Blue Dogs Hold Insurance Subsidies Hostage Because Money Saved Might Be Used for Abortions.

crooksandliers.com
These are Democrats, mind you. And the thing is, I don't even believe most of these amoral jerks give a damn about abortion. They're just playing to their audience, and it provides protective cover for their real agenda: Stop the public option at any cost.
And of course this means that women on Medicaid who already have abortion coverage would lose it. Our women's-rights president's bold stand?

"‘Look, try to get this thing worked out among the Democrats. We want you to work it out within the party,’ ” Mr. Stupak said, adding that Mr. Obama did not say whether he supported the segregated-money provision or a more sweeping restriction. “We got his attention, which we never had before.”

Isn't that nice. In a country founded on religious freedom, apparently some religions are much more equal than others:

WASHINGTON — As if it were not complicated enough, the debate over health care in Congress is becoming a battlefield in the fight over abortion.
Abortion opponents in both the House and the Senate are seeking to block the millions of middle- and lower-income people who might receive federal insurance subsidies to help them buy health coverage from using the money on plans that cover abortion. And the abortion opponents are getting enough support from moderate Democrats that both sides say the outcome is too close to call. Opponents of abortion cite as precedent a 30-year-old ban on the use of taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions.

Yes, God forbid that an unemployed couple who are struggling to get on their financial feet have abortion as an option. It makes a lot more sense to send them (and their offspring) further down the financial hole, don't you think?

Abortion-rights supporters say such a restriction would all but eliminate from the marketplace private plans that cover the procedure, pushing women who have such coverage to give it up. Nearly half of those with employer-sponsored health plans now have policies that cover abortion, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The question looms as a test of President Obama’s campaign pledge to support abortion rights but seek middle ground with those who do not. Mr. Obama has promised for months that the health care overhaul would not provide federal money to pay for elective abortions, but White House officials have declined to spell out what he means.
Democratic Congressional leaders say the latest House and Senate health care bills preserve the spirit of the current ban on federal abortion financing by requiring insurers to segregate their public subsidies into separate accounts from individual premiums and co-payments. Insurers could use money only from private sources to pay for abortions.
But opponents say that is not good enough, because only a line on an insurers’ accounting ledger would divide the federal money from the payments for abortions. The subsidies would still help people afford health coverage that included abortion.

You know what I see as the real issue? When we give high-quality, subsidized insurance to allegedly "pro-life" politicians, why, that means they have that much more cash to spend on their girlfriends' abortions (not to mention hookers of either gender), and that can't be allowed to stand.
The solution is obvious. Just to make sure we're not subsidizing immoral behavior, we need to stop paying for their health insurance. In fact, maybe we should cut their salaries so they're not led into temptation.

Schools Out for Summer Maybe History

source: news.yahoo.com
WASHINGTON – Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way.

Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.

"Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."

The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.

"Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

Fifth-grader Nakany Camara is of two minds. She likes the four-week summer program at her school, Brookhaven Elementary School in Rockville, Md. Nakany enjoys seeing her friends there and thinks summer school helped boost her grades from two Cs to the honor roll.

But she doesn't want a longer school day. "I would walk straight out the door," she said.

Domonique Toombs felt the same way when she learned she would stay for an extra three hours each day in sixth grade at Boston's Clarence R. Edwards Middle School.

"I was like, `Wow, are you serious?'" she said. "That's three more hours I won't be able to chill with my friends after school."

Her school is part of a 3-year-old state initiative to add 300 hours of school time in nearly two dozen schools. Early results are positive. Even reluctant Domonique, who just started ninth grade, feels differently now. "I've learned a lot," she said.

Does Obama want every kid to do these things? School until dinnertime? Summer school? And what about the idea that kids today are overscheduled and need more time to play?

___

Obama and Duncan say kids in the United States need more school because kids in other nations have more school.

"Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here," Duncan told the AP. "I want to just level the playing field."

While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days, it's not true they all spend more time in school.

Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).

___

Regardless, there is a strong case for adding time to the school day.

Researcher Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution looked at math scores in countries that added math instruction time. Scores rose significantly, especially in countries that added minutes to the day, rather than days to the year.

"Ten minutes sounds trivial to a school day, but don't forget, these math periods in the U.S. average 45 minutes," Loveless said. "Percentage-wise, that's a pretty healthy increase."

In the U.S., there are many examples of gains when time is added to the school day.

Charter schools are known for having longer school days or weeks or years. For example, kids in the KIPP network of 82 charter schools across the country go to school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., more than three hours longer than the typical day. They go to school every other Saturday and for three weeks in the summer. KIPP eighth-grade classes exceed their school district averages on state tests.

In Massachusetts' expanded learning time initiative, early results indicate that kids in some schools do better on state tests than do kids at regular public schools. The extra time, which schools can add as hours or days, is for three things: core academics — kids struggling in English, for example, get an extra English class; more time for teachers; and enrichment time for kids.

Regular public schools are adding time, too, though it is optional and not usually part of the regular school day. Their calendar is pretty much set in stone. Most states set the minimum number of school days at 180 days, though a few require 175 to 179 days.

Several schools are going year-round by shortening summer vacation and lengthening other breaks.

Many schools are going beyond the traditional summer school model, in which schools give remedial help to kids who flunked or fell behind.

Summer is a crucial time for kids, especially poorer kids, because poverty is linked to problems that interfere with learning, such as hunger and less involvement by their parents.

That makes poor children almost totally dependent on their learning experience at school, said Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, home of the National Center for Summer Learning.

Disadvantaged kids, on the whole, make no progress in the summer, Alexander said. Some studies suggest they actually fall back. Wealthier kids have parents who read to them, have strong language skills and go to great lengths to give them learning opportunities such as computers, summer camp, vacations, music lessons, or playing on sports teams.

"If your parents are high school dropouts with low literacy levels and reading for pleasure is not hard-wired, it's hard to be a good role model for your children, even if you really want to be," Alexander said.

Extra time is not cheap. The Massachusetts program costs an extra $1,300 per student, or 12 percent to 15 percent more than regular per-student spending, said Jennifer Davis, a founder of the program. It received more than $17.5 million from the state Legislature last year.

The Montgomery County, Md., summer program, which includes Brookhaven, received $1.6 million in federal stimulus dollars to operate this year and next, but it runs for only 20 days.

Aside from improving academic performance, Education Secretary Duncan has a vision of schools as the heart of the community. Duncan, who was Chicago's schools chief, grew up studying alongside poor kids on the city's South Side as part of the tutoring program his mother still runs.

"Those hours from 3 o'clock to 7 o'clock are times of high anxiety for parents," Duncan said. "They want their children safe. Families are working one and two and three jobs now to make ends meet and to keep food on the table."

Aubrey O'Day Cancels Las Vegas Show Due To Naked Photo Leak (With Video)

starpulse.com

Pop star Aubrey O'Day pulled out of her burlesque performance in Las Vegas on Wednesday night after learning a previous show-goer had posted nude photos of her on the Internet.

The former Danity Kane singer performs in Sin City revue Peepshow, a semi-nude stage extravaganza, and made her debut performance on Tuesday.

She was disturbed to learn an audience member had snapped her mid-performance during her first show - and took to her website to post a video of her stripping to inform fans of her plans to axe Wednesday's gig.

She says, "I'm making a video for you guys, because instead of being onstage at Peepshow tonight, where I usually am, I decided to call off tonight because of some nude photos that were illegally obtained last night at the show. Last night was my opening night, and it was such an amazing feeling, and I've been told by everyone that the performance that I gave was absolutely amazing, one of the best they've seen. But the photos made me feel like c**p. It made me feel bad. It made me feel insecure about my body, and unfortunately, this is not the first time I felt this way in this industry."

But O'Day has vowed to go on with the show in a bid to hit back at all her critics.

She adds, "A lot of people may not understand what it feels like for women to be judged like that, but as you can see, I'm not performing, which is the one thing I love doing most... I'm not going to let anyone like (gossip blogger) Perez Hilton say that Aubrey looks ugly un-Photoshopped. I am going to be back onstage at 'Peepshow' every night following tonight's cancellation."

Aubrey's video is probably nsfw because of a see-through bra, and it contains some strong language. Watch it:

Kanye's VMA With Taylor Swift And Katy Perry's Comment

By Cyndi Whittel

Kanye West's outburst at the MTV VMA awards wasn't his first meltdown. Back in 07 he claimed that he had the video that should have won because he spent so much time on it. The video "Touch The Sky" didn't win. Even again, last year in 2008 you will find Kanye on you tube. A video of his ranting backstage: "Give A Black Man A Chance", he continues with "Where's Britney?", "Get Britney!". Comments to this are, "Want to Win An Award Kanye? Quit using pitch correction in your music".

On an even more interesting note, he's now been heard stating that he apparently feels like Greg Focker of the movie, "Meet The Parents". Apparently this is due to so many people who wanted him to leave after the VMA's. It was obvious why he felt like a focker. Take for instance all of the blog comments he got and all of the angry people in the audience after he interrupted T. Swift receiving her very first VMA in such a shockingly distasteful way. Taylor had even left you tube videos regarding how excited she was about even being nominated.

Kelly Clarkson, Pink, and others didn't hold back on anything either. Kelly Clarkson left a blog which said the following: ""I've seen you do some pretty s----- things, but you just keep amazing me with your tactless, ass--- ways. .... It's absolutely fascinating how much I don't like you. I like everyone"

She then continues: "What happened to you as a child?? Did you not get hugged enough? Something must have happened to make you this way and I think we're all just curious as to what would make a grown adult go on national television and make a talented artist, let alone teenager, feel like shit."

The former American Idol sweetheart was also nominated against Swift for best female video, but insists that she was still happy for her. "You weren't even up for THIS award and yet you still have a problem with the outcome. Is winning a Moon Man that much of a life goal? You can have mine if it will shut you up." Clarkson said.

"I was actually nominated in the same category that Taylor won and was excited for her. So why can't you be?? I'm not even mad at you for being an ass----. ... I just pity you because you''re a sad human being," she writes. Clarkson praised Swift: "You outsell him, [West]. That's why he's bitter. You know I love your work! Keep it up girl!" She also appreciated Beyonce and called her a "class act," for showing grace in the situation.

Later, West went on the Jay Leno Show and apologized. After all the hysteria you almost end up feeling a little sorry for Kanye in the end. A one time fashion leader, wearing all the new styles, even had his own Nike shoes, the "Air Yeezy". He made a few other fashion statements with his luxury, yet sporty/fashionable timepieces including the Bape Casio G-Shock watch. According to other sources he was also a fan of Breitling Bentley and other Breitling watches which says a lot about his sense of style.

Like all other artists who have to deal with the issues just as with all celebrities, Kanye will revive in the end and bounce back like all of the others. It will just take some time since he did basically trample on a new and very young artist. Like Katy Perry said, "F--k You, Kanye. It's like you stepped on a kitten.". The statement proves how long of a wait he truly has. Staying out of the spotlight for at least a couple of years would help. Then come back with honey instead of something bitter. Catches more bees.

About the Author:

Cyndi Whittel was an R&B and Soul music enthusiast at an early age. She grew up in Southern Indiana. She is now staying in Southwest Montana in a city named Missoula. She, her husband and two children collect Breitling replica, Concord, and other luxury watches and raise horses.

UFO Sighting in Las Vegas - Did You See It? - The Fourth Kind Trailer -Alien Abductions Based on Actual Case Studies

theexaminer.com

DO YOU BELIEVE?

A Nevada witness near Las Vegas watched a silent and hovering object with five rectangular white lights on November 18, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.

After about 30 to 45 seconds, the witness said, the object "just disappeared."

Following is the unedited witness statement from MUFON. Please keep in mind that most UFO reports can be explained as something natural or man made. If Nevada MUFON investigates and reports back on this case, I will update this page.

NV, September 18, 2009 - lights seen and then disappearing. MUFON Case # 19393.

Around 11 pm (I didn't think to check the exact time) on Sept. 18th, 2009, I saw what at first appeared to be an airliner (we are in the McCarren fight path for planes that have taken off from McCarren airport going east bound), it had 5 rectangle white lights from left to right in a straight line with a white strobe flashing on the bottom center.

What made me pay attention was there was no sound from the jets (at that time of night you can hear the jet engines for a very long time) and it wasn't moving away like a airliner, it was stationary.

I watched the lights for like 30 to 45 seconds and then it just disappeared.

I mean disappeared, poof, it was just gone. It wasn't like it went into a cloud, it just vanished, like faster than a blink of the eye and I didn't see it again.

I had the strangest feeling that I saw something that I wasn't meant to see.

The lights I saw were east of Las Vegas near Nellis Air Force Base, over what we call Sunrise Mountain (real name is Frenchman Mountain), kind of low in the sky, maybe a 45 degrees from the horizon. A plane at that degree would have been very high and far away and just a dot. This looked to be only about 10 miles away.

I was just wondering if anyone else saw the same thing and reported this sighting?

This isn't the first weird sighting I've seen, I've reported to Mufon before a few years ago. Of course Area 51 isn't that far away.

Another weird light I saw was few months ago at night, I didn't record the date and time, sorry, I saw what looked to be a star but it was moving slowly in the sky. If you had just looked upward in the night sky you would have thought it was just another star, but I was gazing at the stars and saw it moving, then a very bright light came off of it for about 3 seconds, like it was taking a night time photo, then it went back to being a slow moving star then it disappeared. I watched this for about 30 seconds. This was moving from north to south, was in the eastern sky, around 60 degrees (guessing) from the horizon.

Anyway, let me know if anyone else saw these latest lights too so that I know I'm not seeing things.

NBA's Superstar LeBron James May Become a Knick

By Brynn Thompson

Rumblings have surfaced recently that make it seem further possible that LeBron James will be coming aboard with New York after this season.

When LeBron turns into a free agent in the end of the 2010 season, the Cavs will be in the number one position to re-sign him. This is because of the Larry Bird rule, which allows a team to go over the salary limit in order to extend their own free agent.

The New York Knicks will give James a huge deal, although they will not have the talent to offer LeBron as a lot as the Cavaliers. So they got inventive in the big city and found a way to sidestep that darned salary cap.

The rumor is that the Knicks will not only give LeBron a max contract, however additionally his own cable channel. As you can know, the Knicks are wholly owned by Cablevision, a cable TV giant.

LeBron might receive income from the advertisers on his cable channel. According to NBA regulations, the franchise would not be permitted to set up these advertisements/sponsors for LeBron; he might need to do that himself. But I think we would all acknowledge that LeBron possesses enough connections in the commercial sphere to make this possible.

Assumption is that the television network would show reruns of New York basketball games (whose rights are owned by Cablevision), as well as other programming regarding LeBron, the Knicks, in addition to the league. Some have even predicted that Nike would seek to be involved and create their own television series.

The large issue is whether the NBA would consent to this. It seems to be fully within league regulations. The cable television network might be seen as a marginal privilege of playing in New York, similar to a amount of other advertising benefits that come from playing in a particular city. The income would be perceived as non-basketball related revenue.

This is a new and interesting twist in the LeBron-to-be-a-free agent saga. The broad consensus has been that the Cavs are leading the race. Possibly that's starting to change?

About the Author:

If you like basketball, visit the basketball forums at RootZoo. Play trivia questions and get hooked.

Tomatoes thrive on urine diet

sanationupdates.wordpress.com
September 15, 2009 ·

Using human urine as a fertiliser produces bumper crops of tomatoes that are safe to eat, scientists have found.

Their research was published in August 2009 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Surendra Pradhan, an environmental biology researcher at the University of Kuopio, Finland, and colleagues gave potted tomato plants one of three treatments: mineral fertiliser, urine and wood ash, urine only, and no fertiliser. Urine is rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Yields for plants fertilised with urine quadrupled and matched those of mineral-fertilised plants. The urine-fertilised tomatoes also contained more protein and were safe for human consumption.

Pradhan says that the method is a free alternative to expensive mineral fertiliser, which is also not easily available in remote or hilly areas. Pradhan also believes that the idea could improve sanitation by incentivising toilet-building.

A pilot programme based on the research will be launched in Nepal in November [2009] , says Pradhan.

But Håkan Jönsson, eco-agriculture and sanitation system technology expert at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Sweden, told SciDev.Net: “The amount [of urine] that can be collected from a person or a family is fairly small (equivalent to about two bags of fertiliser per year for a west African family).[The technique] is of great value to a subsistence farmer but does not suffice for even a medium-scale cash-crop farm.”

He adds that to fertilise larger areas, many urine-diverting toilets would have to be linked up to a good transportation system.

There are also cultural issues. In most cultures, Jönsson says, faeces are considered impure and urine is viewed in a similar way, even though the hygiene risk associated with it is minimal.

Pradhan says that studies will be done to assess how acceptable the idea is in different cultures. His team will also investigate ways of decontaminating any faecal matter in urine collected from a toilet using a jerry can.

He adds: “For large-scale implementation of this idea, we are trying to find different methods to reduce the volume of the urine in economic way, without losing the nutrients”.

Link to full article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry [750kb]

Commentary: Drinking age of 21 doesn't work

By John M. McCardell, Jr.
Special to CNN

Editor's note: John M. McCardell Jr., president emeritus at Middlebury College, is founder and president of Choose Responsibility, a nonprofit organization that seeks to engage the public in debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age.


John McCardell says the 21-year-old drinking age isn't preventing widespread binge drinking.

(CNN) -- One year ago, a group of college and university presidents and chancellors, eventually totaling 135, issued a statement that garnered national attention.

The "Amethyst Initiative" put a debate proposition before the public -- "Resolved: That the 21-year-old drinking age is not working." It offered, in much the way a grand jury performs its duties, sufficient evidence for putting the proposition to the test. It invited informed and dispassionate public debate and committed the signatory institutions to encouraging that debate. And it called on elected officials not to continue assuming that, after 25 years, the status quo could not be challenged, even improved.

One year later, the drinking age debate continues, and new research reinforces the presidential impulse. Just this summer a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry revealed that, among college-age males, binge drinking is unchanged from its levels of 1979; that among non-college women it has increased by 20 percent; and that among college women it has increased by 40 percent.

Remarkably, the counterintuitive conclusion drawn by the investigators, and accepted uncritically by the media, including editorials in The New York Times and The Washington Post is that the study proves that raising the drinking age to 21 has been a success.

More recently, a study of binge drinking published in the Journal of the American Medical Association announced that "despite efforts at prevention, the prevalence of binge drinking among college students is continuing to rise, and so are the harms associated with it."

Worse still, a related study has shown that habits formed at 18 die hard: "For each year studied, a greater percentage of 21- to 24-year-olds [those who were of course once 18, 19 and 20] engaged in binge drinking and driving under the influence of alcohol."

Yet, in the face of mounting evidence that those young adults age 18 to 20 toward whom the drinking age law has been directed are routinely -- indeed in life- and health-threatening ways -- violating it, there remains a belief in the land that a minimum drinking age of 21 has been a "success." And elected officials are periodically reminded of a provision in the 1984 law that continues to stifle any serious public debate in our country's state legislative chambers: Any state that sets its drinking age lower than 21 forfeits 10 percent of its annual federal highway appropriation.

This statement may seem obvious, but not necessarily. In 1984 Congress passed and the president signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. The Act, which raised the drinking age to 21 under threat of highway fund withholding, sought to address the problem of drunken driving fatalities. And indeed, that problem was serious.

States that lowered their ages during the 1970s and did nothing else to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol witnessed an alarming increase in alcohol-related traffic fatalities. It was as though the driving age were lowered but no drivers education were provided. The results were predictable.

Now, 25 years later, we are in a much different, and better, place. Thanks to the effective public advocacy of organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, we are far more aware of the risks of drinking and driving. Automobiles are much safer.

Seatbelts and airbags are mandatory. The "designated driver" is now a part of our vocabulary. And more and more states are mandating ignition interlocks for first-time DUI offenders, perhaps the most effective way to get drunken drivers off the road.

And the statistics are encouraging. Alcohol-related fatalities have declined over the last 25 years. Better still, they have declined in all age groups, though the greatest number of deaths occurs at age 21, followed by 22 and 23. We are well on the way to solving a problem that vexed us 25 years ago.

The problem today is different. The problem today is reckless, goal-oriented alcohol consumption that all too often takes place in clandestine locations, where enforcement has proven frustratingly difficult. Alcohol consumption among young adults is not taking place in public places or public view or in the presence of other adults who might help model responsible behavior. But we know it is taking place.

If not in public, then where? The college presidents who signed the Amethyst Initiative know where. It happens in "pre-gaming" sessions in locked dorm rooms where students take multiple shots of hard alcohol in rapid succession, before going to a social event where alcohol is not served. It happens in off-campus apartments beyond college boundaries and thus beyond the presidents' authority; and it happens in remote fields to which young adults must drive.

And the Amethyst presidents know the deadly result: Of the 5,000 lives lost to alcohol each year by those under 21, more than 60 percent are lost OFF the roadways, according to the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.

The principal problem of 2009 is not drunken driving. The principal problem of 2009 is clandestine binge drinking.

That is why the Amethyst presidents believe a public debate is so urgent. The law does not say drink responsibly or drink in moderation. It says don't drink. To those affected by it, those who in the eyes of the law are, in every other respect legal adults, it is Prohibition. And it is incomprehensible.

The principal impediment to public debate is the 10 percent highway penalty. That penalty should be waived for those states that choose to try something different, which may turn out to be something better. But merely adjusting the age -- up or down -- is not really the way to make a change.

We should prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol in the same way we prepare them to operate a motor vehicle: by first educating and then licensing, and permitting them to exercise the full privileges of adulthood so long as they demonstrate their ability to observe the law.

Licensing would work like drivers education -- it would involve a permit, perhaps graduated, allowing the holder the privilege of purchasing, possessing and consuming alcohol, as each state determined, so long as the holder had passed an alcohol education course and observed the alcohol laws of the issuing state.

Most of the rest of the world has come out in a different place on the drinking age. The United States is one of only four countries -- the others are Indonesia, Mongolia and Palau -- with an age as high as 21. All others either have no minimum age or have a lower age, generally 18, with some at 16.

Young adults know that. And, in their heart of hearts, they also know that a law perceived as unjust, a law routinely violated, can over time breed disrespect for law in general.

Slowly but surely we may be seeing a change in attitude. This summer, Dr. Morris Chafetz, a distinguished psychiatrist, a member of the presidential commission that recommended raising the drinking age, and the founder of the National Institute for Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse admitted that supporting the higher drinking age is "the most regrettable decision of my entire professional career." This remarkable statement did not receive the attention it merited.

Alcohol is a reality in the lives of young adults. We can either try to change the reality -- which has been our principal focus since 1984, by imposing Prohibition on young adults 18 to 20 -- or we can create the safest possible environment for the reality.

A drinking age minimum of 21 has not changed the reality. It's time to try something different.

It's not 1984 anymore.

Patrick Swayze Dies at 57

Story photo: omg.yahoo.com Publicist: Patrick Swayze dies at 57 - In this Nov. 28, 2005 file photo, actor Patrick Swayze poses for the photographers, prior to the premiere of his new film 'Keeping Mum' at a Leicester Square cinema in central London. Swayze's publicist Annett Wolf says the 57-year-old 'Dirty Dancing' actor died Monday, Sept. 14, 2009, after a nearly two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, file)Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into viewers' hearts with "Dirty Dancing" and then broke them with "Ghost," died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

"Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months," said a statement released Monday evening by his publicist, Annett Wolf. No other details were given.

Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer.

He had kept working despite the diagnosis, putting together a memoir with his wife and shooting "The Beast," an A&E drama series for which he had already made the pilot. It drew a respectable 1.3 million viewers when the 13 episodes ran in 2009, but A&E said it had reluctantly decided not to renew it for a second season.

Swayze said he opted not to use painkilling drugs while making "The Beast" because they would have taken the edge off his performance. He acknowledged that time might be running out given the grim nature of the disease.

When he first went public with the illness, some reports gave him only weeks to live, but his doctor said his situation was "considerably more optimistic" than that.

"I'd say five years is pretty wishful thinking," Swayze told ABC's Barbara Walters in early 2009. "Two years seems likely if you're going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I'd better get a fire under it."

A three-time Golden Globe nominee, Swayze became a star with his performance as the misunderstood bad-boy Johnny Castle in "Dirty Dancing." As the son of a choreographer who began his career in musical theater, he seemed a natural to play the role.

A coming-of-age romance starring Jennifer Grey as an idealistic young woman on vacation with her family and Swayze as the Catskills resort's sexy (and much older) dance instructor, the film made great use of both his grace on his feet and his muscular physique.

It became an international phenomenon in the summer of 1987, spawning albums, an Oscar-winning hit song in "(I've Had) the Time of My Life," stage productions and a sequel, 2004's "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights," in which he made a cameo.

Swayze performed and co-wrote a song on the soundtrack, the ballad "She's Like the Wind," inspired by his wife, Lisa Niemi. The film also gave him the chance to utter the now-classic line, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

And it allowed him to poke fun at himself on a "Saturday Night Live" episode, in which he played a wannabe Chippendales dancer alongside the corpulent and frighteningly shirtless Chris Farley.

A major crowdpleaser, the film drew only mixed reviews from critics, though Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times, "Given the limitations of his role, that of a poor but handsome sex-object abused by the rich women at Kellerman's Mountain House, Mr. Swayze is also good. ... He's at his best -- as is the movie -- when he's dancing."

Swayze followed that up with the 1989 action flick "Road House," in which he played a bouncer at a rowdy bar. But it was his performance in 1990's "Ghost" that showed his vulnerable, sensitive side. He starred as a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee (Demi Moore) -- with great frustration and longing -- through a psychic played by Whoopi Goldberg.

Swayze said at the time that he fought for the role of Sam Wheat (director Jerry Zucker wanted Kevin Kline) but once he went in for an audition and read six scenes, he got it.

Why did he want the part so badly? "It made me cry four or five times," he said of Bruce Joel Rubin's Oscar-winning script in an AP interview.

"Ghost" provided yet another indelible musical moment: Swayze and Moore sensually molding pottery together to the strains of the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody." It also earned a best-picture nomination and a supporting-actress Oscar for Goldberg, who said she wouldn't have won if it weren't for Swayze.

"When I won my Academy Award, the only person I really thanked was Patrick," Goldberg said in March 2008 on the ABC daytime talk show "The View."

Swayze himself earned three Golden Globe nominations, for "Dirty Dancing," "Ghost" and 1995's "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," which further allowed him to toy with his masculine image. The role called for him to play a drag queen on a cross-country road trip alongside Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo.

His heartthrob status almost kept him from being considered for the role of Vida Boheme.

"I couldn't get seen on it because everyone viewed me as terminally heterosexually masculine-macho," he told the AP then. But he transformed himself so completely that when his screen test was sent to Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin pictures produced "To Wong Foo," Spielberg didn't recognize him.

Among his earlier films, Swayze was part of the star-studded lineup of up-and-comers in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel "The Outsiders," alongside Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane. Swayze played Darrel "Dary" Curtis, the oldest of three wayward brothers -- and essentially the father figure -- in a poor family in small-town Oklahoma.

Other '80s films included "Red Dawn," "Grandview U.S.A." (for which he also provided choreography) and "Youngblood," once more with Lowe, as Canadian hockey teammates.

In the '90s, he made such eclectic films as "Point Break" (1991), in which he played the leader of a band of bank-robbing surfers, and the family Western "Tall Tale" (1995), in which he starred as Pecos Bill. He appeared on the cover of People magazine as its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991, but his career tapered off toward the end of the 1990s, when he also had stay in rehab for alcohol abuse. In 2001, he appeared in the cult favorite "Donnie Darko," and in 2003 he returned to the New York stage with "Chicago"; 2006 found him in the musical "Guys and Dolls" in London.

Swayze was born in 1952 in Houston, the son of Jesse Swayze and choreographer Patsy Swayze, whose films include "Urban Cowboy."

He played football but also was drawn to dance and theater, performing with the Feld, Joffrey and Harkness Ballets and appearing on Broadway as Danny Zuko in "Grease." But he turned to acting in 1978 after a series of injuries.

Within a couple years of moving to Los Angeles, he made his debut in the roller-disco movie "Skatetown, U.S.A." The eclectic cast included Scott Baio, Flip Wilson, Maureen McCormack and Billy Barty.

Swayze had a couple of movies in the works when his diagnosis was announced, including the drama "Powder Blue," starring Jessica Biel, Forest Whitaker and his younger brother, Don, which was scheduled for release this year.

Off-screen, he was an avid conservationist who was moved by his time in Africa to shine a light on "man's greed and absolute unwillingness to operate according to Mother Nature's laws," he told the AP in 2004.

Swayze was married since 1975 to Niemi, a fellow dancer who took lessons with his mother; they met when he was 19 and she was 15. A licensed pilot, Niemi would fly her husband from Los Angeles to Northern California for treatment at Stanford University Medical Center, People magazine reported in a cover story.

WARNING ASPARTAME IS POISON!!!!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

SWEET POISON A MUST READ

 


In October of 2001, my sister started getting very sick. She had stomach spasms and she was having a hard time getting around. Walking was a major chore. It took everything she had just to get out of bed; she was in so much pain.

By March 2002, she had undergone several tissue and muscle biopsies and was on 24 various prescription medications. The doctors could not determine what was wrong with her. She was in so much pain, and so sick she just knew she was dying. She put her house, bank accounts, life insurance, etc., in her oldest daughter's name, and made sure that her younger children were to be taken care of.

She also wanted her last hooray, so she planned a trip to Florida (basically in a wheelchair) for March 22nd. On March 19 I called her to ask how her most recent tests went, and she said they didn't find anything on the test, but they believe she had MS. I recalled an article a friend of mine e-mailed to me and I asked my sister if she drank diet soda? She told me that she did. As a matter of fact, she was getting ready to crack one open that moment.

I told her not to open it, and to stop drinking the diet soda! I e-mailed her article my friend, a lawyer, had sent. My sister called me within 32 hours after our phone conversation and told me she had stopped drinking the diet soda AND she could walk! The muscle spasms went away. She said she didn't feel 100% but, she sure felt a lot better. She told me she was going to her doctor with this article and would call me when she got home.

Well, she called me, and said her doctor was amazed! He is going to call all of his MS patients to find out if they consumed artificial sweeteners of any kind. In a nutshell, she was being poisoned by the Aspartame in the diet soda...and literally dying a slow and miserable death. When she got to Florida March 22, all she had to take was one pill, and that was a pill for the Aspartame poisoning! She is well on her way to a complete recovery.
And she is walking! No wheelchair!

This article saved her life. If it says 'SUGAR FREE' on the label;
DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! I have spent several days lecturing at the WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE on 'ASPARTAME,' marketed as 'Nutra Sweet,'
'Equal,' and 'Spoonful.'

In the keynote address by the EPA, it was announced that in the United States in 2001 there is an epidemic of multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus. It was difficult to determine exactly what toxin was causing this to be rampant. I stood up and said that I was there to lecture on exactly that subject. I will explain why Aspartame is so dangerous: When the temperature of this sweetener exceeds 86 degrees F, the wood alcohol in ASPARTAME converts to formaldehyde and then to formic acid, which in turn causes metabolic acidosis.. Formic acid is the poison found in the sting of fire ants. The methanol toxicity mimics, among other conditions, multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus.

Many people were being diagnosed in error. Although multiple sclerosis is not a death sentence, Methanol toxicity is!

Systemic lupus has become almost as rampant as multiple sclerosis, especially with Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi drinkers.

The victim usually does not know that the Aspartame is the culprit. He or she continues its use; irritating the lupus to such a degree that it may become a life-threatening condition.
We have seen patients with systemic lupus become asymptotic, once taken off diet sodas.

In cases of those diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, most of the symptoms disappear. We've seen many cases where vision loss returned and hearing loss improved markedly.

This also applies to cases of tinnitus and fibromyalgia. During a lecture, I said,
'If you are using ASPARTAME ( Nutra Sweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc ) and you suffer from fibromyalgia symptoms, spasms, shooting, pains, numbness in your legs,
Cramps,
Vertigo,
Dizziness,
Headaches,
Tinnitus,
Joint pain,
Unexplainable depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, blurred vision, or memory loss you probably have ASPARTAME poisoning!' People were jumping up during the lecture saying, 'I have some of these symptoms. Is it reversible?'

Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
STOP drinking diet sodas and be alert for Aspartame on food labels! Many products are fortified with it! This is a serious problem. Dr. Espart (one of my speakers) remarked that so many people seem to be symptomatic for MS and during his recent visit to a hospice; a nurse stated that six of her friends, who were heavy Diet Cokeaddicts, had all been diagnosed with MS. This is beyond coincidence!

Diet soda is NOT a diet product! It is a chemically altered, multiple SODIUM (salt) and ASPARTAME containing product that actually makes you crave carbohydrates.

It is far more likely to make you GAIN weight!

These products also contain formaldehyde, which stores in the fat cells, particularly in the hips and thighs. Formaldehyde is an absolute toxin and is used primarily to preserve 'tissue specimens.' Many products we use every day contain this chemical but we SHOULD NOT store it IN our body!

Dr. H. J. Roberts stated in his lectures that once free of the ' diet products ' and with no significant increase in exercise; his patients lost an average of 19 pounds over a trial period.

Aspartame is especially dangerous for diabetics. We found that some physicians, who believed that they had a patient with retinopathy, in fact, had symptoms caused by Aspartame. The Aspartame drives the blood sugar out of control. Thus diabetics may suffer acute memory loss due to the fact that aspartic acid and phenylalanine are NEUROTOXIC when taken without the other amino acids necessary for a good balance.

Treating diabetes is all about BALANCE. Especially with diabetics, the Aspartame passes the blood/brain barrier and it then deteriorates the neurons of the brain; causing various levels of brain damage,
Seizures,
Depression,
Manic depression,
Panic attacks,
Uncontrollable anger and rage.

Consumption of Aspartame causes these same symptoms in non-diabetics as well.
Documentation and observation also reveal that thousands of children diagnosed with ADD and ADHD have had complete turnarounds in their behavior when these chemicals have been removed from their diet.

So called 'behavior modification prescription drugs' (Ritalin and others) are no longer needed. Truth be told, they were never NEEDED in the first place! Most of these children were being 'poisoned' on a daily basis with the very foods that were 'better for them than sugar.'

It is also suspected that the Aspartame in thousands of pallets of diet Coke and diet Pepsi consumed by men and women fighting in the Gulf War, may be partially to blame for the well-known Gulf War Syndrome. Dr. Roberts warns that it can cause birth defects, i.e. mental retardation, if taken at the time of conception and during early pregnancy. Children are especially at risk for neurological disorders and should NEVER be given artificial sweeteners.

There are many different case histories to relate of children suffering grand mal seizures and other neurological disturbances talking about a plague of neurological diseases directly caused by the use of this deadly poison.' Herein lies the problem: There were Congressional Hearings when Aspartame was included in 100 different products and strong objection was made concerning its use. Since this initial hearing, there have been two subsequent hearings, and still nothing has been done. The drug and chemical lobbies have very deep pockets.

Sadly, MONSANTO'S patent on Aspartame has EXPIRED! There are now over 5,000 products on the market that contain this deadly chemical and there will be thousands more introduced. Everybody wants a 'piece of the Aspartame pie.'

I assure you that MONSANTO, the creator of Aspartame, knows how deadly it is.
And isn't it ironic that MONSANTO funds, among others, the American Diabetes Association, the American Dietetic Association and the Conference of the American College of Physicians? This has been recently exposed in the New York Times. These [organizations] cannot criticize any additives or convey their link to MONSANTO because they take money from the food industry and are required to endorse their products.

Senator Howard Metzenbaum wrote and presented a bill that would require label warnings on products containing Aspartame, especially regarding pregnant women, children and infants.

The bill would also institute independent studies on the known dangers and the problems existing in the general population regarding seizures, changes in brain chemistry, neurological changes and behavioral symptoms.

The bill was killed.

It is known that the powerful drug and chemical lobbies are responsible for this, letting loose the hounds of disease and death on an unsuspecting and uninformed public. Well, you're informed now!

YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW!

Ellen DeGeneres is the new full-time judge on “American Idol.”

LOS ANGELES, Calif. --accesshollywood.com

The TV talk show host announced the news during a taping of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” on Wednesday that she is the new “Idol” judge, filling a seat left vacant by Paula Abdul, who chose not to return to the show last month.

“I have a big announcement to make. No one knows this. I just finally got the OK … just moments ago to announce this to you today…I am going to be the new judge on ‘American Idol,’” Ellen told her audience on Wednesday afternoon, for her show which will air on Thursday.

Although Ellen is known for being one of the funniest ladies on television, the news was no joke, as the announcement was confirmed to Access Hollywood by a rep for FOX.

“I could not be more excited to have Ellen join the ‘American Idol’ family,” Simon Fuller, the show’s creator and executive producer, said in a statement issued to Access Hollywood. “Ellen has been a fan of the show for many years, and her love of music and understanding of the American public will bring a unique human touch to our judging panel. I can’t wait for this next season to begin.”

However, Ellen will remain the host of her talk show, she promised her audience.

“I’m not leaving here. Don’t worry about that. I’m going to have a day job and a night job,” she said. “The times we’re living… in we’re all doing that.”

Ellen called her additional job “exciting” and explained that her judging credentials are accentuated by the fact she has watched the show – which begins its ninth season in January – since it began on FOX.

“I don’t know how it happened myself but I have not missed one episode of that show. I’ve watched every single thing,” she said. “I love everything about it and I love music, as you know. Hopefully I’m the people’s point of view because I’m just like you. I sit at home and I watch it and I don’t have that technical… I’m not looking at it in a critical way from the producer’s mind. I’m looking at it as a person who is going to buy the music and is going to relate to that person. So I’m hopefully going to be that voice of what we’re all doing at home.”

“American Idol’s” Executive Producer Cecile Frot-Coutaz said in a statement to Access Hollywood the show is thrilled to have Ellen on board.

“We’re all delighted to have Ellen join our ninth season of ‘American Idol,’” she said. “Beyond her incredible sense of humor and love of music, she brings with her an immense warmth and compassion that is almost palpable. She is one of America’s foremost entertainers, and we cannot wait to have her join our team.”

Deputy Dumb Ass Crashes SUV into Starbucks - DUI Charges

azcentral.com

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - An off-duty Sacramento County Sheriff's deputy faces felony DUI charges a day after she drove her SUV through the front of a Starbucks coffee shop, injuring three people, according to Sacramento police.

Sacramento police spokesman Norm Leong said investigators suspect Lisa Gargano, 37, was under the influence of prescription drugs Sunday morning when she lost control of her vehicle and drove through the front of the store in Natomas, Calif.

Two people inside, a woman in her 80s and a Starbucks employee in his 20s, suffered nonlife-threatening injuries.

Witnesses said the elderly woman was pinned between the SUV and the front counter after the vehicle crashed through the bar area, Leong said. Gargano and the two victims were transported to local hospitals.

Leong said Gargano also crashed into the curb and a car in the parking lot before driving into the storefront. Gargano was arrested on a felony charge of driving under the influence, Leong said.

Gargano has been a Sacramento County Sheriff's deputy since 2001 and was assigned to the department's north patrol unit, Sacramento County Sheriff's Sgt. Tim Curran said.

Curran said Gargano was placed on paid administrative leave.

VIDEO

TSK TSK Tila Tequila Jailed San Diego Charger Shawne Merriman for Battery and False Imprisonmment

community.livejournal.com

San Diego Chargers star outside linebacker Shawne Merriman was arrested Sunday and accused of choking and restraining his girlfriend, reality TV star Tila Tequila, as she tried to leave his suburban home.

Sheriff’s deputies got the call at 3:45 a.m. on Sunday from a woman who claimed to have been choked and thrown to the ground by the player at his home on Sagecrest Drive in Poway.

“Nguyen told deputies she had been choked and physically restrained by Merriman when she attempted to leave his residence,” San Diego County Sheriff's spokesperson Jan Caldwell said.

Tequila, 27, signed a citizen's arrest warrant, charging Merriman with battery and false imprisonment, San Diego County Sheriff's Lt. Gary Steadman said.

Merriman, 25, was taken into custody and booked into the central jail at about 8:30 a.m. He was released shortly after 11 a.m. Caldwell said she didn't know if he posted bail or was released on his own recognizance.

The linebacker’s lawyer talked briefly with reporters outside the San Diego County Jail downtown Sunday. He denied the allegations and claimed that Merriman and Nguyen were at a party at his Poway home with at least 14 other people.

“During the evening Ms. Tequila was extremely intoxicated, inebriated and Mr. Merriman did everything he could to assist her in arranging for transportation to leave his home. At no time did Mr. Merriman assault her; at no time did Mr. Merriman keep her against her will. His intentions were nothing but good,” Merriman’s attorney Todd Macaluso said.

Tequila requested an ambulance and was transported to Pomerado Hospital. She has since been released.

Caldwell said Sunday that deputies confirmed that Tequila had been drinking.

Click to Enlarge

Tequila, whose real name is Tila Nguyen, is best known for "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila," which ran for two seasons on MTV. The bisexual dating show featured men and women vying for Tequila's affections. She has also modeled for Playboy and other men's magazines.

Scott E. Leemon, an attorney for Tequila, said in a statement that neither she nor her representatives would comment publicly on the incident.

Stingaree management officials confirmed Sunday that Merriman and Tequila were a birthday celebration with friends in the Penthouse of the nightclub until 2 a.m. when the nightclub closed.

“They seemed in good spirits throughout the evening and were enjoying themselves. There was no outward indication of any problem between the two of them," Stingaree spokesperson Lauren Clifford said.

The Chargers, picked by some as Super Bowl favorites, open the regular season a week from Monday night at Oakland. Players had been off since after Friday night's exhibition finale against San Francisco. They are due back at practice on Monday.

“It’s disappointing to hear about the issue involving Shawne Merriman. We’ll continue to monitor the situation and let the legal process run its course,” General Manager of the San Diego Chargers A.J. Smith said in a statement released on Sunday afternoon.

The Chargers have faced a string of negative publicity after several arrests.

Chargers defensive tackle Jamal Williams was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving on Feb. 1., but the San Diego City Attorney's office decided to charge him with misdemeanor reckless driving after his blood-alcohol level showed 0.07 percent, under the state limit of 0.08.

Chargers receiver Vincent Jackson was arrested for investigation of DUI on Jan. 6, five days before San Diego's playoff loss at Pittsburgh.

In 2006, there were seven run-ins with the law by Chargers players, including linebacker Steve Foley's shooting by an off-duty Coronado police officer who suspected him of drunken driving, and two other players who were arrested for investigation of DUI.

Besides the arrests, linebacker Shawne Merriman was suspended four games for testing positive for steroids in 2006, and linebacker Stephen Cooper was suspended by the NFL for the first four games of the 2008 season after testing positive for a banned stimulant.

Merriman was the 12th overall pick out of the University of Maryland in the 2005 draft, and had 39 1/2 sacks in his first three seasons. The three-time Pro Bowl selection was getting back into shape after missing nearly all of last season following knee surgery.

It’s now up to the District Attorney’s office whether they will uphold the charges. If they do uphold the charges, Merriman is expected to be arraigned next week.

“He’s done absolutely nothing wrong; he looks forward to the football season. He’s ready to go and this is merely an incident that was unfortunate that should never had occurred and was a result, directly, of Ms. Tequila’s conduct and the way she conducted herself in Mr. Merriman’s home,” Macaluso said. “We are very confident this matter will be resolved without any charges being filed whatsoever.”

This guy is a liar. How do you know he's lying?

Have You Seen ME? Missing Children

Cick on image to enlarge
Always phone 911,or the Police,

FIRST... upon finding your loved one is missing.


Many families are seeking assistance to gain public awareness of their missing family member. Unfortunately, the media industry is ever-changing and may only provide coverage, for a limited time, before they move on to other cases. At LostNMissing, Inc. we want to continue to bring awareness to the public and support all ways possible with media, internet, and public awareness.

Our goal, at LostNMissing,Inc. is to utilize all possible avenues in order to help bring a missing loved one home. In some cases, unfortunately, to help bring closure for the family on those that have passed.

We are also a "one-stop" location that provides resources, educational and informative needs to help enlighten the general public on ways to protect your family members from becoming missing.

Should a loved one become missing, our services provide the tools necessary for family members to obtain assistance, at no charge, to support their efforts in helping to find their lost or missing loved one. (Always call 9-1-1 first!) A proactive approach will be taken to assist with the marketing and media awareness of a missing loved one upon proof of a filed police report or, in some cases, a publicly posted newspaper article available online.


LostNMissing, Inc. is presently seeking a 501c(3) nonprofit status in order to accept donations for their dedicated work and to help improve ways to assist families of missing loved ones, as well as community programs and workshops. At present, all work is voluntary. Once a 501c (3) is completed, services will continue to be provided at no charge.



It is our hope that you happened upon our website for educational purposes and to view our database, and not because you are experiencing the pain of a missing loved one.

How do Drugs get in the US? Video

Diet may cut cow fart emissions

Friday, 04 September 2009
sceincealert.com.au

Everybody loves a good fart joke, but the rise in methane emissions is no laughing matter when it comes to global warming.

Now, James Cook University nutritionist Dr Tony Parker thinks he has found a way to decrease this output and he will be testing it on a herd of heifers at the University’s Townsville campus.

Methane is considered more damaging to the ozone layer than Carbon Dioxide and according to researchers, the world’s cattle population accounts for up to 20 per cent of methane emissions from human-related activities.

Dr Parker, from JCU’s School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, and collaborator Professor Rocky de Nys, from JCU’s School of Marine and Tropical Biology, have just received a $7,000 Collaboration Across Boundaries grant to prove their theory that feeding seaweed to cattle will improve their digestion and in turn result in less methane released into the atmosphere.

“Orkney sheep are ruminants that live off seaweed and they do very well on such a diet; so the obvious question is, why can’t cows?” said Dr Parker.

“I like to call it the reef and beef project because it has far reaching implications that come full circle: starting with seaweed, taking in the beef and aquaculture industries, and extending back out to the sea to help conserve the Great Barrier Reef.”

Professor de Nys said that many aquaculture farms used seaweeds and algae to clean their ponds and effluent streams of the waste from fish and crustaceans.

“Effluent water contains nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous which are responsible in part for the breakdown of aquatic ecosystems in the Inner Great Barrier Reef,” Professor de Nys said.

“At present, however, there is little incentive provided to farmers to use this bioremediation method as it means they will often be left with a huge biomass that they don’t know what to do with and which has little to no financial value.

“Cattle produce a lot of methane due to their diet. Seaweed, algae and other sea grasses have been proven to be much more digestible than land grass because they have less cellulose and more starch. A better diet for cattle, then, will encourage better digestion and thus lead to a decrease in methane emissions.

“If we can get the beef and aquaculture industries to work together on this we can not only help them reduce their impact on the environment but also improve their profitability,” Professor de Nys said.

The hope is that the incentive to sell their seaweed to beef producers will lead to more aquaculture farmers, and perhaps agricultural farmers, adopting environmentally-friendly algal bioremediation methods to clean their water. By improving the digestion of cattle, growth and milk yield rates will also rise.

Dr Parker said that at least 50 per cent of the global cattle population was located in developing nations, many of which are in the tropics.

“Beef cattle production is the largest animal-based primary industry in the tropics,” Dr Parker said.

“The quality of the pasture often deteriorates in the winter compromising animal growth and increasing methane emissions. If seaweed can improve on that and at the same time contribute to a reduction in global warming then we’re going to give it a go.”

Two species of ‘green tide algae’ (Cladophora coelothrix and Chaetomorpha indicia), identified as the best for bioremediation of pond effluence due to their hardiness, fast growth and efficient nutrient uptake, will be used for the experiment.

A herd of tropically-adapted Bos indicus heifers will be split into six groups and, over 28 days, fed a basal diet of tropical forage hay. Each group will have an increased inclusion of dried green tide algae added to their feed to establish the amount of seagrass that can be tolerated by the cows to maintain a healthy, productive weight and milk yield.

Dr Parker will also have the unenviable task of measuring at what quantity the seaweed is most effective in terms of reducing methane emissions.

“I’m not looking forward to that part of the process,” he admitted.

Pit Bull Eats Infants Toes

September 03, 2009 4:37 PM

LINDELL KAY

The grandmother of an infant whose toes were bitten off by a pit bull Monday is defending the child’s parents who were charged with child abuse.

She says it could have happened to anyone.

“My daughter loved her children and would do any thing for them,” Belinda Baker said of Robbie Lynn Jenkins, 20, who along with the child’s father, Tremayne Jerel Spillman, 23, remain in the Onslow County Jail charged with negligent child abuse resulting in serious physical injury and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Jenkins bond was set at $50,000 and Spillman’s bond is $57,500, because he was also served with outstanding 2006 warrants for attempted breaking and entering.

The child, 4-month-old Tremayne Jerel Spillman Jr., remains in stable condition at Pitt Memorial Hospital. Baker is upset that she has not been allowed to visit him.

“I haven’t been charged with anything,” she said. “I have not been arrested. Why can’t I see my grandchild?”

The 12-week-old pit bull puppy had to be euthanized so a rabies test, which requires a brain sample, could be performed. The test came back negative, Onslow County Animal Control officials said Wednesday.

Baker said the puppy is at the heart of her daughter’s legal troubles because the Onslow County Sheriff’s Department only arrested her because of whom the puppy belonged to.

Jenkins and Spillman were watching the dog for a neighbor, Aaron Watkins, 36, who was in the Onslow County Jail under a $7,500 bond at the time after being charged with possession of a firearm by a felon, discharging a firearm and possession of marijuana.

Baker said Jenkins and Spillman barely knew Watkins, but Spillman can clearly be heard telling a dispatcher “it’s my buddy’s puppy” while on the phone to 911 Monday morning, according to the emergency recording obtained by The Daily News.

Baker said authorities do not like Watkins so they charged Spillman and her daughter.

She said her daughter was struggling to provide for her three children but was a good parent.

“She did everything she could for them,” she said. “When they lived in Pennsylvania, my daughter would carry her kids on her back in the snow to get them to doctor’s appointments.”

Baker said her daughter is a cancer survivor who is taking Xanex and sleep-aid medications. Neighbors in the Murrill Hill Road mobile home park told reporters earlier in the week that Jenkins had locked the puppy in the bathroom before going to sleep and one of her two other children must have let it out during the night. The infant was on a foldout couch in the living room. The dog nibbled on the child’s left foot until all five toes were gone.

During the hectic Monday morning 911 call, Spillman interrupted a dispatcher trying to explain how to stop the child’s bleeding to tell her “ma’am, we’re not bad parents.”

“I’m about to kill the dog,” Spillman says at one point during the call with the baby crying in the background. The dispatcher discourages him from hurting the animal.

Baker said her daughter was on heavy medication and she had a reason not to wake up when the infant cried out, but she was unsure why Spillman did not respond to the child’s cries.

Authorities sent Spillman and Jenkins to Onslow Memorial Hospital to have blood samples drawn. Blood tests are often used by law enforcement to determine what types of drugs a person has been taking.

Search warrants for the couple’s Murrill Hill Road home remain sealed.

Jenkins and Spillman went from the hospital to the Sheriff’s Department on Monday, Baker said. They were not on the run like the authorities tried to make it sound, she said.

The entire situation has been made into a spectacle by the media, Baker said, adding that her family was hurt by comments made by readers on local news sites.

For now, Jenkins and Spillman’s other two children are being cared for by one of Jenkins’ sisters.

Spillman and Jenkins are scheduled for a preliminary court hearing Sept. 22.

No Positive School Activities Encourage Students with Negative Behavior

NO SPORTS, NO BAND, NO HOMECOMING, NO PROM

Teens need social activities to keep busy and out of trouble. This fall we might see more than the occasional smashed pumpkin as bored teens find other outlets to keep themselves amused, like drugs and alcohol which leave to steeling from parents and neighbors.

USAToday article:

Gannett News Service - Sep 2nd, 2009

Instead of gearing up to run cross country for Grove City High School in Ohio, Andy Bennett is training for a marathon.

It will give the 16-year-old some consolation because sports programs and clubs at his school have been shut down. An hour after the last bell each afternoon, it’s lights out at the school.

Bennett and his classmates won’t have homecoming, prom or a student government - activities that, like sports, are fixtures in American high schools but no longer exist at Grove City because of a financial crisis.

That’s the plight of all students who attend South-Western City Schools, which serves part of Columbus and nearby towns and is Ohio’s sixth-largest school district. The district has been in dire financial straits for years and is being squeezed further by the economic downturn. By canceling activities, the district cut $2.5 million in expenses, district spokeswoman Sandy Nekoloff says.

“I thought it was the worst thing in the world,” Bennett says of the school board’s decision to cancel activities after a proposed property tax hike was rejected by voters in August, the third time it failed.

In this district, no one has been spared, not even Grove City High’s marching band. “There’s no football games. There’s nowhere for the marching band to march,” Nekoloff says.

High schools across the USA are reporting that the recession has led to similar financial difficulties for extracurricular programs, forcing cost-cutting that is particularly painful now, as fall sports seasons open. From Hawaii to Rhode Island, school systems are trimming compensation for coaches, eliminating transportation, adding or increasing athletic fees for students, holding fundraising drives, cutting back on night games to save electricity costs and dropping some sports and related events altogether.

In Nevada, this “is going to be the worst year financially for school districts in history - and 2010-11 is going to be worse,” says Eddie Bonine, executive director of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association. “We may be told to do more next year.”

In Michigan, Jamie Gent, athletics director at Haslett High near Lansing, says, “There’s no money, period. We’re coming to a stage in the next three years that if things don’t get better, (it could damage) sports altogether. Who do you pick? What stays? What sport doesn’t stay?”

Bennett says he was close to transferring to a school outside his district so he could earn his third varsity letter in cross country. His parents were willing to pay more than $3,000 for him to attend an out-of-district public school or private school, he says.

He knows of other families who are paying steep tuition so their teens can play sports.

Such a move from Grove City would have been difficult academically and socially, Bennett says. He is a top student taking Advanced Placement courses and didn’t want to hurt his chances of getting into his dream college, the Air Force Academy. “I’ve been in the Grove City public system forever,” he says. “Switching to another school with no friends was not very appealing.”

Some athletes may miss out

The mood at school is grim, others say. “We’re going to have all these idle hands,” says Drew Eschbach, who was the cross country coach.

Top-tier athletes will be OK, Eschbach says, because they will transfer to schools with better-funded programs or form their own clubs. He says he worries about average athletes who will miss out on the collegiality and sense of belonging that a team or club can provide.

Some in the community have accused school system officials of canceling activities to strong-arm residents into passing a tax increase. Nekoloff says activities were canceled after other cuts failed to help solve the financial problems. “We’ve had $22 million in reductions and more than 330 positions reduced over the past three years,” she says.

Residents will vote on a scaled-back property tax increase in November. The district estimates the new proposal would cost the owner of a $100,000 home an additional $18.89 a month in property taxes. The median household income for the area was $54,965 in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Pay-to-play plan considered

District officials are studying a pay-to-play model, which increasingly has been used across the country. Nekoloff says if South-Western’s proposed tax increase passes, the board could bring back activities under this system and students would share costs with the district.

At most schools, pay-to-play fees cover a portion of a team’s expenses and school districts kick in the rest. But those amounts can be disproportionate, as is the case at Brighton High School in Michigan.

Brighton offers 32 sports and fields 98 teams, enviable by any school’s standards. But the district funds only 38% of the athletic department’s nearly $1.5 million in expenditures; the other 62% is self-generated through fundraisers and fees, athletics director John Thompson says.

Athletes pay $175 a sport, although the fee for a third sport is waived. Students also pay transportation fees ranging from $30 to $70 a sport. Fees are waived for those with financial hardship.

“We’ve started chipping away at the model that existed when I was a kid,” Thompson says.

“Unfortunately, one day sports will be out there for people who have money. We can say we’ll take care of those without money, but I can tell you it will be the kids with talent. The average kid is going to get left behind. That whole development factor, they’re going to miss out on it.”

FDA says residue is frog or toad; how did it get in Pepsi can?

(CNN) -- The "disgusting" blob that Fred DeNegri's wife says she poured out of his Diet Pepsi can was probably a gutted frog or toad, the Food and Drug Administration said.

Amy DeNegri took pictures of the can in question right after her husband gagged on its contents.

DeNegri was grilling in his backyard tiki bar in Ormond Beach, Florida, when he popped open a can of Diet Pepsi, took a big gulp and started gagging, his wife, Amy, said.

He emptied out the can down a sink but something heavy remained inside. His wife took over and shook the can over a paper plate until something resembling "pink linguini" slid out, followed by "dark stuff," Amy DeNegri said.

"It was disgusting," said Amy DeNegri, 55. "And now, what started out as a normal afternoon in our tiki bar has blown up into this crazy thing."

The DeNegris took pictures before calling poison control and the FDA, which showed up the next day to examine the can in question and collect it for lab testing.

The couple received a copy of the completed report last week from the Food and Drug Administration Office of Regulatory Affairs, which concluded the foreign matter appeared to be a frog or a toad.

"The animal was lacking internal organs normally found in the abdominal and thoracic cavity," the report notes.

A second, closed can from the same 36-pack of Diet Pepsi from Sam's Club, was also submitted for testing, according to Amy DeNegri. No abnormalities were detected, the report states.

The FDA also conducted an investigation at the local Pepsi bottling plant in Orlando from August 4 to 11 and "did not find any adverse conditions or association to this problem," spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey said.

"We have not determined when or how the contamination occurred," DeLancey said in an e-mail.

Pepsi says the FDA results "affirmed" the company's confidence "in the quality of our products and the integrity of our manufacturing system," according to spokesman Jeff Dahncke.

"The speed of our production lines and the rigor of our quality control systems make it virtually impossible for this type of thing to happen in a production environment. In fact, there never has been even a single instance when a claim of this nature has been traced back to a manufacturing issue," Dahncke said in an e-mail.

"The FDA conducted a thorough inspection of our Orlando facility and found no cause for concern. In this case, the FDA simply was unable to determine when or how the specimen entered the package."

When asked if Pepsi believed it was not responsible for the animal getting into the can, Dahncke said, "We have addressed the facts of the investigation and stated our position. It's not appropriate for us to comment beyond that."

But the DeNegris say they're hopping mad over Pepsi's handling of the matter.

Amy DeNegri said she hasn't heard from Pepsi since the day after the incident occurred, when she spoke with someone over the phone. At first, the woman was apologetic, but DeNegri says her attitude changed after she told her that the FDA had taken the can for testing.

"She asked for my pictures, I sent them and never heard back," she said.

The retired school staffer says she and her husband are seeking legal advice to examine their options.

"I want to see Pepsi fess up to it and compensate my husband for the negative publicity they have caused," she said. "I'm easy, but they're the ones that are making it hard."