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Figures & Facts
Presumed Innocent. Friend, wife, ex-wife and 60% of French people believe Strauss-Kahn's innocent when he's accused of 7 charges
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The prize-winning, blue-eyed television interviewer first met Strauss-Kahn in 1989 at the apex of her career as a political talk-show host on French channel TFI. For years her celebrity largely eclipsed his. She became his third wife in 1996. He is her second husband.
People who know them say they are an affectionate couple who have an easy relationship and like to vacation together with friends in their holiday home in the Moroccan town of Marrakesh.
Sinclair sacrificed her career to his, giving up her popular prime-time Sunday show -- which featured guests from President Bill Clinton to Madonna and every major French political leader -- when her husband was appointed finance minister in 1997. Many on the center-left saw her as an ideal "first lady" if, as expected, Strauss-Kahn sought the Socialist nomination for the 2012 presidential election. read more »
"We're what we eat"- 1 burger 20 yrs ago: 333 calories; today: 590 calories. Av. weight(M) in 1960-62: 166.3 lb; 1990-02: 191 lb
Obesity rates rise at least 90% in 17 states since ’95, study says. One-third of children are overweight or obese.
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Nine of the 10 states with the highest obesity rates are in the South, led by Mississippi at 34.4 percent, followed by Alabama and West Virginia, according to the report by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Those states also lead the nation in diabetes and high blood pressure, the report found. Michigan was listed as 10th at 30.5 percent. Massachusetts ranked fourth best at 22.3 percent.
Medicare and Medicaid, the public health plans, each spend more than 20 percent of their budget to treat illnesses related to obesity and smoking, which are avoidable medical risks.
The survey’s authors dubbed a swath of 644 counties in 15 mostly southern states the “diabetes belt,’’ as reported in the Journal of Preventive Diseases. Colorado, the slimmest state with a 19.8 percent obesity rate, had the second-smallest rise since 1995, though its rate is still higher than Mississippi’s was at that time, according to the study. read more »
To Nature: Lunar eclipse today, June 15, 2011 11:20am PDT, visible in skies of S America, Africa, Asia, Australia & Europe
A simulation of what today's lunar eclipse should look. Credit: Google
Lunar eclipse: Google, YouTube broadcast the astronomical event live.
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June 15, 2011: The lunar event will last about 100 minutes YouTube will be broadcasting on the Web a red-glowing lunar eclipse today at 11:20 a.m. PDT that otherwise will only be visible in the skies of South America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. Sorry, North America.
The lunar event will last about 100 minutes and be live-streamed in video to Google's official YouTube channel.
"We're always fascinated by the unique wonders of space and the world -- what can we say, it's the geek in us," wrote Noel Gorelick, Google's chief extraterrestrial observer, in a company blog post.
"Naturally, when we learned that part of the world will be treated to a rare 100-minute-long total lunar eclipse starting at 11:20 am PDT today, we were both excited and disappointed that this rare occasion wouldn't be visible from our Mountain View campus like last year's eclipse."
Suspecting they weren't alone in wanting to see the eclipse, a team of Googlers contacted the folks at Web-broadcasting Slooh SpaceCamera to get a real-time video feed of the eclipse onto YouTube.
Slooh is hosting a mission interface Web app, built using Google's App Engine technology, that will also broadcast the video feed and will be "equipped with audio narrations from real-life astronomers so you can hear a firsthand, expert account of the event," Gorelick said. read more »
World's tallest waterfalls: Angel Falls, Tugela Falls, Cataratas las Tres Hermanas, Olo'upena Falls, Catarata de Yumbilla..
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List of World's Tallest Waterfalls
Ranking Name Height (sort) Tallest Drop (sort) State Country read more »
SOS Ocean from nuclear leak - European Committee on radiation risk: "nuclear explosion" "situation at Fukushima out of control"
Professor Christopher Busby (video): "As a matter of fact, right from the beginning, real situation is far worse. Lots of indicators: there have been nuclear explosions.. we now know from the data.. serious matter.. massive radiation coming out. It is still going on - by no means it is over…"
Japan declares nuclear emergency - fire broke out..11 nuclear reactors shut down... nuclear crisis since March 11: nuclear reactors react to 9.0 earthquake. Repeated human errors - 1979: Three Mile Island, 1986: Chernobyl (video "25 years later: Food for Thought"), 2011: Fukushima (nuclear fallout map and video from Japanese journalist, the first to enter the radiation evacuation zone)
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May 26, 2011 - Greenpeace: High radiation levels detected in Japanese seafood: Tokyo - High levels of radioactive substances were found in seaweed and other seafood products near a damaged nuclear power station in north-eastern Japan, environmentalists.
Greenpeace Japan said it found radioactive substances above the legal limits for consumption in 14 of 21 samples of products that included seaweed, shellfish and fish caught 22 to 60 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. read more »
Kids vs. Global Warming. Million Youth "iMatter March" on Mother's Day: "protect Planet for our future and generations to come"
Kids, the climate-crisis-affected generation, refuse to inherit a damaged planet from us, from parent and grandparent generations. They demand the atmosphere protected for their future. They will have iMatter climate march on Mother's Day, May 7-14; they are taking legal action to claim "the atmosphere belongs to us all". Youth to preserve the planet in all 50 states and the District of Columbia announced today that they're suing the government in order to create an "atmospheric trust," arguing that public trust law should protect the atmosphere for future generations. The plaintiffs and petitioners on all the cases are young people. Kids deserve a healthy Earth to live, to survive, to call it home. Shall we, parent / grandparent generations, leave behind at least a reasonably sustainable (if not better) place behind us for our kids, for children’s children? Regardless, now kids are standing up for their future.
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