All posts by nedhamson
Lebanon, a land of fat boys: study | News , Lebanon News | THE DAILY STAR
After ranking highly on a string of top 10 lists, Lebanon can now add being one of the fattest countries for young boys to its list of achievements.
The percentage of boys under twenty who are obese in Lebanon range between 13 to 19.1 percent, placing the Mediterranean nation at fifth in the world, tied with the Caribbean nation The Bahamas. The findings are according to a recently released global analysis on country-by-country obesity funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“This is largely due to low physical activity,” said Stephanie Nehme, a dietitian at the So7i W Sari3 clinic in Ashrafieh.
Nehme said that the changing of lifestyle and exchanging homemade food for fastfood was among several factors that led to an increase to obesity in youngsters.
via Lebanon, a land of fat boys: study | News , Lebanon News | THE DAILY STAR.
WHO | Ebola virus disease, West Africa – update
Guinea
From 23 May 2014 to 27 May 2014, 4 new districts reported 14 new clinical cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) and 5 deaths as follows: Boffa, 5 cases and 1 death; Telimele, 7 cases and 4 deaths; Boke, 1 case and 0 death; and Dubreka, 1 case and 1 death. Community and nosocomial transmission are still occurring in Gueckedou, Macenta, and Conakry.
As of 18:00 on 27 May 2014, the total cumulative number of cases due to EVD is 281 and 186 deaths. The classification of these cases and deaths are as follows: confirmed, 163 cases and 103 deaths; probable, 66 cases and 56 deaths; and suspected, 44 cases and 23 deaths. The geographical distribution of the cases is as follows: Conakry, 48 cases, and 26 deaths; Gueckedou, 176 cases and 126 deaths; Macenta, 31 cases and 19 deaths; Kissidougou, 7 cases and 5 deaths; Dabola, 4 cases and 4 deaths; Djinguiraye, 1 case and 1 death, in addition to the cases and deaths in the newly affected areas. The total number of cases in isolation is 16 (10 in Gueckedou, 3 in Telimele, and 3 in Boffa). The number of contacts under follow-up is 427 (250 in Conakry, 213 in Gueckedou, 126 in Macenta, and 88 in Telimele).
Sierra Leone
In Sierra Leone, 16 cases, (7 laboratory-confirmed, 9 suspected) and 5 community deaths have been reported from Kailahun district. The district is located in the eastern region of Sierra Leone sharing borders with Gueckedou in Guinea and also with Liberia.
Food Politics » Historic! First Lady and President actively support school nutrition standards
Today, the House Appropriations Committee will discuss the annual spending bill for the Agriculture Department, meaning that it will consider proposals to weaken nutrition standards for school meals.
In what has to be a groundbreaking move, First Lady Michelle Obama has an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times.
Yet some members of the House of Representatives are now threatening to roll back these new standards and lower the quality of food our kids get in school. They want to make it optional, not mandatory, for schools to serve fruits and vegetables to our kids. They also want to allow more sodium and fewer whole grains than recommended into school lunches.
…Remember a few years ago when Congress declared that the sauce on a slice of pizza should count as a vegetable in school lunches? You don’t have to be a nutritionist to know that this doesn’t make much sense. Yet we’re seeing the same thing happening again with these new efforts to lower nutrition standards in our schools.
Our children deserve so much better than this.
Yes, they do, and how terrific that she is saying this.
via Food Politics » Historic! First Lady and President actively support school nutrition standards.
Only Chinese-born parliamentarian in UK to quit politics over racist abuse | UK news | theguardian.com
The Hong-Kong-born immigrant, who has lived in Northern Ireland for four decades, said she was also considering leaving the province for good because of enduring sectarianism and now rising racism.
Lo, who represents South Belfast in the regional parliament, blamed continual racist behaviour towards her, as well as first minister Peter Robinson’s support for a born-again Christian preacher’s depiction of Islam as “the spawn of the devil”, as her reasons for wanting out of Ulster politics.
In an interview with the Guardian on Thursday, Lo said she was shaken up by a recent incident during the European election campaign when a loyalist mob followed her out of an east Belfast shopping centre.
“They started hurling abuse at me and I decided to get out of Connswater shopping centre as quickly as possible. About three or four individuals then followed me to the car park but I kept ahead of them walking as quickly as I could. Even when I got inside my car there was a young girl who climbed out of the wound-down window of a parked car and started shouting vile things at me. If I hadn’t decided to act quickly and get out of there I don’t know what would have happened to me,” Lo said.
Tests show high H7N9 antibodies in Chinese poultry workers | CIDRAP
The researchers found a hemagglutination-inhibition antibody titer of at least 1:160 in 7.2% of poultry workers in May and in 14.9% in December, a rise that was consistent with the second wave of H7N9 activity in China, with Guangdong as one of the hot spots. None of the participants had confirmed H7N9 infections, and investigators didn’t find evidence of infection in any of the general public group for either testing period.
The team pointed out that other studies of H7N9 seroprevalence in Chinese poultry workers showed much lower levels. For example, a study based on sampling in Zhejiang province in April and May of 2013 found 1.3% had antibody titers suggesting earlier infection.
Looking for risk factors, the researchers found that being female and having occupational exposure for 10 or more years was associated with infection. The team said the increased risk in women may reflect their having the major share of poultry duties for that region, which include selling poultry, defeathering, and cleaning. They said the longer work history could be related to reduced preventive measures or may reflect greater susceptibility to infection in older people.
They found that working in a retail market, rather than a wholesale setting, was associated with antibody titers indicative of infection in the analysis of samples from May. The researchers wrote that the shorter stays in warehouse markets and twice-a-week disinfection protocols might limit workers’ exposure to the H7N9 virus.
via Tests show high H7N9 antibodies in Chinese poultry workers | CIDRAP.
The Singing Revolution: Estonia 1991 (History Day Documentary) – YouTube
#YesAllWomen reveals the constant barrage of sexism that women face | Jessica Valenti | Comment is free | theguardian.com
The reason women mobilized so quickly after the shooting is because we recognized immediately the language and ideology in Rodger’s videos and manifesto: the over-the-top sexual entitlement; the rage against women who “dared” to reject him; the antiquated, but nonetheless terrifying, belief that women should not be in control of their own sexual choices. Regardless of Rodger’s mental health issues – which we still don’t know much about – his ideas were not “crazy” by the standards of the world today. They are the norm.
So students protested in a walk to Rodger’s apartment holding signs with slogans like, “Nobody is entitled to a woman’s body”. A new Tumblr, When Women Refuse, listed story after story of women who suffered violence after rejecting a man’s sexual advances. And the Twitter hashtag #YesAllWomen went viral as hundreds of thousands of people shared their experiences with misogyny.
How Maya Angelou Became San Francisco’s First African-American Female Streetcar Conductor: SFist
In 1944, at the age of 16, Maya Angelou walked into Muni’s personnel department to ask for an application to become a streetcar conductor. She had moved to San Francisco from St. Louis with her mother, Vivian Baxter (described in today’s NYT obit as “beautiful and volatile”), and dropped out of high school two years earlier, and she had always admired the tailored uniforms the female streetcar conductors wore, outfitted with change dispensers on the front, and she thought to herself “that’s a job I want.”
via How Maya Angelou Became San Francisco’s First African-American Female Streetcar Conductor: SFist.
Watch: Israeli forces detain 4 teenage girls in south Hebron hills | Maan News Agency
Israeli forces on Tuesday detained four Palestinian girls in the south Hebron hills after a settler accused them of stealing cherries, human rights group B’Tselem said.
The girls, aged 11 to 15, were on their way home from school with an Israeli army escort when Israeli police arrested them. They were taken to an Israeli police station in Hebron with no adult accompaniment and held for four hours until being handed over to Palestinian police and released.
via Watch: Israeli forces detain 4 teenage girls in south Hebron hills | Maan News Agency.







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