New Poverty Muppet Premieres on Sesame Street Today

On By A.P.In HomelessnessLeave a comment

 

Sesame Street is on a mission to tackle childhood hunger and homelessness, premiering a new character whose background highlights children who live in such poverty.

Lily, the newest muppet on Sesame Street, comes from an impoverished family.

Country music singer Brad Paisley and his wife, actress Kimberly Williams Paisley, will host the hour-long show, titled “Growing Hope against Hunger.”

“We are honored that Sesame Street, with its long history of tackling difficult issues with sensitivity, caring and warmth, asked us to be a part of this important project,” the couple said in a statement.

The show will air Sunday, Oct. 9. It is sponsored by Walmart.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2011/10/04/2011-10-04_sesame_street_to_debut_new_muppet_dealing_with_poverty_and_hunger_in_the_home.html

 

UFO Shuts Down Airport in China

On By A.P.In UFOLeave a comment

Flights were re-routed or forced to circle an airport for over an hour after Chinese air traffic controllers saw what they believed to be a UFO hovering over the runway.

The incident, which took place at about 8 p.m. on Sept. 11 at an airport in Baotou, is the eighth reported UFO sighting in China since June, according to AOL News. Back-to-back sightings in June alarmed Chinese residents.

As ABC reports:

The alert was triggered by bright lights in the sky that moved erratically, but reports claim that air traffic controllers at the Hohhot Air Traffic Management Bureau spotted the object on their radar. After about an hour, the object and the lights suddenly vanished and passenger jets were allowed to land.

While the others were dismissed as part of routine military exercises, the Chinese government has refused to comment on this sighting.

http://newsone.com/nation/newsonestaff2/china-ufo-sighting-closes-airport-country-abuzz/comment-page-3/?obref=obinsite

Herbert Chavez Undergoes Surgery to Look Like Superman

On By A.P.In Human BehaviorLeave a comment

Herbert Chavez, a 35-year old Filipino pageant trainer, has since 1995 undergone a whole host of surgeries to make him more closely resemble the Man of Steel, including a nose job, chin augmentation — for that iconic cleft, silicone lip injections and, of course, thigh implants.

His home is a shrine to the hero, with everything from bedding to wall decorations to actual, larger than life statues of the hero taking up an entire room.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8356959/obsessed-fan-has-surgery-to-look-like-superman

10% of Brits Are Afraid to Try New Cheese

On By A.P.In UncategorizedLeave a comment

Almost half of all consumers say that traditional cheddar is their favourite variety while three in ten say that they only buy cheeses that they have tasted before.

The British Cheese Board, which carried out a survey into the nation’s cheese tastes, has urged consumers to broaden their minds and develop a more sophisticated palates.

Nigel White, the board’s secretary, said: “We know that the majority of people love their cheddar but we were surprised to find out that some people are actually scared of trying new cheeses. We strongly encourage people to be more adventurous with British cheese, and try something new alongside their usual cheddar.”

Mr White said that there are move than 700 named cheeses made on British soil.

A third of people questioned said that they try a new cheese less than once a year, and half of all consumers said that they habitually buy the same cheeses every week.

Half of consumers said they would only try a new cheese if they knew it tasted similar to a cheese they already liked.

Despite consumers’ apparent reluctance to try new flavors, sales of cheese are rising strongly. Household purchase of cheese rose by 3.5 per cent in 2010, according to Kantar Worldpanel. Last year around 372,700 tonnes of cheese were produced in the UK, and exports rose by 7.3 per cent to 112,000 tonnes.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/8782537/One-in-ten-Brits-scared-of-trying-a-new-cheese.html

English School Bans Hand Raising for Questions in Class

On By A.P.In UncategorizedLeave a comment

Pupils at Burlington Junior School in Bridlington, East Yorks, have been asked to adopt the new hand signal to create a more relaxed classroom.

The children – aged eight and nine – have now been told to get the teachers attention by giving a thumbs up while cupping their hand.

But parents at the 360-pupil school have blasted the decision as “daft” after it was introduced at the beginning of this school year and say the clidren look like The Fonz, from the television comedy Happy Days.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8803648/School-bans-children-from-raising-their-hands-and-makes-them-do-The-Fonz-instead.html

Depressed People Process Hate Differently in Their Brains

On By A.P.In Depression, Neuropsychiatric Disease, The BrainLeave a comment

Scientists in China and the UK scanned the brains of people with and without depression, and they found a surprising pattern in nearly all of the depressed people: Their brain activity was out of sync in three regions collectively known as the “hate circuit” — so called because in previous experiments they have been shown to light up when people look at photographs of someone they can’t stand.

It’s as if the brains of depressed people hate incorrectly. The brain disruptions the researchers observed could be a sign that people with depression have an impaired ability to cope with — and learn from — social situations in which they feel hate, Feng says. This may explain why they often turn emotions such as hatred and anger inward, instead of handling them in more constructive ways, he adds.

The study, which was published Tuesday in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, is the first to connect disruptions in the hate circuit to depression, and the findings may help doctors understand why depressed people react the way they do to certain circumstances, says Madhkar Trivedi, M.D., director of the mood disorders program and clinic at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/04/health/depressed-brains-hate-differently/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

 

Texas Drought Could Last 9 More Years

On By A.P.In DroughtLeave a comment

A devastating Texas drought that has browned city lawns and caused more than $5 billion in damages to the state’s farmers and ranchers could continue for another nine years, a state forecaster said on Thursday.

“It is possible that we could be looking at another of these multiyear droughts like we saw in the 1950s, and like the tree rings have shown that the state has experienced over the last several centuries,” State Climatologist John Nielson-Gammon told Reuters.

Some 95 percent of the state is listed as being in either “severe” or “exceptional” drought by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Drought Monitor, and Nielson-Gammon said the last 12 months have been the driest one-year period on record in the Lone Star State.

The state’s worst recorded drought lasted from 1950 through 1957 and prompted the creation of artificial lakes all across Texas to supply water to a state that at the time had a population of 15 million – a whopping 10 million fewer than today.

The long-term weather patterns, including La Nina currents in the oceans, mirror records from the early 1950s, Nielsen-Gammon said. The current drought, which he said began in earnest in 2005, could wind up being a 15-year stretch if patterns hold, he said.

“We’re very lucky that we had 2007 and 2010, which were years of plentiful rain,” he said. “2010 was the wettest year in record. Were it not for last year, we would be in much worse shape even than we are today.”

Conditions in Texas now are far from good. The drought has dried up many lakes built after the drought of the 1950s, and more than 23,000 separate wildfires fueled by dried brush and trees have destroyed 3.8 million acres and with that 2,800 homes, according to the Texas Forest Service.

Nielson-Gammon said Texas was now 10 to 20 inches of rainfall behind where it should be at the end of September, usually one of the state’s wettest months.

Rather than being the exception, severe drought could become the rule in Texas going forward, with wet years being more noteworthy.

“We’ve had five of the last seven years in drought, and it looks like it is going to be six out of eight,” he said.

The month is going out the same way it came in, with Texas firefighters on edge. Friday will be another extremely dangerous day for wildfires, with conditions similar to those over the Labor Day weekend when 60 fires erupted across the state, Holly Huffman of the Texas Forest Service said.

On Sept. 4, a gust of wind blew a dead pine tree into power lines east of Austin, sparking the deadly Bastrop Complex Fire. That blaze killed two people, destroyed 1,600 homes, and is now the costliest fire in terms of lost property in Texas history.

The Forest Service this week called in two air tankers from Canada to fight wildfires that continue to burn around Texas, citing a shortage of enough planes to fight the state’s fires.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44725170

96 year old Amanda Rice Stevenson is now Florida’s oldest murder suspect

On By A.P.In UncategorizedLeave a comment

Retired postal worker Amanda Rice Stevenson, 96, has been charged with murdering her 53-year-old nephew.  According to a neighbor, Johnny Rice let his aunt move in with him even though he feared her because she had previously threatened to kill him and his wife.  Police say Rice was shot in the chest while lying on his bed.  The arrest makes Stevenson Florida’s oldest murder suspect.
 
 
   

Synthetic Meat

On By A.P.In ScienceLeave a comment

Within months labs could be growing synthetic meat for us to eat, including meat from exotic animals. 

Pig cells + horse serum = synthetic sausage in a Petri dish.

The environmental impacts are so much lower, as synthetic meats need 99 per cent less land than beef farming.

Read more here:  http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/painfree-meat-how-synthetic-sausages-could-be-on-our-plates-in-six-months-20110909-1k0nj.html