The Shoe Hero

In a region filled with political opposition and years of war and conflicts, Iraqis took to the streets not to fight but as a celebration for their newest national hero. The even happened Sunday night as President Bush was making his final speech in Iraq, an Iraq journalist named Muntader al-Zaidi threw his shoe at Bush shouting "This is a gift fro the Iraqis; this is the farwell kiss, you dog!" then he threw his other shoe shouting "This is from the windows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!" He was promply hauled off into the lobby where his screams could be heard as the presidents body guards beat him. Mr. Zaidi faces up to seven years in jail for committing an act of aggression against a visiting head of state. The ordeal lasted only a few minutes but it has almost all Iraqis singing. Many groups paraded threw the streets with shoes up on flag poles and in Damascus a signs reading "Oh, heroic jouranlist, thank you so much for all you have done." Mr. Zaidi, "provided a rare moment of unity in a region often at odds with itself." A man offered to pay $10 million to buy just one of the famous black dress shoes. A man who was closing up his shop to go out to celebrate with friends said "This is like a holiday, this is just what we needed for revenge"

Eggs, Peanuts, Soy, Milk, Wheat, Fish, Shellfish and Tree Nuts

90% of food allergies in children come from eight foods. They include egg, peanuts, soy, milk, wheat, fish, shellfish and tree nuts. Now 4% of the US population has food allergies, but ten or 15 years ago not much was taught about food allergies in medical training. Now you go to preschool and there are a lot of notes and precautions about kids there that have various food allergies. It's an increasing health risk and there aren't a lot of studies about it. Now there is an international study that is trying to search for the causes. The study is being conducted in Boston, Chicago and a province in China. They are skin prick testing in China and found that 12 to 16% of the rural population had reactions to shellfish and peanuts. But in the country overall under 1% are diagnosed. This is a very complex issue and all the answers have not been found yet. A boy in the study got kissed by his grandmother and something in her lipstick made his cheek break out in hives. Food Allergies can be life threatening, 200 die each year in the US and cause 30,000 trips to the emergency room. The study is only in it's beginnings and it will take awhile before enough is known to make any helpful conclusions.

Terrorism in Mumbai, is it all over for India?

This article is by one of the people who also wrote one of my articles for my research assignment. As I was reading the article I was thinking wow, this is really well written but I didn't know who the author was. After looking him up on google,(at first I thought he was a girl, the name sounds like mine). He is actually a really cool person who is an award winning journalist and has a high position in the UN. This is what he blogged about a week ago after the terrorist attacks on Mumbai; over it's long struggle, India has adapted to deal with tragedy. Their resilence and openness has made them strong. After earlier attack on Mumbai in 1993, stock traders went to work without computers, lights and a shattered building. They sold their stock the old fashion way, with yelling and shouting and paper. Bombs and bullets can not destroy India. Many of India's cities are open, with grand bridges welcoming those in by sea. Their mix of language, culture and 1,000's of good on the open market are found; these are all parts of great India. Now after these recent attacks India's openness can not fade, fear can not grip citizens of Mumbai, because then the terrorists win. India must continue to be the open, cultural place it was, without fear of smeared evil.

5 Truths About Heath Care in America

In five years health care will be one-fifth of the U.S. economy, and per-person; spending will nearly double. The U.S. spends far more money on health care than any other nation. We aren't very healthy respectively but we do make the most medical advances and innovations in the world. For every dollar the U.S. spends on health care 31 cents of it goes to hospital care, 21 to physician and clinical services and 9 to nursing home care. For all this money and energy we rank pretty low on almost every health statistic for developed nations. Our average life expectancy is 77.9 years only 34th in the world. Infant mortality rate is no better, we are tied with Poland and Slovakia as 29th in the world. Out of every 1,000 live births 6.9 babies die, this statistic is linked with economic status and a mother's access to health care. Even with all our great hospitals and research Americans fall far behind in the healthiness of our daily lives. Education, Income and Race and sex are key factors, smoking is on the decline but still half of men with GED diplomas are smokers, but just 6% of men with a graduate degree light up. Americas' top killers; heart disease, cancer and stroke now only account for 5 out of ever 10 deaths, less than the 7 out of 10 in 1980. Prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women are the most common forms of cancer, but they are also the most survivable. Even with our very interconnected world rural areas still do not have enough doctors available, plus the 45.6 million of Americans uninsured. Almost 32% of Hispanics are uninsured as well as 8.1 million children. America is starting to realize it's extremely poor state of health care, we are no where near our goal but we are getting there, slowly.

Freshly Squeezed

As food prices rise and grocery bills increase up to 7.5 %, the fastest rate in 18 years, food companies are going beneath the consumer radar to give people less for the same price. It's a trend that is just now being noticed by many regular grocery shoppers as they feel their carts becoming lighter and the bills becoming bigger. A Skippy Peanut butter can has a larger indent in the bottom making the new sized jar 16.3 oz instead of the old 18 oz for the same price. For companies it has become a large part of their business, General Mills has a new "Holistic Margin Management" team, devoted to saving the company millions but cutting seemingly unnoticeable margins in the packages of their products. The company is encouraging all employees to think of new ways to cut costs on packages, such as thinner soup lid on Progresso soup cans which can save almost 360 tons of steel a year. Fruit Gushers fruit snacks used to have a distinct design for each flavor, but after a resent study they decided to cut costs by having a generic package for all flavors saving the company 3 million a year. One reason the companies have been able to get away with this is because more people are eating at home again and they pay more attention to the price than the sizes. But now with the economy looking grim for many and the pinching of budgets, more Americans are noticing the difference; making it harder for companies to get away with it. This all goes back to what you think you see on the shelf isn't always what you get.

In Search of Cheap Food

What's the connection between a Minnetonka based company, Papua New Guinea and world food prices? Palm oil is the connection, it's the most widely used vegetable oil in the world. It's in a lot of foods that we don't even realize, cereal, breakfast bars, snacks and more. And 30% of it comes from the islands of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Cargill, one of Minnesota's largest companies is one of the largest producers of Palm oil in the world. They have plantations on the island of Papua New Guinea where they hire 15,000 workers for their plants seasonally. They extract the oil and then ship it to the US where it is processed and then put into foods on grocery sheaves in all but 3 countries. Palms produce more oil per acre than any other plant like Canola or soy by up to 50%. The large plantations feature rows of tall 4 to 6 year old palms and workers who walk up and down the rows with long poles to snip off the fruits and send them tumbling to the ground where the oil from their kernels is extracted. For hundreds of years New Guineans lived like they had for 1,000 of years as subsistence farmers. The island residence speak over 800 distinct languages and has the world's 3rd largest rain forest. In the 1960's the US government and World Bank decided to introduce a cash crop to the island to improve their standard of living. Now with more worldwide food shortages and an increase in food prices Cargill and other local farmers are expanding their plantations into the treasured rain forest. The company and the farmers argue they do this to improve their lifestyles and send their children to school but as the prices increase so will the amount of deforested rain forest that can never be recovered. It is a recurring problem that sometimes feels so far away for us, that is until your next visit to the grocery store or bowl of General Mill's cereal.

The Abundance of Katherines blog #1

Colin Singleton is a child prodigy with some relationship problems. He has dated 19 girls all of them named Katherine. After being dumped by #19 his best friend Hassan decides it's time for some vacation time on the road. They end up in Gunshot Tennessee, a one factory town that makes tampon strings. Colin knows every priminister of Canada, 90 digits of Pi, and the 43 anagrams of the word dingleberries. But he is taking on a new mission to prove his Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which could predict the lenght and predictability of an relationship anywhere. Colin will make the world safe for every dumpee everywhere. I'm on page 191 and Colin has just perfected his theorem, which is really long and involves a lot of math symbols I don't even know.Colin may be smart and a 'prodigy' but he is convinced that he is not yet in fact a genius. Prodigies as Colin says have a lot of potential but usually they don't have any more likely chance of winning the Noble Prize than any other regular smart person. Colin wants to make something of himself - be remembered forever. But to achieve greatness he must come to terms with his own 19 timed broken heart and what he really wants to do with is extra ordinary life.