Woods needs to find form to advance in FedExCup playoffs | Reuters

Reuters By Larry Fine

Tiger Woods tees off on the second hole during the final round of the 92nd PGA Golf Championship at Whistling Straits, in Kohler, Wisconsin, August 15, 2010. By: Reuters/Matt Sullivan

PARAMUS New Jersey (Reuters) Tue Aug 24, 2010 - Tiger Woods begins a new chapter at the Barclays tournament on Thursday, competing for the first time since his divorce and scrambling to qualify for the remainder of the FedExCup playoff series.

The world number one, who announced his split from wife Elin on Monday, will be in the unaccustomed role of teeing off in the first group on the first tee at 0710 local time in Thursday's opening round due to the fact he is 112th in the points list.

Playing alongside little-known fellow Americans Cameron Beckman and Troy Matteson at Ridgewood Country Club, Woods also faces the pressure of producing good golf in order to qualify for next week's Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston.

The top 100 on the points list go through to the second event in the series, with 70 players qualifying for the third, the BMW Championship. The leading 30 then advance to the Tour Championship finale in Atlanta.

The 34-year-old Woods, without a win this season, needs to finish between 50th and 57th to qualify for the next round of a series that pays the final points winner a $10 million bonus.

World number two Phil Mickelson tees off at the more genteel time of 1316 along with Briton Justin Rose and American Jeff Overton.

Ernie Els of South Africa, who has led the FedExCup standings for 22 successive weeks, tees off at 0816 with Americans Steve Stricker and Jim Furyk.

The last time the Barclays was staged at the tree-lined, 7,319-yard Ridgewood layout in 2008 the event was won by Vijay Singh of Fiji in a playoff against Spaniard Sergio Garcia and American Kevin Sutherland.

SPECIAL WEEK

The course boasts the 291-yard fifth hole -- the shortest par-four on the U.S. PGA Tour -- and the lengthy 626-yard par-five 13th.

Also adjacent to the seventh hole is a cemetery where 2008 contender Kevin Streelman's grandparents are buried.

"It's sentimental and my parents get in tomorrow so it's kind of a special week," Streelman told reporters on Tuesday.

His family hail from the Paramus area.

Unheralded Heath Slocum won last year's Barclays by sinking a 20-foot par putt to beat Woods, Stricker, Els and Padraig Harrington of Ireland by one stroke at Liberty National with the Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty as backdrop.

"I think I proved last year that anywhere in this field somebody could have that week and come out on top," Slocum said.

With Mickelson fairly quiet since his U.S. Masters victory in April, the door is firmly ajar for the FedExCup series and for Player of the Year honors.

"There's been a lot of good golf played by a lot of different people," said Slocum. "So I think it's going to be very compelling for the playoffs. Anybody can win."

(Editing by Tony Jimenez)

Vuvuzelas make it into the Oxford dictionary | Reuters

Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) Thu Aug 19, 2010. The ever-present hum of the vuvuzela during this year's soccer World Cup catapulted the plastic trumpet to prominence and now it has earned a place in the Oxford Dictionary of English.

Vuvuzela is among 2,000 new words and phrases added to the third edition of the dictionary, published on Thursday, which is compiled from analysis of two billion words used in everything from novels to internet message boards.

The credit crunch features heavily in this year's additions, with terms such as "overleveraged," having taken on too much debt and "quantitative easing," the introduction of new money in to the money supply by the central bank, among those included.

"Staycation," a holiday spent in one's home country, and "bargainous," costing less than usual, also reflect the hot topic of belt-tightening among consumers during the economic downturn.

The rise of "social media," itself a new term, has spawned several additions, including "defriend," removing someone from a list of friends or contacts on a social networking site, and "tweetup," a meeting organized via posts on Twitter. Other words include:

Bromance: a close but non-sexual relationship between two men

Buzzkill: a person or thing that has a depressing or dispiriting effect

Cheeseball: lacking taste, style or originality

Chillax: calm down and relax

Frenemy: a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry

Interweb: the internet

Wardrobe malfunction: an instance of a person accidentally exposing an intimate part of their body as result of an article of clothing slipping out of position

(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Steve Addison)

Attractive women overlooked for certain jobs? |

Reuters Credit: Reuters/Russell Boyce

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Mon Aug 9, 2010. Good looks can kill a woman's chances of snaring jobs considered "masculine," according to a study by the University of Colorado Denver Business School.

Attractive women faced discrimination when they applied for jobs where appearance was not seen as important. These positions included job titles like manager of research and development, director of finance, mechanical engineer and construction supervisor.

They were also overlooked for categories like director of security, hardware salesperson, prison guard and tow-truck driver.

"In these professions being attractive was highly detrimental to women," researcher Stefanie Johnson said in a statement, adding that attractive women tended to be sorted into positions like receptionist or secretary.

"In every other kind of job, attractive women were preferred. This wasn't the case with men which shows that there is still a double standard when it comes to gender."

The study, published in the Journal of Social Psychology, was based on giving participants a list of jobs and photos of applicants and asking them to sort them according to their suitability for the role. They had a stack of 55 male and 55 female photos.

While the researchers found good-looking women were ruled out for certain jobs, they found that attractive men did not face similar discrimination and were always at an advantage.

But Johnson said beautiful people still enjoyed a significant edge when it came to the workplace.

They tended to get higher salaries, better performance evaluations, higher levels of admission to college, better voter ratings when running for public office, and more favorable judgments in trials.

"In every other kind of job, attractive women were preferred," said Johnson, who chided those who let stereotypes affect hiring decisions.

(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Dean Goodman)

Traffickers hide cocaine under rare python...

Reuters

ROME Wed Aug 11, 2010 (Reuters) - Italian police seized a rare albino python in Rome Wednesday in a raid on a group of drug traffickers who used the snake to guard cocaine and intimidate customers who owed them money.

The three-meter (10-foot) long reptile attacked police when they burst into the dealers' apartment where they were preparing the cocaine for distribution. The specialist forest police had to be called in to capture the python.

"When we went in, we found the animal right behind the door waiting for us, just like a proper guard dog," said Lieutenant Luca Gelormino.

"We were surprised to find 200 grams of very pure cocaine under the snake that it was jealously guarding. From our investigation we can say it had been trained to watch over the drugs."

The animal had been starved for seven days to make it extremely aggressive, but it calmed down after it was given a generous helping of chicken.

The python (Python Molurus Bivittatus), which the forest police said originated from Guinea and was "worth a great deal of money," was taken to the reptile house at Rome's zoo.

Police arrested 12 people in the operation and seized around five kilograms of cocaine.

(Reporting by Ella Ide; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Puberty coming earlier for U.S. girls: study...

Reuters By Genevra Pittman

NEW YORK Mon, Aug 9, 2010(Reuters Health) - Girls in the U.S. may be continuing to hit puberty at earlier ages, according to new research.

The findings suggest earlier development than what was reported in a 1997 study and show a worrying pattern, say the study's authors, led by Dr. Frank Biro of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Girls who hit puberty earlier are more likely to engage in risky behavior, Biro's team notes, and might be at a higher risk for breast cancer, than their peers who develop later.

"This could represent a real trend," Dr. Joyce Lee, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Michigan who was not involved with the new research, told Reuters Health.

Doctors are unsure of what could be causing girls to develop at a younger age, but rising obesity rates may be to blame, they say.

In a study published today in Pediatrics, Biro's team examined about 1,200 girls aged 7 and 8 in Cincinnati, New York and San Francisco. Researchers, as well as the girls' doctors and nurses, used a standard measure of breast development to determine which girls had started puberty.

Compared to the 1997 findings from girls across the U.S., girls in the current study - especially white girls - were more developed at a younger age. As previous research has shown, there were also large differences in development based on race.

At age 7, approximately 10 percent of white girls and 23 percent of black girls had started developing breasts - compared to 5 percent of white girls and 15 percent of black girls in 1997, the authors write.

Among 8-year-olds in the study, 18 percent of white girls and 43 percent of black girls had entered puberty - an increase from around 11 percent of white girls from 1997, but the same as black girls in that year.

This study and another published today in Pediatrics suggest that being overweight, both as a young child and growing up, makes girls more likely to enter puberty earlier. In the second study, Dr. Mildred Maisonet from Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health and her colleagues observed that gaining weight quickly in infancy - a predictor of later obesity - was linked to early puberty in girls in Great Britain.

Biro's team found that girls with a higher body mass index (BMI) - a ratio of weight and height - at age 7 and 8 were more likely to be developed than their thinner peers.

Those authors warn that their study population, although diverse, doesn't necessarily represent what's happening in all U.S. girls. But they are continuing to follow the girls in the study to see when the rest of them hit puberty, and what other factors might be related to their rate of development.

Biro thinks that rising rates of obesity could be a major reason why girls seem to be developing faster than they did even 13 years ago. "We're on the opposite side of an increase in BMI that has been seen in this country and in other countries," he told Reuters Health.

Researchers know that heavier girls are more likely to enter puberty early, Lee, of the University of Michigan, said. That could be because overweight people have more of a hormone known to be linked to development - but it could also be a matter of the actual nutrients that girls get from their diet, she said.

Lee and Biro said doctors are worried about both the psychological and physical health of girls who hit puberty at a young age.

Studies have shown that girls who develop early are more at risk for depression and often start having sex earlier than girls who develop later.

"For the 11-year old that looks like she's 15 or 16, adults are going to interact with her like she's 15 or 16, but so are her peers," Biro said. Girls who develop early "look physically older," he said. "It doesn't mean that they're psychologically or socially more mature."

In addition, women who spend more of their lives menstruating are at a higher risk for breast cancer - which, depending on when they hit menopause, could be a worry for girls who develop early.

Biro said that there are things families can do to minimize the possible risk of early puberty in young daughters, including eating more fruits and vegetables and eating together as a family.

Microsoft releases final IE9 preview, beta due in September...

ZDNet By Ed Bott

August 4, 2010, Summary - Internet Explorer 9 continues its steady pace toward a final release. Today’s milestone is an important one. The fourth and final Platform Preview, like its predecessors, is intended for developers to test their web sites and report bugs. Most of the major pieces of IE9’s HTML5 support were put in place in the previous release.

BioContact. BiographyEd BottEd Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. He's served as editor of the U.S. edition of PC Computing and managing editor of PC World; both publications had monthly paid circulation in excess of 1 million during his tenure. He is the author of more than 25 books on Microsoft Windows and Office, including the recently released Windows 7 Inside Out.

Internet Explorer 9 continues its steady pace toward a final release. Today’s milestone is an important one. The fourth and final Platform Preview, like its predecessors, is intended for developers to test their web sites and report bugs. Most of the major pieces of IE9’s HTML5 support were put in place in the previous release. This preview incorporates a slew of bug fixes (more than 1300 bug reports have been filed at Microsoft’s Connect site) and shows off what Microsoft claims are big improvements in its new Chakra JavaScript engine. IE boss Dean Hachamovich argues that how a JavaScript engine is integrated into the browser is as important as the engine itself, in terms of performance:

The fourth Platform Preview moves the new JavaScript engine, codenamed Chakra, inside IE9 and brings them together into one single, integrated system.

Through this deep integration, the performance of real world websites significantly improves, and IE9 becomes the first browser to have a shared DOM between the browser and the script engine based on ECMAScript5. The benefits start with real-world performance and consistency.

Microsoft has published test scores that show the new JavaScript engine acing the SunSpider test (and beating the current shipping version of Safari), but the company continues to emphasize holistic, real-world performance measurements.

Probably the single biggest headline in today’s release is IE9’s final score on the Acid3 test. As I noted back in June (see IE9 adds key HTML5 features in new preview release), each successive platform preview release has sported an improved score on the 0-100 Acid3 scale, starting at 55 in March, increasing to 68 in May, and jumping to 83 in June. Today’s release hits a 95, and Hachamovich argues that striving for a perfect 100 on this imperfect test isn’t necessary or desirable. The two Acid3 failures are on features that are “in transition,” he writes:

Support for SVG Fonts in the web development and font communities has been declining for some time. There’s already been discussion without objection of dropping SVG fonts from the Acid3 test. The community has put forth a proposal in the SVG Working Group to give SVG Fonts optional status.

Instead, developers can use the Web Open Font Format (WOFF, supported in IE9 Platform Preview 3 as well as other browsers) for both HTML and SVG content. It works well in conjunction with the CSS3 Fonts module and has broad support from leading font vendors (e.g. here, “a majority of font makers have already settled on WOFF or services like Typekit as their format of choice”). WOFF fonts are a better long-term solution for many reasons discussed previously.

Similarly, support for SMIL animation of SVG in the web development community is far from strong. The leader of the SVG standardization effort wrote that not supporting SMIL in its current state is probably best “since the SVG WG intends to coordinate with the CSS WG to make some changes to animation and to extend filters.”

Today’s newly released performance tests continue Microsoft’s tradition of showing off full hardware acceleration using PC-based GPUs to render text, graphics, and media, both audio and video. I haven’t tried the tests themselves yet, but I’ve seen videos of Hamster Dance Revolution and Psychedelic Browsing in action. The former is guaranteed to get that silly hamster jingle stuck in your head for the rest of the day, and the latter could cause vertigo. You’ve been warned.

What’s next? A beta, of course, with a full-fledged user interface instead of the bare frame that the platform previews use. When I spoke with Microsoft’s Ryan Gavin earlier today, he declined to offer an exact shipping date but suggested that the next release would follow the same cadence as the platform previews. On that timetable, it’s reasonable to expect a beta in the second half of September.

.Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications.

Miss Australia urged to dump her woolly Ugg boots....

Reuters

SYDNEY (Reuters) Wed Aug 4, 2010 - A pair of high-heeled woolly Ugg boots to be worn by Australia's representative at the Miss Universe Pageant later this month has come under fire on two fronts -- tackiness and animal cruelty.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) asked Jesinta Campbell not to wear Ugg boots or a lamb's wool shrug at the pageant in Las Vegas on August 23 because it was cruel and unethical, using Australian wool sourced from mulesed sheep.

Mulesing, a common practice among Australian farmers, involves removing strips of wool-bearing skin from the buttocks of sheep in a bid to reduce a potentially lethal maggot infestation called flystrike.

"Some people say that Ugg boots put the 'Ugg' in 'ugly,' but we believe that mulesing puts the 'ugly' in Uggs," said PETA's director of campaigns, Jason Baker, in a statement.

PETA says there are more humane ways to prevent flystrike, and that it has persuaded many clothing designers and retailers such as H&M and Limited Brands to stop sourcing mulesed wool.

Campbell's costume, by Sydney designer Natasha Dwyer was said to have been inspired by the outback. But Australian media described it as a "national joke" and a "travesty." The country does not have a national costume.

Campbell, 18, who won the Miss Universe Australia title in June, could not immediately be reached for comment. She previously described the costume as "incredible."

(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Dean Goodman)

Sex job ads banned at employment offices ...

Reuters

LONDON Mon Aug 2, 2010. LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Britain is to ban employers looking for lap dancers, strippers, topless barmaids or sexy web-cam performers from placing adverts at Jobcentres.

Such a ban had previously been in place at the taxpayer-funded employment exchanges but that changed seven years ago when Ann Summers, a sex toys and suggestive lingerie retailer, successfully argued at the High Court that it was unlawful.

Now the government plans to legislate to protect vulnerable jobseekers who are keen to get back to work from feeling they have to consider jobs that they are not comfortable with, Minister for Employment Chris Grayling said in a statement.

"We shouldn't put vulnerable people in an environment where they're exposed to these types of jobs and could feel under pressure to work in the sex industry."

The statement specified that Jobcentres would no longer advertise jobs "that involve the direct sexual stimulation of others" because public money should not be a conduit to such work.

However, Jobcentres will continue to advertise other types of vacancies in the adult entertainment sector, such as cleaning jobs in striptease clubs.

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Steve Addison)

Vicar conducted 360 sham marriages...

Reuters Credit Mike Segar

<--Wedding bell balloons fly from a storefront in Rhinebeck, New York, July 26, 2010.

LONDON (Reuters) Thu Jul 29, 2010- A vicar was found guilty on Thursday of conducting hundreds of sham marriages between African nationals and cash-strapped eastern Europeans to allow illegal immigrants to gain residency in Britain.

Rev Alex Brown, 61, presided over 360 fake ceremonies over four years, including several cases in which participants canceled one wedding only to marry someone else a month or two later, and another in which a person was registered to marry two people on the same day.

Of the hundreds of people Brown married, 90 couples were registered as living in one road in the parish and in some cases several brides and grooms claimed to live in the same house, the Press Association reported.

Brown's co-defendant Vladymyr Buchak, 33, was also found guilty of conspiring to breach immigration laws by paying eastern Europeans up to 3,000 pounds ($4,700) to marry Africans, mainly from Nigeria, to allow them to obtain the documents they needed to live and work in Britain.

The court heard Buchak, a Ukrainian national who had himself been living illegally in Britain since at least 2004, was responsible for "cajoling and persuading" the eastern Europeans into the marriages of convenience, preying on migrant workers in the area who were desperate to earn money.

FORGOT PASSPORTS

Although Buchak was seen as the main organizer of the operation, prosecutor David Walbank said there was no doubt Brown must have been fully aware that the majority of the weddings he was conducting at the church were shams.

Giving evidence during the seven-week trial, Brown insisted he only ever married couples he was sure were getting married for the right reasons and exceptions would only be made if the bride-to-be was imminently expected to give birth.

But he admitted he occasionally forgot to check the passports of foreign nationals wanting to get married to make sure they had indefinite leave to remain in Britain.

He said he became suspicious of one or two couples, but only because of vast differences in age between the bride and groom.

The court heard Brown conducted a total of 383 marriages at his church in East Sussex, southeast England, over the period, a 30-fold increase on the 13 he had conducted over the previous four years.

Brown was arrested on June 30 last year following an investigation by police and the UK Border Agency.

During a search of his vicarage and the church at St Leonards-on-Sea, police found documents he had doctored, including the church's electoral roll plus a second, altered copy, which he had filled out to hide the dramatic increase in weddings over which he was presiding.

The jury at Lewes Crown Court is still deliberating on a third defendant, Nigerian-born Michael Adelasoye, 50, a specialist in immigration law who is accused of helping the African participants by advising them with their applications for residency once they were married.

(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Steve Addison)

Hamas targets women's underwear in modesty drive...

<---Syrian women shop at Souk al-Hamidieh in old downtown Damascus September 29,2008. REUTERS / Khaled al-Hariri

GAZA (Reuters)Wed July 28,2010 The Islamist rulers of the Gaza Strip have ordered lingerie shops to display more modesty.

A week after banning women from smoking water pipes in public places, the Hamas-run police force has told stores selling women's underwear to remove scantily-clad mannequins and any posters of racy undergarments.

"These measures have stemmed from complaints and pressure by ordinary people. They have to do with upholding our traditions," police spokesman Ayman Al-Batniji said Wednesday.

Hamas leaders have repeatedly denied any intention to impose Islamic law on the Gaza Strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians.

But Hamas police have broken up a hip-hop concert in the territory and tried -- unsuccessfully -- to force women lawyers in court and female school students to wear traditional Muslim clothing, a step that drew a public backlash.

Hamas's modesty moves were widely seen by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as attempts to mollify more conservative Islamic factions that have accused the movement of failing to uphold Islamic Sharia law.

(Writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Device combats common cause of vertigo...

Reuters By Dave Levitan

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Fri July 23, 2010. - A new device lets people treat a common cause of dizziness in the comfort of their own home, Canadian researchers say.

So-called "benign paroxysmal positional vertigo" (BPPV) affects roughly 10 percent of the population over age 60, according to studies done in the late 1980s. It is characterized by intense vertigo (room spinning), which often occurs when looking up, rolling over in bed, or bending under things.

BPPV results from the build-up of crystals in the inner ear. Doctors typically treat BPPV with a physical maneuver to shift the crystals out of a canal in the inner ear where they cause the feeling of dizziness.

The so-called "Epley" maneuver is fairly simple and highly effective -- but difficult for patients to remember how to do on their own. So Dr. Matthew Bromwich and colleagues at Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Canada developed a device to help them.

The device, which attaches to the brim of any common baseball cap, is called the DizzyFIX and costs $150. Bromwich is now the CEO of the company that manufactures it, Clearwater Clinical Limited, but he told Reuters Health that his financial involvement began only after the present study was completed.

The device consists of a plastic tube that attaches to the hat in a way that makes it visible to the person wearing it. The tube contains a thick fluid and a particle. As the patient moves, the particle moves too, giving visual feedback. The user simply guides the particle through the device to relieve their dizziness.

"The tube shape was designed to enable accurate replication of the Epley maneuver," say the researchers. The particle will only move ahead if the patient performs the maneuver correctly.

In their study, published in the Archives of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery, the researchers gave the DizzyFIX to 40 patients suffering from BPPV. After one week of home treatment, 35 patients (88 percent) had no evidence of BPPV.

There were no serious complications.

The researchers did not include a group of patients with BPPV who did not use the device, but the findings compare "very well to physician-guided treatment for BPPV," Bromwich told Reuters Health by e-mail. In a follow-up phone interview, he added that BPPV often recurs, both after home treatment with the new device and after physician-guided treatment.

"Recurrence is about 60 percent," he said. "(The device) cures BPPV about as much as Tylenol cures a headache. The only difference (between the device and physician treatment) is that when you get a recurrence you just reach under the bed, pull out the DizzyFIX, put it on your head, and two and a half minutes later you're cured and you go back to sleep."

The DizzyFIX is approved by the FDA for use with a prescription in the U.S. It's also approved for use in Europe and Canada.

Teenager survives fall from 16th story balcony ...

Reuters

WELLINGTON(Reuters) Mon Jul 26, 2010. A 15-year-old New Zealand boy has survived with minor injuries after falling 16-storeys from the balcony of his family's apartment onto a concrete floor, New Zealand media reported Monday.

The New Zealand Herald said the teen-ager fell about 50 meters off the balcony, dropping through a carpark roof that may have broken his fall before he hit the concrete. Another tenant raised the alarm after seeing the boy fall past his window.

The newspaper said medical experts were amazed that the boy survived as few people managed to live if they plunged from more than five storeys.

The teen-ager was described as in a stable condition in an Auckland hospital with a broken wrist, broken rib, gashed leg and internal injuries, the New Zealand Herald reported.

"God must have been with him. He's got an angel looking after him, that's for sure," housekeeper Kaa Wehi, who was working in the building at the time, told the newspaper.

(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Gyles Beckford)

Germans hold 60 km-long party on motorway....

Reuters

DORTMUND Germany (Reuters) Mon Jul 19, 2010 About three million people turned a busy motorway into one of the biggest open-air festivals in Germany's history on Sunday.

A 60 km (36 mile)-long section of the A40 Autobahn between the western German cities of Dortmund and Duisburg was closed to motorists and turned over to pedestrians, cyclists, skaters and picnickers.

The event called "Still Life" was part of celebrations for the Ruhr region Cultural Capital of Europe 2010. The area, once Germany's industrial heartland, is home to 5.3 million people.

Some 20,000 tables were set up on the motorway for what organizers called "the longest banquet in the world." They said three million people had taken part.

Television pictures from the air showed crowds milling around on a road where cars usually race along at speeds of 160 kph (100 mph) or more.

Hannelore Kraft, state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia state, was among the revelers. She rode a bicycle and said the event should be repeated.

"This is fantastic," Kraft said. "I grew up right next to the A40 and still live close to it. It's great to see it now without cars but with so many people and so much cultural variety."

(Reporting by Petra Wischgoll; writing by Erik Kirschbaum; editing by Andrew Roche)

Popular food additive can cause stomach ache...

Reuters

(Reuters Health) - "Stealth fiber" increasingly added to processed foods, while not a problem for most, can cause gastrointestinal discomfort for some who may not know they're consuming too much of it, Minnesota researchers warn. The fiber is called "inulin."

"Normal fiber foods like wheat bran and legumes are self-limiting, it's hard to over eat them," Joanne Slavin, a registered dietitian in the department of food science and nutrition at the University of Minnesota at St. Paul, told Reuters Health.

Inulin, she explained, may be in chocolate bars, drinks, and snacks around the house, and "before you know it, you may eat more than you can tolerate and have gastrointestinal issues you wouldn't necessarily associate" with those foods.

Inulin is a carbohydrate fiber that occurs naturally in many foods like bananas, wheat, onions and garlic. Found in high concentrations in chicory root, is can be extracted for industrial use. Unlike more familiar carbohydrates, which are broken down in the small intestines and turned into fuel for the body, inulin passes through the small intestines to the colon where it stimulates the growth of "good bacteria" and is fermented by bacteria. In some people it can cause gas, bloating, flatulence, and diarrhea.

Because of its growing popularity as a food additive, Slavin and her colleagues wanted to assess how much inulin it takes to cause gastrointestinal problems.

They designed a study involving 26 healthy men and women aged 18 to 60. After a night of fasting, once a week for five weeks, participants were fed a breakfast of a bagel with cream cheese and orange juice. The orange juice was mixed with a placebo or with 5- or 10-gram doses of two commonly used inulin products -- native inulin and shorter-chain oligofructose.

After their "fiber challenge," participants were called several times over two days and asked about symptoms such as gas/bloating, nausea, flatulence, stomach cramping, diarrhea, constipation and GI rumbling.

Those that got any dose of inulin generally reported "mild symptoms"; the highest scores in every symptom except constipation were reported by those who got 10 grams of oligofructose. The findings are in line with previous research that found the short-chain "sweet" inulin causes faster fermentation in the gut leading to more gas and gastrointestinal symptoms.

Flatulence was the most common symptom reported by all subjects who got fiber although symptoms were "highly variable" among individuals and many subjects did not experience any, the investigators say.

Slavin and colleagues conclude, based on their study, that most healthy people can tolerate up to 10 grams of native inulin and 5 grams of the "sweet" inulin a day.

Food manufacturers, faced with demands to reduce calories, fat, and sodium while increasing fiber and flavor, are increasingly turning to products like inulin. They have discovered they can chemically manipulate the chemical structure of inulin to mimic tastes and textures consumers want in food. "It's like a food manufacturer's nirvana," Slavin said.

Inulin can be found in high fiber breakfast bars, ice creams, and beverages among other processed foods. The label may list inulin, chicory root extract, oligosaccharide, or oligofructose. For example, the Fiber One Chewy Bar with 9 grams of dietary fiber lists chicory root extract as its top ingredient.

Slavin and her colleagues urge continued study of tolerance levels of food additives like inulin because their use is likely to continue to grow and "there is the potential for overuse."

The research was funded by Cargill, Inc. a maker of inulin food additives, which provided the product used in the study.

SOURCE: link.reuters.com/tur56m Journal of the American Dietetic Association, June 2010

Health

Cat burglar takes shine to washing-line underwear | Reuters

Reuters

LONDON Reuters Thu Jul 8, 2010 - A spate of thefts from gardens and washing lines in a southern English town had been puzzling police.

Socks, gloves, ladies underwear -- almost anything left unattended was fair game for the thief, especially the knickers, and the rate of offending was getting worse.

But now the culprit has been unmasked as a kleptomaniac cat with a generous nature.

Eager to please his new owners, Peter and Birgitt Weismantel, 13-year-old Oscar had been bringing home presents to the family home in Portswood, a suburb of the southern coastal town of Southampton.

"He started bringing socks home a few months ago and then gardening gloves which we tracked to our neighbor," his owner Peter Weismantel told the Southern Daily Echo newspaper.

"Then we had a situation in which he brought back young women's underwear," said Peter, 72.

"It began to escalate and I telephoned the police as people must have been missing clothes -- especially with women's underwear being taken."

The couple have been fostering Oscar from Southampton's Cats Protection charity since Christmas.

Since then he had also pinched builder's gloves, a knee-pad, a paint roller, rubber gloves, and 10 pairs of children's underpants.

On average he commits 10 robberies a day.

"He brings them back as presents," Birgitt told the Echo. "We can't give him back now as he makes such an effort with all these gifts. He's got a lovely personality and is a very loving cat.

"I think we fell in love with him before he started taking all these things," she added. "It was just so touching to see him come home every day with something for us."

Now the couple will adopt Oscar full time but they still have yet to devise a way to curb his criminal instincts.

"He's still doing it now," said Peter. "We are thinking of training him as Fagin!"

(Reporting by Deborah Cicurel; Editing by Steve Addison)

BBC Sport - Football - World Cup 2010: Englishman Howard Webb to referee final

BBC Sport - Football - World Cup 2010: Englishman Howard Webb to referee final

Corporate firewalk ends with burnt feet in Italy...

Reuters

A girl walks over burning coal as part of the Dammaduwa festival celebrations in Anawatuna village, some 160 km (99 miles) south of Colombo, Sri Lanka.Credit: Reuters/Nir Elias

ROME (Reuters)- Tue Jul 6, 2010. A "motivation day" organized by one of Italy's biggest real estate agencies ended in tears and scars when nine staff had to be treated in hospital after walking barefoot on a bed of hot coals.

Alessandro Di Priamo, a former athlete now turned motivational trainer for companies, said the nine salespeople from the Tecnocasa agency had suffered light burns and none were seriously hurt.

"Firewalking helps people overcome their fears, seek new challenges and understand that most of what they see as their limits are self-inflicted," Di Priamo told Reuters.

He said the hotel near Rome where the exercise was held used the wrong kind of wood and some artificial coal without him knowing.

"I have done this job for 12 years with thousands of people and never had a problem. I myself walked first on that bed of burning coals and didn't feel anything -- in fact that same evening I went for a 16 km run," he said.

(Reporting by Silvia Aloisi, editing by Paul Casciato)

Alligator takes late-night stroll through town...

Reuters

VIENNA Reuters Wed Jun 30, 2010 12:36pm An Austrian university is on the hunt for girls who recoil at the sight of spiders for research into how fear affects the processes of the brain.

"The researchers are looking for girls aged between 8-13 years who are very fearful of spiders and/or who feel sick at the sight of them," the University of Graz said on its website.

The girls will be shown pictures of the eight-legged crawlers and their brainwaves will be registered. They will also undergo free fear therapy with specialists. The researchers hope the results will help them develop their phobia treatments.

"Spiders provoke revulsion for many people and even set off fearful panic. Girls in particular are frequently affected," the university said.

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall, editing by Paul Casciato)

Frenchman who ate cellmate's lung gets 30 years jail...

Reuters

Thu Jun 24, 2010 ROUEN France (Reuters) - A French convict who killed his cellmate and ate his lung was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Thursday.

Nicolas Cocaign and Thierry Baudry had a fight when Cocaign asked Baudry to wash his hands after he had used the toilet during the night of January 2, 2007. Cocaign strangled Baudry and cut open his chest with a razor blade.

Thinking it was the heart, Cocaign then ripped out a piece of Baudry's lung and ate part of it raw before cooking the rest.

"What I did, I liked doing," said Cocaign, 37, who has a shaved head and whose face is covered in tattoos.

He will have to serve at least 20 years of his sentence.

Aware of his impulses, Cocaign had requested psychiatric help in 1998 and asked to be placed in isolation in 2006.

"It's exceptional to see a psychologically disturbed person say: I have to be treated," said defense lawyer Fabien Picchiottino, noting the "failure of the psychiatric, penitentiary and social system."

(Reporting by Marc Parrad; Writing by Sophie Taylor)

Trapped drunk driver opens another beer as awaits rescue...

Reuters

AUCKLAND Wed Jun 23, 2010 3:01pm AUCKLAND (Reuters) - A drunk driver trapped after overturning his car cracked open another can of beer while he waited for emergency crews to rescue him, a New Zealand court was told.

Paul Nigel Sneddon, 47, pleaded guilty to careless driving and drunken driving after being nearly three times over the legal alcohol limit in a district court in the city of Palmerston North, the Dominion Post newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Police found Sneddon, a former baker, trapped in his overturned Ford Laser on June 1, drinking a can of beer after he failed to take a corner properly and crashed through a wooden barrier, flipping his vehicle.

Defense lawyer Peter Young said that when Sneddon found he could not open the doors, "he had nothing else to do at that point, so he had another beer."

When asked by police how much he had consumed, Sneddon replied: "Plenty, I've been drinking for four days straight."

Sneddon, who is estranged from his wife, told the Wellington- based newspaper that he went on a drinking binge after losing his job at a bakery on the same day that he heard his father was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Judge Gregory Ross fined him NZ$1,100 (US$780) and disqualified him from driving for 10 months. It was his first offence.

(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Gyles Beckford)