on Sumatra

New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign

Africa

South Africa’s unions turn on Jacob Zuma and the ANC

Latin America

Chile mine rescuers work on ‘Plan B’

US right claims spirit of Martin Luther King at Lincoln Memorial rally

Tea Party activists gather in Washington to hear Glenn Beck on anniversary of King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech

Ewen MacAskill in Washington

Tens of thousands descended on Washington today for one of the biggest culture clashes in decades – one that pitted an almost exclusively white crowd against one that was predominantly African-American. Both claimed the legacy of Martin Luther King.

The biggest crowd was for a rightwing rally supported by the Fox Television host and author Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Tea Party activists, who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his “I have a dream” speech 47 years ago to the day.

Beck estimated that the crowd, the biggest show of strength by Tea Party activists this year, numbered in the hundreds of thousands, many of whom had travelled long distances.

Deepwater Horizon fears resurface as rigs probe for oil under Arctic ice

ExxonMobil and Shell compete to drill in wilderness despite Greenpeace’s fears a broken well could gush for years

Robin McKie, Science editor

The Observer, Sunday 29 August 2010

In a few days’ time, officials at the Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum in Greenland will reveal the winners of a new round of licences to drill for oil and gas in its waters. The announcement promises to be explosive.

Among those waiting are most of the world’s leading oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell and Norway’s StatOil. Watching with equal attention will be the planet’s leading green groups, who they have pledged to block every effort to drill in the Arctic.

USA

Five years later, large New Orleans family ‘still walking through Katrina’

By Wil Haygood

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, August 28, 2010; 8:04 PM

IN NEW ORLEANS — All her life, Pam Cash dreamed of a house for her family. But she was poor as pennies. She worked two jobs, cleaning buildings. With every swish of the mop on her night shift, she worried about her children. It broke her heart when her son Curtis got sent to prison, but she still had seven mouths to feed in this wicked dreamscape of a city.

For Obama, Steep Learning Curve as Chief in Time of War

By PETER BAKER

Published: August 28, 2010

WASHINGTON – President Obama rushed to the Oval Office when word arrived one night that militants with Al Qaeda in Yemen had been located and that the military wanted to support an attack by Yemeni forces. After a quick discussion, his counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, told him the window to strike was closing.

“I’ve got two minutes here,” Mr. Brennan said.

“O.K.,” the president said. “Go with this.”

While Mr. Obama took three sometimes maddening months to decide to send more forces to Afghanistan, other decisions as commander in chief have come with dizzying speed, far less study and little public attention.

Europe

Sublime to the ridiculous: new cases in the extradition courts

The British taxpayer is spending thousands of pounds extraditing a Polish man accused of possessing cannabis worth just 65 pence, it can be revealed.

By David Barrett and Michael Howie

Published: 8:15AM BST 29 Aug 2010

To investigate the burden which extradition places on Britain’s criminal justice system, The Sunday Telegraph spent a week in the country’s sole extradition court.

Of the 100 or so extradition hearings held every week at City of Westminster magistrates’ court, some involve career criminals or accusations of major crimes.

But in many cases defendants appear bemused to find themselves in court over relatively minor matters, offences they did not realise they had been accused of, or issues they thought had been resolved years ago.

Central bank exec triggers fresh storm with views on the “Jewish gene”

Central bank official Thilo Sarrazin, already under fire in Germany for using shock talk about the country’s Muslim immigrants, has sparked a new uproar by saying that “all Jews share a common gene.”

IMMIGRATION | 29.08.2010

German central bank executive Thilo Sarrazin has stirred fresh controversy over the weekend with discriminatory remarks concerning religious minorities.

“All Jews share a particular gene,” Sarrazin said in an interview published on Sunday, August 29. “That makes them different from other peoples.”

Sarrazin, who is currently promoting his book “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (“Germany does away with itself”), remained undeterred in expressing his views despite criticism and calls for his resignation from the board of the Bundesbank.

Middle East

A U.S. ‘legacy of waste’ in Iraq

The $53-billion reconstruction effort is not without its successes. But poor planning, violence and a failure to consult Iraqis derailed many projects, which may offer lessons in Afghanistan.

By Liz Sly, Los Angeles Times

August 29, 2010

Reporting from Khan Bani Saad, Iraq – The shell of a prison that will never be used rises from the desert on the edge of this dusty town north of Baghdad, a hulking monument to the wasted promise of America’s massive, $53-billion reconstruction effort in Iraq.

Construction began in May 2004 at a time when U.S. money was pouring into the country. It quickly ran into huge cost overruns. Violence erupted in the area, and a manager was shot dead in his office.

Asia

Thousands flee Indonesia volcano on Sumatra

Thousands of Indonesians have been forced to flee after a volcano erupted on the island of Sumatra.

The BBC 29 August 2010

Officials issued a red alert after Mount Sinabung began to spew lava shortly after midnight (1900 GMT).

Smoke and ash reportedly shot 1,500m into the air, and witnesses said they could see lava from the volcano from several miles away.

Mount Sinabung, some 60km (40 miles) south-west of Sumatra’s main city Medan, has not erupted for 400 years.

The volcano had been pumping out smoke all day Saturday, but alert levels had not been raised, and local media reported that villagers had been taken by surprise.

New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign

By MARTIN FACKLER

Published: August 28, 2010

KYOTO, Japan – The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies.

Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in their classrooms, singing loudly to drown out the insults, as parents and eventually police officers blocked the protesters’ entry.

Africa

South Africa’s unions turn on Jacob Zuma and the ANC

A faltering ruling alliance in South Africa is locked in a power struggle as public sector strikes near crisis point

Alex Duval Smith

The Observer, Sunday 29 August 2010

Deaf, perhaps, and mum, definitely, in response to the cries of his striking populace, President Jacob Zuma led his court and comrades in a solemn reunion at Saint George’s cathedral in Cape Town yesterday for the funeral of anti-apartheid hero Joe Matthews.

Two days earlier, a striking teacher marching in a huge public servants’ demonstration to parliament held aloft a placard suggesting: “Zuma: Give 700 rands 2 your wives.”

Two decades after trade unions played a key role in bringing the African National Congress to power, the £61 monthly housing allowance being offered by the government of the polygamous president to 1.3 million strikers is about as welcome as cake from Marie Antoinette.

Latin America

Chile mine rescuers work on ‘Plan B’

Engineers in Chile are working on a plan that they hope will dramatically speed up the rescue of 33 miners trapped in a collapsed shaft.

The BBC 29 August 2010

Workers are due on Monday to start drilling an escape shaft going about 700m (2,300ft) underground, which is likely to take four months to complete.

But engineers say widening an existing tunnel may reach the men in two months.

Officials are looking at several plans to rescue the men, who have been stuck below ground since 5 August.

Engineer Walter Herrera told reporters: “We can broaden the hole that is already there with the latest generation machines and using a wider diameter bore.”

Ignoring Asia A Blog

Morning Shinbun

Aug 29 2010

Prime Time

By rustymancuso581

Well, there is Throwball, Boys @ Texans, root for the Texans. Giants @ Ravens, Go Blue. I suggest High School Throwball if you must, Madison v. Steele.

AMC– The Horse Soldiers, The Wings of Eagles (Marion)
E!– Coyote Ugly
ABC Family– Love & Basketball, Remember the Titans
Food– Iron Chef America marathon
FX– Maid night, Made of Honor, Maid in Manhattan (much better)
Oxygen– Music and Lyrics, Monster-in-Law
Nick– Back to the Future Part II (maybe I didn’t miss it after all, maybe they just have problems with numbers. There are too many of them.)
SciFi– Meteor Apocalypse! (in case you’re not getting enough from the History Channel. Now with that Steel Drum Apocalypso beat)
TBS– Rush Hour 3 (you spent way too much on that really creative title)
TNT– You’ve been Gumped. Pre-Taint Jumbo Shrimp.
Disney– Some Phineas and Ferb

Turner Classic has Lawrence of Arabia. TheMomCat keeps telling me that if you want to understand Arabia you need to read The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Later-

Turner Classic– The Ruling Class (really a much better Peter O’Toole movie if you ask me, but it doesn’t have Omar Sharif)
TNT– A Perfect Murder (not Hitchcock)
USA– License to Wed
TBS– Jerry Maguire (well, it has Renee Zellweger in it too)
Spike– Halloween (Rob Zombie’s, not the good one from 1978)
Oxygen– Shall We Dance?

SNL is repeating Taylor Swift. Adult Swim has the normal Boondocks repeats, The S Word and It’s a Black President, Huey Freeman. Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood City of Heresy, InuYasha Series Premier, GitS:SAC Meme and Idolater.

I’ve refrained from pimping Yahoo TV Listings the last couple of days deliberately because they’re showing a lot of blank spaces. I think the page is broken as they’re also shuffling the channel order.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to the Biff Tannen Museum! Dedicated to Hill Valley’s #1 Citizen. And America’s greatest living folk hero. The one and only Biff Tannen. Of course we’ve all heard the legend, but who is the man? Inside you will learn how Biff Tannen became one of the richest and most powerful men in America. Learn the amazing history of the Tannen family, starting with his great-grandfather, Buford ‘Mad Dog’ Tannen, fastest gun in the West. See Biff’s humble beginnings and how a trip to the race track on his 21st Birthday made him a millionaire overnight. Share in the excitement of a fabulous winning streak that earned him the nickname “The Luckiest Man on Earth.” Learn how Biff parlayed that lucky winning streak into the vast empire called Biffco. Discover how, in 1979, Biff successfully lobbied to legalize gambling and turned Hill Valley’s dilapidated courthouse into a beautiful casino-hotel!

I just wanna say one thing! God Bless America.

Prime Time, TV
2 comments

Aug 29 2010

Evening Edition

By rustymancuso581

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Exodus as floods threaten more Pakistan towns

by Hasan Mansoor and Emmanuel Duparcq, AFP

2 hrs 48 mins ago

THATTA, Pakistan (AFP) – Hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing areas of southern Pakistan on Saturday as rising floodwaters breached more defences and inundated towns.

For nearly a month torrential monsoon rains have triggered massive floods, moving steadily from north to south in Pakistan, affecting a fifth of the volatile country and 17 million of its 167 million people.

Southern Sindh is the worst-affected province. Out of its 23 districts, 19 have so far been ravaged by floods, a statement by the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday.

2 Taliban attack NATO bases in Afghanistan

by Sardar Ahmad, AFP

2 hrs 53 mins ago

KABUL (AFP) – About two dozen Taliban militants — at least some dressed in US military uniforms — were killed Saturday in a failed attempt to storm two US-run bases in a city in eastern Afghanistan, NATO said.

The attackers targeted US-run Forward Operating Bases (FOB) Salerno and Chapman, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.

Amid a spike in military deaths, the brazen attacks underscored the threats faced by foreign forces in Afghanistan as the insurgency drags towards its tenth year.

3 Iran says no final decision on woman’s stoning

by Siavosh Ghazi, AFP

Sat Aug 28, 11:52 am ET

TEHRAN (AFP) – Iran said on Saturday that it has yet to take a final decision on the stoning of a woman convicted of adultery and complicity in her husband’s murder in a case that has sparked an international outcry.

As human rights groups demonstrated in Paris and France called on the European Union to threaten new sanctions, the foreign ministry said that the carrying out of the sentence has been stayed pending a judicial review.

“In this case, implementation of the sentence has been stayed and is under review by the judiciary,” ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told AFP.

4 US conservatives rally to ‘restore America’

by Lucile Malandain, AFP

1 hr 20 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Tens of thousands of people gathered in the US capital Saturday to hear right-wing icons, including talk show host Glenn Beck and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, call on them to “restore America.”

In wide-ranging and often religious terms, Beck told Americans that their country was “at a crossroads.”

“Today we must decide, who are we? What is it we believe? We must advance or perish. I choose advance,” he said to the cheers of a crowd that stretched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.

5 Japan complains to China about business environment

by Dan Martin, AFP

50 mins ago

BEIJING (AFP) – Japan pressed China to improve its climate for foreign businesses during talks Saturday between the world’s number two and three economies that also touched on the issue of North Korean disarmament.

Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada led a delegation to Beijing for talks with a Chinese side led by Vice Premier Wang Qishan in which both urged even greater cooperation between their two increasingly inter-connected economies.

“The economies of both countries highly rely on each other,” Wang told the Japanese delegation, later saying after the third Japan-China High-level Economic Dialogue that the talks were “fruitful.”

6 US Fed chief vows aggressive steps as recovery slows

by P. Parameswaran, AFP

Sat Aug 28, 4:29 am ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Federal Reserve chief has vowed to take aggressive steps to boost the US economy as the world’s largest economy’s pace of growth slowed rapidly in the second quarter.

But Ben Bernanke, the central bank chairman, said Friday prospects for a pick up in economic expansion in 2011 appeared to remain despite the sharp government cutback Friday in economic growth to 1.6 percent in the April-June period.

The growth revision by more than half from the 3.7 percent in the first quarter came on the heels of a massive trade deficit and weak private inventory investment, signaling a more pronounced slowdown in recovery from recession.

7 Some Chile miners despondent as drilling rescue gets ready

by Moises Avila Roldan, AFP

Sat Aug 28, 3:10 am ET

COPIAPO, Chile (AFP) – An Australian-made hydraulic bore was being assembled Saturday for the months-long drilling of a shaft big enough to rescue 33 trapped miners, some of whom were showing signs of depression.

“We’ve finished building the machine’s platform… we hope between Sunday and Monday to begin drilling the shaft,” the operation’s chief engineer, Andre Sougarret, told reporters.

The bore, an Australian-made Strata 950, drills at a maximum rate of 20 meters (66 feet) per day. The initial narrow shaft it will dig will have to be doubled in diameter to permit a man to pass through, he explained.

8 Local journalists told Katrina horror to world

by Lucile Malandain, AFP

Sat Aug 28, 1:41 am ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – As Hurricane Katrina unleashed its furor on the southeastern United States five years ago, two local newspapers relentlessly kept publishing, bringing national and global attention to the disaster.

“Help Us, Please,” “Under Water,” “Ground Zero,” “Our Tsunami,” The Times-Picayune and the Sun Herald cried out in the heady days that followed the hurricane.

The headlines were a desperate cry for help for the authorities to finally come rescue many of the region’s poor who were left abandoned for weeks on end amid the watery wreckage and the stench of death everywhere around them.

9 Contador absence leaves Tour of Spain wide open

by Denholm Barnetson, AFP

Fri Aug 27, 11:16 pm ET

MADRID (AFP) – The third and final Grand Tour of the season is set to begin in Spain, with several leading riders eyeing their chances amid the absence of the world’s top road racer Alberto Contador.

Three-time Tour de France winner Contador is skipping his home Tour, which he won in 2008, after a hard-fought victory in France in July.

He joins two of his Spanish countrymen — last year’s winner Alejandro Valverde, who is serving a suspension for doping, and Samuel Sanchez, who was injured in a crash in the final mountain stage of the Tour de France — on the absentee list.

10 NATO forces fight off Taliban attacks on Afghan bases

By Elyas Wahdat, Reuters

Sat Aug 28, 11:29 am ET

KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Foreign and Afghan troops killed 24 insurgents as they fought off pre-dawn attacks on two bases in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said, with the Taliban saying suicide bombers the fighters.

The attacks targeted the U.S. military’s Forward Operating Base Chapman and nearby Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost province near the eastern border with Pakistan, where U.S. and other foreign forces have been stepping up operations against a resurgent Taliban.

Seven Central Intelligence Agency officers were killed by a suicide bomber inside Chapman last December, the second-most deadly attack in CIA history.

11 U.N. fears for children as Pakistan floods threaten town

By Faisal Aziz, Reuters

Sat Aug 28, 8:07 am ET

KARACHI (Reuters) – Flood waters threatened to engulf two towns in southern Pakistan on Saturday, a month after the disaster began, as the United Nations warned that tens of thousands of children risked death from malnutrition.

The floods are Pakistan’s worst-ever natural disaster in terms of the amount of damage and the number of people affected, with more than six million people forced from their homes, about a million of them in the last few days as the water flows south.

The disaster has killed about 1,600 people, inflicted billions of dollars of damage to homes, infrastructure and the vital agriculture sector and stirred anger against the U.S.-backed government which has struggled to cope.

12 Bernanke says Fed to act if needed

By Mark Felsenthal and Pedro da Costa, Reuters

Fri Aug 27, 11:12 pm ET

JACKSON HOLE, Wyoming (Reuters) – U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Friday the economic recovery has weakened more than expected and the Fed stands ready to act if needed to spur slowing growth.

Bernanke downplayed concerns that the economy might slip back into recession, predicting a modest expansion in the second half of this year, with the pace picking up in 2011.

If that forecast proves overly optimistic, however, he said the Fed has sufficient ammunition left and could support growth by purchasing more government debt or by promising to keep rates exceptionally low for a longer period than currently priced in by financial markets.

13 Beck: Help us restore traditional American values

By PHILIP ELLIOTT and NAFEESA SYEED, Associated Press Writers

36 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Conservative commentator Glenn Beck and tea party champion Sarah Palin appealed Saturday to a vast, predominantly white crowd on the National Mall to help restore traditional American values and honor Martin Luther King’s message. Civil rights leaders who accused the group of hijacking King’s legacy held their own rally and march.

While Beck billed his event as nonpolitical, activists from around the nation said their show of strength was a clear sign that they can make a difference in the country’s future and that they want a government that will listen and unite.

Palin told the tens of thousands who stretched from the marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the grass of the Washington Monument that calls to transform the country weren’t enough. “We must restore America and restore her honor,” said the former Alaska governor, echoing the name of the rally, “Restoring Honor.”

14 Afghan militants in US uniforms storm 2 NATO bases

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer

40 mins ago

KABUL, Afghanistan – U.S. and Afghan troops repelled attackers wearing American uniforms and suicide vests in a pair of simultaneous assaults before dawn Saturday on NATO bases near the Pakistani border, including one where seven CIA employees died in a suicide attack last year.

The raids appear part of an insurgent strategy to step up attacks in widely scattered parts of the country as the U.S. focuses its resources on the battle around the Taliban’s southern birthplace of Kandahar.

Also Saturday, three more American service members were killed – two in a bombing in the south and the third in fighting in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. command said. That brought to 38 the number of U.S. troops killed this month – well below last month’s figure of 66.

15 Iraq on highest alert for terror attacks

By LARA JAKES, Associated Press Writer

41 mins ago

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s prime minister put his nation on its highest level of alert for terror attacks, warning of plots to sow fear and chaos as the U.S. combat mission in the country formally ends on Tuesday.

The Iraqi security forces who will be left in charge have been hammered by bomb attacks, prompting fears of a new insurgent offensive and criticism of the government’s preparedness to protect its people. Still, President Barack Obama left no doubt Saturday in his weekly radio address that the U.S. is sticking to its promise to pull out of Iraq despite the uptick in violence.

In a statement to state-run television, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Iraqi intelligence indicated an al-Qaida front group and members of Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath party are collaborating to launch attacks “to create fear and chaos and kill more innocents.”

16 Imam behind NYC mosque faces divisions over center

By CRISTIAN SALAZAR, Associated Press Writer

43 mins ago

NEW YORK – Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has long worked to bridge divisions, be they fissures between interfaith husbands and wives or political chasms separating the United States and the Muslim world. The 61-year-old clergyman is now in the midst of a polarizing political, religious and cultural debate over plans for a multistory Islamic center that will feature a mosque, health club and theater about two blocks north of ground zero.

He is one of the leaders of the Park51 project, but has largely been absent from the national debate over the implications of building a Muslim house of worship so close to where terrorists killed more than 2,700 people.

Though Rauf has said the center, which could cost more than $100 million, would serve as a space for interfaith dialogue, moderate Muslim practice and peaceful prayer, critics say it will create a base for radical, anti-American Islam. Some critics have also asked where the funding for the center might originate and whether it may come from sources linked to Muslim extremists.

17 Admin. official: FDA to inspect large egg farms

By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press Writer

Sat Aug 28, 1:40 am ET

WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration is planning to inspect all of the country’s largest egg farms before the end of next year following the massive recall of tainted eggs linked to a salmonella outbreak that has sickened as many as 1,500 people.

An Obama administration official says inspectors will visit about 600 large egg farms that produce 80 percent of the nation’s eggs. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not yet been announced. This will be the first government effort to inspect large egg farms, as most of them have gone largely uninspected for decades.

The FDA’s plan for heightened inspections came after more than half a billion eggs linked to cases of salmonella poisoning were recalled from two Iowa farms this month. The inspections will be conducted as part of new FDA rules put in place this July to prevent salmonella in shell eggs.

18 Federal contractor charged with leaking secrets

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

Sat Aug 28, 1:41 am ET

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Friday accused an analyst who worked at the State Department of leaking top secret information about North Korea to a reporter.

Steven Kim, who worked at State as an employee of a contractor, maintains his innocence.

He was named in a federal indictment unsealed Friday and charged with illegally disclosing national defense information, which carries a top penalty of 10 years in prison, and with making false statements to the FBI, which has a maximum five-year sentence.

19 Older activists, younger crowd team to fight nukes

By MELANIE S. WELTE, Associated Press Writer

Sat Aug 28, 1:21 pm ET

DES MOINES, Iowa – It’s been 33 years since Raye Fleming’s arrest outside Southern California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, near the height of the anti-nuclear power furor.

That was the first arrest of many and, Fleming believed, such actions paid off as a generation of Americans turned against nuclear power.

“It was just the correct, moral thing to do,” said 66-year-old Fleming.

20 Co-founder of Islamic charity goes on trial

By JEFF BARNARD, Associated Press Writer

Sat Aug 28, 1:00 pm ET

ASHLAND, Ore. – The gates are rusted and the American flags are gone from the house on the outskirts of this small tourist town that once served as U.S. headquarters for an Islamic charity that was declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

But despite six years of trying, federal investigators have not brought terrorism charges against the Iranian-born tree trimmer and naturalized American citizen who co-founded the American branch of Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, Inc., or his fellow foundation officer living in Saudi Arabia.

The government will instead put Pete Seda, also known as Pirouz Sedaghaty, on trial Monday in U.S. District Court in Eugene on charges of conspiracy, tax fraud and failing to report taking $150,000 out of the country.

21 Huge verdict shakes up nursing home industry

By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press Writer

Sat Aug 28, 12:30 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – During Cindy Cool’s almost daily visits to the nursing home, she would routinely find her Alzheimer’s-suffering father wearing urine-soaked clothes.

The Blue Lake, Calif. resident said it would take upwards of 20 minutes for the apparently short-handed staff of Eureka Healthcare and Rehabilitation to respond and help Cool clean her father. Other patients fared worse, she said.

“A lot of times I walked out of there crying because of the things I saw,” Cool said an interview.

22 Priest among missing 5 years after Katrina

By CAIN BURDEAU and ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writers

Sat Aug 28, 12:16 pm ET

LAKE CATHERINE, La. – The night sky heaved like a living thing as Fire Chief Joe Perez took another slow cruise in the rescue truck down the two-lane road snaking across this town in the last patch of marsh standing between New Orleans and an angry Gulf of Mexico.

It was his final check before he, too, holed up in a safe haven just ahead of Hurricane Katrina.

On his dashboard, the radio was silent. His firefighters had left after a frantic weekend of tying down skiffs, helping folks pack up before the gusts and water arrived, getting fire trucks and equipment out of harm’s way.

23 Obama: Iraq war is ending, Baghdad to chart future

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer

Sat Aug 28, 10:25 am ET

VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. – President Barack Obama said the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq means “the war is ending” and Baghdad is in position “to chart its own course.”

Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday to highlight Tuesday’s formal end to U.S. combat missions in Iraq and remind people that he’s keeping a promise he made as a candidate in the 2008 election.

Remaining troops will assume a backup and training role, a shift Obama will underscore with a visit to Fort Bliss, Texas, on Tuesday and then a prime-time speech to the nation from the Oval Office. The events come on Aug. 31, the date he set last year for the change in focus in the war.

24 Guard troops to deploy to Arizona border on Monday

By AMANDA LEE MYERS, Associated Press Writer

Fri Aug 27, 10:58 pm ET

PHOENIX – The first of 532 National Guard troops are set to begin their mission in the southern Arizona desert on Monday under President Barack Obama’s plan to beef up U.S.-Mexico border security, although they won’t have any law enforcement authority.

About 30 troops will start their jobs on the border Monday, and waves of more troops will be deploying every Monday until all 532 are expected to be on the Arizona border by the end of September. In May, Obama ordered 1,200 National Guard troops to boost security along the border.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said the first of 224 National Guard troops allocated for his state have finished their training and are expected to be deployed to the state’s border on Wednesday.

25 Marquee homes languish on Calif. housing market

By JACOB ADELMAN, Associated Press Writer

Fri Aug 27, 10:28 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – Southern California’s home-sale listings are beginning to resemble an index to the country’s most famous mid-20th-century architects, with more marquee properties languishing on the market as the well-heeled become increasingly reluctant to buy.

Homes by the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler that once sold briskly to architectural aficionados for stratospheric prices are now selling at a loss – if at all.

“Those days of easy money and money-is-no-object artwork kinds of prices are gone,” said architect and real estate agent Brian Linder, who has a listing for a 1937 condo unit by Austrian emigre designer Richard Neutra that’s had its price cut to $675,000 after hitting the market in May for $815,000.

26 Dem. runner-up wants recount in Vt. gov. primary

By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press Writer

Fri Aug 27, 6:31 pm ET

RICHMOND, Vt. – First, it was too close to call. Then it was called. Now, the second-place finisher is second-guessing the call.

Vermont’s unsettled Democratic gubernatorial primary got even less settled Friday, with an official vote tally confirming state Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin’s victory and also-ran Doug Racine responding by announcing he’ll seek a recount.

“We want to know for sure,” said Racine, a 57-year-old state senator. “I want to know for sure. He does as well.”

27 Obama to commemorate Katrina on 5th anniversary

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer

Fri Aug 27, 5:34 pm ET

VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. – President Barack Obama will use the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina to reaffirm his commitment to the Gulf Coast amid lingering questions over his administration’s response to the BP oil spill.

Obama ends his Martha’s Vineyard vacation Sunday and heads to New Orleans, five years to the day from when Hurricane Katrina raged ashore, busting through crumbling levees and flooding 80 percent of the city, killing more than 1,600 people. Then-President George W. Bush was harshly criticized in many quarters for not responding aggressively enough to the disaster.

The unfinished business of helping make New Orleans whole is Obama’s responsibility now. On Sunday, he will have the delicate task of commemorating the ravaging storm while reassuring residents who may still believe the government has failed them – both when it comes to Katrina and to the BP spill.

28 Corps: New Orleans levee upgrades nearly ready

By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer

Fri Aug 27, 1:18 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – Five years after Hurricane Katrina flooded more than 80 percent of this city, the Army Corps of Engineers says billions of dollars of work has made the city much safer and many of its defenses could withstand a storm as strong as the deadly 2005 hurricane.

Surprisingly, many locals – even the vocal critics of the Army Corps – say its assessment of work done on the levee system is not far off the mark.

Since Katrina flooded New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, and killed more than 1,800 people, New Orleans has become a round-the-clock construction site and Congress gave the Army Corps more than $14 billion to fix and upgrade the levees and other defenses. Numerous breaches in the hurricane protection system led to the flooding that devastated the New Orleans area. The corps says about half of the work is complete, and the rest should be finished by next summer.

Aug 28 2010

Health and Fitness News

By arlethamaselli0

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

Tomatoes Pack a Nutritional Punch

Tomatoes receive a lot of attention from nutritionists largely because of a phytonutrient called lycopene. Studies have long suggested that lycopene, which is contained in the red pigment, has antioxidant properties. Now growers are raising and marketing “high-lycopene” tomatoes. Indeed, a company based in Israel has developed a dried cherry tomato, which it is calling a “raisin tomato,” that contains almost 100 times the amount of lycopene in a regular cherry tomato.

I love this suggestion on preparing tomatoes for cooking from the author, Martha Rose Shulman

In many of this week’s recipes I’m using a technique that may be new to some of you. Rather than peeling, seeding and dicing the tomatoes, I grate them on the large holes of a box grater. This is a technique I learned in Greece; it’s used throughout the Mediterranean. Cut the tomatoes in half, squeeze out the seeds if instructed to do so, and rub the cut side against the grater. Don’t worry: the skin is tough and you won’t scrape your hands. When you feel the holes of the grater against the inside of the tomato skin, you’re done. It goes quickly, and it’s a nifty time-saver.

Pasta With Salsa Crudo and Green Beans

Tomato Frittata With Fresh Marjoram or Thyme

Blender Tomato Soup

Bruschetta With Tomato Topping

Cooked Grains Salad With Tomato Vinaigrette

General Medicine/Family Medical

Gaining on death, cooling therapy catches on slowly

(Reuters Health) – It was a cold, drizzly March morning this year when Ed Sproull’s heart stopped beating.

At 58, he had arrived at work feeling fit and healthy. As he stepped into the elevator at De Lage Landen Financial Services in Wayne, Pennsylvania, he had no reason to suspect he would end up in a limbo between life and death.

He collapsed without a sound. He didn’t grab his chest, he didn’t indicate any pain or discomfort, he just closed his eyes and slumped down, coffee in hand. Unbeknownst to the colleague with him in the elevator, Sproull’s heart had entered a state of electric anarchy, no longer pumping out blood.

Responding to the 911 call from De Lage Landen, EMS Captain Chris Griesser of Berwyn Fire Company arrived less than 15 minutes later. He had to cut through a crowd to get to Sproull.

“We shocked him with the AED and we think we have a pulse,” one woman kneeling next to the body told Griesser. Sproull’s shirt had been ripped open, and electrodes from a so-called automated external defibrillator (AED) were glued to his chest. Within a few minutes of the cardiac arrest, a company employee trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) had jolted Sproull’s heart back to its normal rhythm.

Still, it was far from clear that Sproull would survive. He was in a deep coma and barely breathing. If he made it to the hospital alive, chances were his brain would be so profoundly damaged that he would never be able to live a normal life again.

In fact, the vast majority of the 300,000 Americans who suffer cardiac arrest every year die. Despite massive investments in research and technology, fewer than eight in 100 leave the hospital alive, a rate that has remained stagnant for almost 30 years. Even if the heart is restarted, only a minority make it. And of those who do, many end up in nursing homes with crippling brain injury.

Doctors say those statistics could change, however, if more people had access to a procedure called therapeutic hypothermia – cooling the body. As medical procedures go, it’s among the simplest: Chill the patient about six degrees Fahrenheit — using cold intravenous saline, cooling blankets or ice packs — and wait 24 hours; then re-warm the patient slowly and cross your fingers.

FACTBOX: How does cooling therapy work?

(Reuters Health) – How cooling works:

Cooling machines can be used to chill patients after cardiac arrest, and some doctors have also tested them on stroke and heart attack patients. None of these uses has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Some devices cool the body from the outside, via pads that circulate ice water; others use cold intravenous saline to chill the patient from within. To date, there is no consensus about the best cooling method.

Quitting smoking helps after serious heart attack damage

(Reuters Health) – It’s never too late for smokers to do their hearts good by kicking the habit — even after a heart attack has left them with significant damage to the organ’s main pumping chamber, a new study suggests.

Past studies have found that smokers who kick the habit after suffering a heart attack have a lower rate of repeat heart attacks and live longer than their counterparts who continue to smoke.

But little has been known about the benefits of quitting among heart attack patients left with a complication called left ventricular (LV) dysfunction — where damage to the heart’s main pumping chamber significantly reduces its blood-pumping efficiency.

So it has been unclear whether that dysfunction might “drown out” the heart benefits of smoking cessation, said Dr. Amil M. Shah, the lead researcher on the new study and a staff cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

New Drug May Treat Advanced Melanoma

No Cure, but Study Shows New Melanoma Drug Far Better Than Standard Treatment

Aug. 25, 2010 — It’s no cure, and it works only for about half of melanoma patients, but a new drug extends progression-free survival in patients dying of advanced melanoma.

The vast majority of patients with advanced, metastatic melanoma gain only a few months extra survival from standard treatment. But early tests show that an experimental drug, dubbed PLX4032 by Plexxikon and Roche Pharmaceuticals, offers far greater benefits.

The findings are particularly amazing as they come from a very early, phase I clinical trial. Study leader Keith T. Flaherty, MD, is director of developmental therapeutics at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Are allergies associated with heart disease?

(Reuters Health) – Common allergies that bring on wheezing, sneezing and watery eyes could be next to join the list of factors linked to heart disease, suggests a large new study.

However, the researchers stress that the findings do not prove that allergies actually cause heart disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S.

To look for ties between common allergic symptoms and heart disease, Dr. Jongoh Kim of Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and colleagues analyzed data on more than 8,600 adults aged 20 or older who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted between 1988 and 1994.

First Biosynthetic Corneas Implanted

Nerve, Cell Regeneration Occurred in Nine of 10 Patients

Aug. 25, 2010 — Corneas made in the lab using genetically engineered human collagen could restore sight to millions of visually impaired people waiting for transplants from human donors, researchers say.

In a newly released study, investigators from Canada and Sweden reported results from the first 10 people in the world treated with the biosynthetic corneas.

Two years after having the corneas implanted, six of the 10 patients had improved vision. Nine of the 10 experienced cell and nerve regeneration, meaning that corneal cells and nerves grew into the implant.

Avandia: Less Risky in Younger, Healthier Patients?

Study Finds Avandia No Riskier Than Actos, Unlike 4 Other Studies

Aug. 24, 2010 — A study of patients enrolled in a large HMO finds no evidence that the diabetes drug Avandia is riskier than Actos, a similar medication.

The findings are in striking contrast to four other large studies with similar designs. Data from those studies suggest that Avandia increases risk of heart attack in younger patients and risk of death in older patients.

The new study isn’t entirely new. It’s an “enhanced version” of data presented to an FDA advisory committee in 2007. Like the earlier version, it finds Avandia is no riskier than Actos, says study author Debra A. Wertz, PharmD, of HealthCore Inc.

Migraines With Aura May Raise Stroke Risk

Study Shows Increased Risk of Heart Disease and Stroke for Migraines With Aura

Aug. 24, 2010 — Evidence is accumulating that migraines with aura — a transient visual or sensory disturbance, such as light flashes or zigzag patterns– may increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Researchers have also found that migraine with aura seems to boost the risk of earlier death from any cause, including cardiovascular disease, compared to those who don’t have the condition, and that women with migraine with aura may be at increased risk for an additional type of stroke called hemorrhagic stroke.

The two new studies, both published in BMJ, add to the evidence of a suspected migraine-disease link. But both research teams say the findings should not alarm those who suffer migraine with aura because the risk is still low.

Poll: Patients Unhappy With Rx Drugs

Consumer Reports Survey Shows People Frustrated by Drug Costs and Worry About Safety

Aug. 24, 2010 — Nearly half of all Americans take at least one prescription drug on a regular basis, and they have concerns ranging from economics to safety to whether the doctor prescribing the drug is unduly influenced by pharmaceutical companies, according to a new poll.

Consumer Reports National Research Center conducted the poll, in which 2,022 adults aged 18 and older were surveyed by phone in May 2010.

”Consumers are not finding out about the safety issues of drugs,” says researcher John Santa, MD, MPH, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. The poll results also suggest people are concerned about the expense of drugs, and as a result, are sometimes not taking them as prescribed.

Since 2004, Santa tells WebMD, Consumer Reports has been following the prescription drug market from a consumer’s point of view, conducting surveys about prescribing practices and other factors.

Rectal Cancer on the Rise in Young People

Researchers Not Sure Why Rectal Cancer Incidence Is Increasing While Colon Cancer Rates Remain Steady

Aug. 23, 2010 — The incidence of rectal cancer increased 3.8% per year between 1984 and 2005 among people 40 and younger, according to a new study. The incidence of colon cancer remained unchanged.

Researchers led by Joshua Meyer, MD, a radiation oncologist at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, used data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) cancer registry to compare rectal cancer and colon cancer trends. Their findings were released online today and will appear in the Sept. 15 issue of Cancer, a journal of the American Cancer Society.

Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Autoimmune Diseases

Study Also Shows Lack of Vitamin D May Also Be Linked to Some Cancers

Aug. 23, 2010 — There is now biologic evidence to back up the belief that vitamin D may protect against autoimmune diseases and certain cancers.

A new genetic analysis lends support to the idea that the vitamin interacts with genes specific for colorectal cancer, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and other diseases, says Oxford University genetic researcher Sreeram Ramagopalan.

The study is published in Genome Research.

Antihistamine use linked to extra pounds

(Reuters Health) – People who use prescription antihistamines to relieve allergy symptoms may be more likely than non-users to carry excess pounds, a new study suggests, although the significance of the connection is not yet clear.

In a study of 867 U.S. adults, researchers at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, found that prescription antihistamine users were more likely to be overweight or obese than non-users were.

Cranberry Juice Fights Urinary Tract Infections Quickly

Study Shows Cranberry Juice Works Against Bacteria Within 8 Hours

Aug. 23, 2010 — Scientists report that within eight hours of drinking cranberry juice, the juice could help prevent bacteria from developing into an infection in the urinary tract.

Previous studies have suggested that the active compounds in cranberry juice are not destroyed by the digestive system after people drink them, but instead work to fight against bacteria, including E. coli. This latest study, presented at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston, affirms that and provides evidence of the medicinal value of cranberries.

The new research suggests that the beneficial substances in cranberry juice could reach the urinary tract and prevent bacterial adhesion within eight hours.

Warnings/Alerts/Guidelines

Egg Recall: FDA Finds Salmonella on Suspect Farms

Salmonella ID’d in Chicken Manure, Pullet Feed at Source of Recalled Eggs

Aug. 26, 2010 — The farms implicated in the nationwide egg recall are indeed contaminated with salmonella, FDA investigators find.

Fortunately, the FDA earlier this month pressured Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms — two Iowa facilities that are part of the same company — into voluntarily recalling over a half billion eggs. It’s by far the largest U.S. egg recall on record.

Now, for the first time, the FDA says its investigators have found salmonella in four samples from the suspect facilities:

* a sample from chicken manure

* a manure sample found on a barn walkway

* a sample from chicken feed made at a pullet-raising facility that supplies hens to the two egg farms

* a sample from a feed ingredient

FDA investigators are still testing hundreds of other samples. In a few days, they will file a full report on the extent of salmonella contamination at the facilities, Jeff Farrar, DVM, PhD, MPH, FDA associate commissioner for food protection, said at a news teleconference.

Recall of Deli Meat Sold at Walmart Stores

Products May Contain Bacteria That Cause Listeriosis

Aug. 24, 2010 — Zemco Industries of Buffalo, N.Y., has voluntarily recalled about 380,000 pounds of deli meat products distributed nationwide to Walmart stores because of possible contamination with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes. Such bacteria can cause listeriosis, a rare but potentially deadly disease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) made the announcement today.

The meat was distributed to Walmart stores across the country, where it is used to make Marketside Grab and Go deli sandwiches.

Seasonal Flu/Other Epidemics/Disasters

New York most bedbug infested U.S. city: survey

(Reuters Life!) – New York has more unwanted nocturnal guests than other urban areas and has been named the most bedbug infested city in the United States.

It surpassed Philadelphia, Detroit, Cincinnati and Chicago, which rounded out the top five cities, according to extermination company Terminix, which compiled the list based on call volume to its offices around the country so far this year.

“In the past, offices might get a couple of calls a month for bedbug eradication,” said spokesman Clint Briscoe. “Now, some of them are getting several dozen a week.”

CDC backs away from decades-old flu death estimate

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is backing away from its decades-old estimate of the number of people who die annually from seasonal flu, instead saying deaths vary widely from year to year.

Instead of the estimated 36,000 annual flu deaths in the United States — a figure often cited to encourage people to get flu shots — the actual number in the past 30 years has ranged from a low of about 3,300 deaths to a high of nearly 49,000, the CDC said on Thursday.

warns of nationwide cholera risk as 352 die

(Reuters) – Nigerian health authorities have warned of a nationwide cholera risk after the death toll from an outbreak concentrated largely in the north of Africa’s most populous nation rose to 352.

The health ministry said 6,437 cases had been reported across 11 of the country’s 36 states since June. It said heavy rains and flooding in rural areas where safe drinking water and sanitary facilities are scarce had fueled the outbreak.

“Although most of the outbreaks occurred in the northwest and northeast zones, epidemiological evidence indicates that the entire country is at risk,” the ministry said late on Wednesday in its latest update.

Women’s Health

Weight loss cuts risk of pregnancy complication

(Reuters Health) – Losing the weight gained during pregnancy is a real struggle for many new mothers. But dropping just 10 pounds between pregnancies may help many women diagnosed with a dangerous complication during the first pregnancy to avoid a recurrence the second time around.

Preeclampsia, which is characterized by high blood pressure, protein in the urine and swelling, occurs in about 5 percent of American pregnancies every year.

“It can be more systemic than just high blood pressure. It can affect the liver, kidneys and the body’s blood clotting system,” Dr. Dorothea Mostello told Reuters Health. It’s one of the leading causes of maternal death in childbirth in the developed world, she added.

Mostello, based at the St. Louis School of Medicine, is lead author of a new study in the September issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Herpes Drugs May Be Safe in Early Pregnancy

Certain Antivirals in the First Trimester Do Not Appear to Increase Risk of Birth Defects, Study Finds

Aug. 24, 2010 — Taking certain antiviral medications for herpes infections during the first three months of pregnancy does not increase a child’s risk of major birth defects, researchers report in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The antiviral drugs acyclovir, valacyclovir, and famciclovir are often prescribed to treat herpes viral infections, such as herpes simplex virus (HSV). More than one in five pregnant women have antibodies in their blood to HSV, indicating a past or present infection.

Herpes antiviral medications are also used to treat herpes zoster infections, commonly known as shingles.

Stress May Raise Risk of Premenstrual Syndrome

Study Shows PMS Symptoms Could Be More Severe if Women Are Stressed Before Menstruation

Aug. 24, 2010 — Feeling stressed out in the weeks preceding your menstrual cycle may raise your risk for experiencing more severe premenstrual syndrome (PMS) symptoms, a study shows.

Women who reported high levels of stress in the two weeks before they got their period were two to three times more likely to experience depression, sadness, and crying spells as well as physical PMS symptoms such as body aches, bloating, low back pain, cramps, and headache, compared to women who did not feel stressed early on in their cycles.

The study appears in the Journal of Women’s Health.

Men’s Health

Oesophageal cancer rates rise steeply in men

(Reuters) – Rates of oesophageal cancer in men have risen by 50 percent in Britain in a generation, an increase that is probably being driven in part by growing rates of obesity and poor diet, scientists said on Saturday.

As the “fat man of Europe,” Britain is seeing far higher rates of a type of oesophageal cancer called adenocarcinoma, which is related to obesity and eating a high saturated fat diet, researchers with the charity Cancer Research UK said.

Diabetes Has an Impact on Sex Life

Study Shows Diabetes Is Linked to Loss of Libido and Erectile Dysfunction

Aug. 27, 2010 — Middle aged and older adults are interested in sexual activity, but diabetes impairs libido and can result in erectile dysfunction, a new study shows.

Researchers in Chicago say men diagnosed with diabetes are more likely to express a lack of interest in sex, but also to experience erectile dysfunction.

Scientists at the University of Chicago Medical Center conducted a study of nearly 2,000 people between the ages of 57 and 85.

The study found that about 70% of men and 62% of women with diabetes and sexual partners were found to engage in sexual activity two or three times a month — comparable to people without diabetes.

Study: BPA Linked to Higher Testosterone Levels

Small Increase in Testosterone Levels in Men’s Blood After Exposure to Plastic Chemical

Aug. 26, 2010 — Men who are exposed to high levels of the controversial plastic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) may show a small, but significant increase in blood levels of the male sex hormone testosterone, a study shows. These testosterone levels still remained within the normal range.

The study is published in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Some preliminary research has linked elevated testosterone to an increased risk for heart disease and certain cancers, but whether BPA significantly affects testosterone and whether this has any effect on health remains unproven.

Older men’s testosterone varies by country, race

(Reuters Health) – New research shows older men’s sex hormone levels depend on both race and geographical location, casting further doubt on the criteria for “male menopause.”

More than a million testosterone prescriptions are being written in the U.S. every year, experts say, and many go to middle-aged and older men with stunted libido and depressed mood presumably caused by low levels of the male sex hormone.

Pediatric Health

Friendly bacteria help calm colicky babies

(Reuters Health) – Italian researchers offer some hopeful news for parents of colicky babies: a daily dose of “good” bacteria may help their child to cry less.

After three weeks of treatment with probiotic bacteria, babies cried for an average of about a half-hour a day, while infants who received a placebo were still crying for an hour and a half daily. At the study’s outset, babies in both groups were crying for five to six hours a day.

The cause of colic, traditionally defined as inconsolable crying for at least three hours a day, on at least three days in a week and lasting for at least three weeks, isn’t clear. It affects up to 28 percent of babies under three months of age, according to lead author Dr. Francisco Savino of Regina Margherita Children Hospital in Turin, Italy.

Sledding Accidents Land Thousands of Kids in ER

Study: More Than 20,000 Children Annually Treated in Hospital ER for Sledding Injuries

ug. 23, 2010 — Sledding is popular for only a portion of the year, yet it lands about 20,000 children in the emergency room each year, new research shows.

Researchers analyzed data for 1997-2007 from the Center for Injury Research and Policy of the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. They found an estimated 229,023 injuries serious enough for ER treatment in that time period among children under 19.

Kids’ concussions need follow-up after ER visit

(Reuters Health) – More than 100,000 U.S. children visit the emergency room for a concussion each year, with many discharged without instructions to get needed follow-up care, a new study suggests.

The findings, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, appear to be the first estimate of how many children are treated for concussions in U.S. ERs annually.

They also point to an important shortcoming in care: many parents may take their children home from the hospital without knowing they should follow-up with a visit to their pediatrician.

Youth Tobacco Use: Downward Trend Is Slowing

CDC Report Shows Current Cigarette Smoking by High School Students Is About 17%

Aug. 26, 2010 — Current tobacco use by middle and high school students has declined over the past decade, but this trend has slowed in recent years and more work is needed to combat the problem, the CDC says.

The CDC, reporting in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, says comprehensive anti-tobacco programs need more funding and that the federal government should enforce legislation that requires larger, graphic health warnings on cigarette packages and in advertisements.

Further, broader tobacco-free policies, tobacco tax increases, and advertisement restrictions would help further reduce both youth and adult tobacco use, the report says.

The analysis was based on data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey, a school-based study that collects information on tobacco use and related behaviors. In this study, 22,679 young people participated; they were asked to complete self-administered questionnaires each year from 2000 to 2009.

Aging

Type 2 Diabetes May Have Link to Alzheimer’s

Study Shows Insulin Resistance May Raise Risk of Brain Plaques Associated With Alzheimer’s

Aug. 25, 2010 — People with insulin resistance or type 2 diabetes may be at increased risk for developing telltale brain plaques that are closely linked to Alzheimer’s disease, a study shows.

The new findings, which appear in the Aug. 25 issue of Neurology, may give more evidence of the connection between diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

In insulin resistance, the hormone insulin, produced by the pancreas, becomes less effective in lowering blood sugar. People with insulin resistance are at risk for developing type 2 diabetes.

Berries May Slow Mental Decline From Aging

Study Shows Blueberries, Strawberries, and Acai Berries Are Good for Your Brain’s Health

Aug. 23, 2010 — Compounds found in various berries and possibly in walnuts may slow down natural aging processes in the brain, new research indicates.

What’s more, blueberries, strawberries, and acai berries may help the aging brain in a crucial but previously unrecognized way, according to a study presented at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

Scientists say they have found evidence that compounds in the berries and maybe walnuts activate the brain’s natural “housekeeper” mechanism that cleans up and recycles toxic proteins, which have been linked to age-related mental decline and memory loss.

“The good news is that natural compounds called polyphenols found in fruits, vegetables and nuts have an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect that may protect against age-associated decline,” Shibu Poulose, PhD, a scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agriculture Research Service’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, says in a news release.

Do Spouses Grow Alike as Time Passes?

Study Contradicts Popular Belief That Married Couples Develop Similar Traits as They Age

Aug. 27, 2010 — It just seems so, but it isn’t: Husbands and wives don’t become more alike over time.

That’s according to a study published in the August issue of the Personality and Individual Differences.

Rather than becoming more alike over time, people simply tend to pick mates based on shared personality traits, study researcher Mikhila N. Humbad of MSU tells WebMD.

Researchers at Michigan State University analyzed data from the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research on husbands and wives in 1,296 married couples. They wanted to determine whether men and women become more similar as time passes after the initial honeymoon glow grows dim.

Mental Health

Talk Therapy May Help Adults With ADHD

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy May Be Better Than Medicine Alone in Treating Adult ADHD, Study Says

ug. 24, 2010 — Adults who take medicine for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may benefit from adding cognitive behavioral therapy, a new study says. Doing so may yield better results than using medication alone.

Cognitive behavioral therapy appears to significantly reduce symptoms associated with ADHD, such as inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, the researchers say.

They report that there is a need for alternative ways to treat ADHD because many adults either cannot or will not take medication or show a poor medication response.

Nutrition/Diet/Fitness

Water May Be Secret Weapon in Weight Loss

Study Shows Drinking Water Helps People Lose Weight and Keep the Pounds Off

Aug. 23, 2010 — Drinking water before each meal has been shown to help promote weight loss, according to a new study.

Brenda Davy, PhD, an associate professor of nutrition at Virginia Tech and senior author of a new study, says that drinking just two 8-ounce glasses of water before meals helps people melt pounds away.

The study is being presented at the 2010 National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

“We are presenting results of the first randomized controlled intervention trial demonstrating that increased water consumption is an effective weight loss strategy,” Davy says in a news release. “We found in earlier studies that middle aged and older people who drank two cups of water right before eating a meal ate between 75 and 90 fewer calories during the meal.”

Bottled Tea: Health or Hype?

Bottled Tea, Unlike Home-Brewed, Skimps on Polyphenols, Researchers Say

Aug. 23, 2010 — Bottled tea may be all the rage among health-conscious people, but it may not have as many health benefits as you think.

Bottled tea is billed as being healthful because it contains polyphenols, antioxidants that may help ward off a range of diseases, including cancer.

But scientists say they’ve found that many of the popular bottled tea drinks contain fewer polyphenols than a single cup of home-brewed green or black tea.

And some contain such small amounts that a person would have to drink 20 bottles to get the same polyphenol benefit in a single cup of tea.

For Some, Moderate Drinking May Prolong Life

Moderate Drinking Helps Middle-Aged and Older People Live Longer, Study Finds

Aug. 24, 2010 — Middle-aged and older adults who drink a moderate amount of alcohol daily may live longer than people who abstain or drink heavily, according to a new study.

Moderate drinking is defined as one to less than three alcoholic drinks per day. Such behavior has been shown to decrease total mortality in middle-aged and older adults, but some say the health benefits have been a bit exaggerated.

Black Rice Is Cheap Way to Get Antioxidants

Study Shows Black Rice Is Good Source of Healthy Antioxidants and Vitamin E

Aug. 26, 2010 — Inexpensive black rice contains health-promoting anthocyanin antioxidants, similar to those found in blackberries and blueberries, new research from Louisiana State University indicates.

“Just a spoonful of black rice bran contains more health promoting anthocyanin antioxidants than are found in a spoonful or blueberries, but with less sugar and more fiber and vitamin E antioxidants,” Zhimin Xu, PhD, of Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, says in a news release. “If berries are used to boost health, why not black rice and black rice bran?”

Short-Term Overeating Has Lasting Impact

Study Shows Long-Term Weight Gain Can Result From Just 1 Month of Overeating

Aug. 25, 2010 — Overeating even for short periods of time appears to have long-term effects, according to a new study that lends some scientific oomph to the old saying about “a moment on the lips, forever on the hips.”

”Our study suggests that a short period of hyper-alimentation [overeating] can have later long-term effects by increasing body weight and fat mass in normal-weight individuals,” says researcher Asa Ernersson, a PhD student at Linkoping University in Sweden.

The study results aren’t surprising, according to two experts who reviewed the findings for WebMD, and lend credibility to long-standing messages about moderation.

The study is published in Nutrition & Metabolism.

Broccoli, Plantains May Stop Crohn’s Disease Relapse

Broccoli and Plantain Fibers Prevented E. Coli Movement by 45% to 82% in Study

Aug. 25, 2010 — Fibers from broccoli and plantain plants may block a key stage in the development of Crohn’s disease, a new study finds.

Crohn’s is an inflammatory bowel disorder that affects about seven of every 100,000 people in North America.

Researchers in Europe tested soluble fibers from broccoli, plantains, leeks, apples, and the food processing additives polysorbate 60 and 80. They wanted to see if the fibers could reduce the movement of E. coli bacteria across cells lining the bowel, perhaps protecting against Crohn’s disease.

They found that broccoli and plantain fibers prevented E. coli movement by between 45% and 82%; leek and apple fibers showed no impact. The food additive polysorbate 80, however, substantially increased E. coli movement.

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