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The text on the video above was edited on June 1, 2018 to make it clear that it is impossible to know why the polar bear pictured was starving. An earlier version of the video went too far in suggesting that climate change was responsible ( read more ). This story was updated on January 19, 2018 to reflect the more specific location of where the photographs were taken.

 When photographer Paul Nicklen and filmmakers from conservation group Sea Legacy arrived on Somerset Island—near the larger Baffin Island—in the Canadian Arctic in late summer, they came across a heartbreaking sight: a starving polar bear on its deathbed.

 Nicklen is no stranger to bears. From the time he was a child growing up in Canada's far north the biologist turned wildlife photographer has seen over 3,000 bears in the wild. But the emaciated polar bear, featured in videos Nicklen published to social media on December 5, was one of the most gut-wrenching sights he's ever seen.

 "We stood there crying—filming with tears rolling down our cheeks," he said.

 Video shows the polar bear clinging to life, its white hair limply covering its thin, bony frame. One of the bear's back legs drags behind it as it walks, likely due to muscle atrophy. Looking for food, the polar bear slowly rummages through a nearby trashcan used seasonally by Inuit fishers. It finds nothing and resignedly collapses back down onto the ground.

 In the days since Nicklen posted the footage, he's been asked why he didn’t intervene.

 "Of course, that crossed my mind," said Nicklen. "But it's not like I walk around with a tranquilizer gun or 400 pounds of seal meat."

 And even if he did, said Nicklen, he only would have been prolonging the bear's misery. Plus, feeding wild polar bears is illegal in Canada.

 The wildlife photographer says he filmed the bear's slow, beleaguered death because he didn't want it to die in vain.

 "When scientists say bears are going extinct, I want people to realize what it looks like. Bears are going to starve to death," said Nicklen. "This is what a starving bear looks like."

 The Climate Change Link?

 By telling the story of one polar bear, Nicklen hopes to convey a larger message about how a warming climate has deadly consequences.

 Polar bears have long been unwitting mascots for the effects of climate change. As animals that live only in Arctic regions, they're often the first to feel the impacts of warming temperatures and rising seas.

 The large, half-ton bears find concentrations of seals on sea ice. During summer months, it's not uncommon for polar bears to go months without eating while they wait for Arctic ice to solidify.

 In 2002, a World Wildlife Fund report predicted that climate change could eventually lead to polar bear endangerment or extinction. Even then, the report found that polar bears were moving from ice to land earlier and staying on land longer, unhealthily extending the bears' fasting season. By the end of summer, most bears studied by the World Wildlife Fund showed signs of starvation.

 Fifteen years later, polar bears' icy hunting grounds are in even worse shape. The National Snow and Ice Data Center, which tracks sea ice cover annually, has regularly noted record lows in sea ice coverage—a decline that is expected to only get worse. (Read more about drastic predictions for dwindling sea ice.)

 A study recently published in the journal Biosciences looked at how climate science is often falsely discredited. The study found climate deniers are able to downplay the threat of climate change by discrediting the threat facing polar bears. ||||| The world’s tragedies often have images that end up defining them: A five-year old screaming in Iraq after her parents were killed by U.S. soldiers. A starving child being stalked by a vulture during a ruthless famine in Sudan.

 A video released this week of an extremely emaciated polar bear has served as a similar purpose: as a rallying cry and stand-in for a largely unmitigated environmental disaster.

 The video was shot by Paul Nicklen, a nature photographer and contributor to the National Geographic magazine for the last 17 years. He is also a biologist by training and the co-founder of Sea Legacy, a nonprofit that uses storytelling and images to advocate for the environment.

 Nicklen’s video, which he shot on a trip for Sea Legacy, depicts an emaciated polar bear, its coat patchy, seemingly near death on an island in a Canadian territory inside the Arctic Circle. It searches for food in a rusted garbage can and chews what Nicklen said was an old snowmobile seat.

 And it struck a nerve. It was viewed more than 3.5 million times in posts on Nicklen’s and National Geographic’s Instagram feeds, according to metrics on the photo sharing site, before picking up news coverage from around the world.

 If you have any conscience at all, this video of a starving polar bear will break your heart. We cannot look away. https://t.co/6xPkl45FLp — Maryn McKenna (@marynmck) December 9, 2017

 In his caption with the video, Nicklen wrote that his team’s members were “pushing through their tears” while documenting the bear.

 “It’s a soul-crushing scene that still haunts me, but I know we need to share both the beautiful and the heartbreaking if we are going to break down the walls of apathy,” he wrote. “This is what starvation looks like. The muscles atrophy. No energy. It’s a slow, painful death.”

 [Without action on climate change, say goodbye to polar bears]

 The photo was shot on Somerset Island in the upper reaches of Canada. Nicklen and his team saw the bear and shot the video from about 400 feet away, he said. Nicklen, 49, who grew up in the region on nearby Baffin Island, said that he had never seen a bear in such poor condition before.

 “We stood there crying — filming with tears rolling down our cheeks,” he told National Geographic.

 He said that the intent behind the footage, which is set over a mournful soundtrack, was not purely journalistic. The trip he was on was part of a push to drive home the issue of climate change with Sea Legacy. Though he said that he had no definitive proof that the bear’s condition was connected to the global phenomenon, he said he wanted to show people what a starving bear looked like and let them draw their own conclusions.

 “We are a visual species,” Nicklen said in a phone interview. “He should have been a dominant bear. Why he was dying, I don’t know.”

 A shot of another emaciated polar bear taken by a photographer in 2015 raised similar questions.

 Polar bears face an existential threat from climate change due to the loss of habitat from melting sea ice, scientists believe. The populations of some 25,000 polar bears in 19 locations worldwide are forecast to decline by as much as a third in the coming decades. As their hunting and breeding grounds shrink, polar bears face an increased threat of starvation.

 More than any other animal, polar bears have become the poster animal for climate change. Former vice president Al Gore used a cartoon of an exhausted, endlessly swimming polar bear to illustrate the impact humans were having on the sea ice where the bears once hunted. And studies and government agencies continue to warn that climate change could make polar bears extinct by 2050.

 A paper published in July said that the higher global temperatures go, the more likely polar bears are to interact with humans — and possibly attack and eat them.

 Some expressed skepticism that anything could be gleaned about the environment from one image. A commenter on the National Geographic’s Facebook page wondered about the bear’s age, when the footage was taken and what an autopsy would show.

 Donald Moore, the director of Oregon Zoo, a senior science adviser to Smithsonian National Zoo and an expert on polar bears, said he couldn’t tell much more about the bear’s age or condition from the video except its extreme skinniness. But he said that starvation was one of the results of the polar bear’s loss of icy habitats.

 “These polar bears should be riding ice somewhere,” he said. “We have seen more and more very thin polar bears in the Arctic in recent years as climate change increases in intensity and opens up more water.”

 He said that the population of polar bears in the wild has declined about 20 percent over the last decade or so. Bears need an immense amount of food, he said, about an average of a seal a week.

 Nicklen said that while most people were supportive of the photo, a small percentage had been offended that he had not taken more action by feeding the bear, trying to save it or putting it out of its apparent misery.

 “It’s not like we travel around with 200-300 of pounds of seal meat when we’re walking around in the Arctic,” Nicklen said. “We knew it was going to be gut wrenching and intense and horrible.”

 Cleve R. Wootson Jr. contributed to this report.

 Read more:

 Polar bears hurt by climate change are more likely to turn to a new food source — humans

 The most accurate climate change models predict the most alarming consequences, study finds

 First a polar bear petted a dog. Then a polar bear did what polar bears do: Ate a dog.

 Love in the time of climate change: Grizzlies and polar bears are now mating |||||Summary:

– An estimated 2.5 billion people saw the image: a starving polar bear struggling across an Arctic landscape. "The mission was a success, but there was a problem: We had lost control of the narrative," writes Cristina Mittermeier in National Geographic. Accompanied by a photographic team, she snapped shots of the dying bear last year while colleague Paul Nicklen shot video—all part of their "mission to capture images that communicate the urgency of climate change," she writes. "When Paul posted the video on Instagram, he wrote, 'This is what starvation looks like.'" He also wondered if all 25,000 polar bears would die like this and urged people to reduce their carbon footprint. But he didn't say climate change had killed this bear. That nuance vanished when National Geographic posted the video with the subtitles "This is what climate change looks like" and the Washington Post ran a dramatic headline about "gut-wrenching" images. People also responded dramatically, expressing gratitude for validation of climate science, anger the crew hadn't fed the bear, or a stubborn refusal to acknowledge global warming. "Perhaps we made a mistake in not telling the full story—that we were looking for a picture that foretold the future and that we didn’t know what had happened to this particular polar bear," she writes. Yet a fast-warming Arctic means bears will be stranded on land, unable to pursue prey, so the photo makes sense. The trick for next time? Make sure "our intentions are clear and the narrative remains our own."


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There’s no doubt the public outcry over the News of the World’s illegal hacking of mobile phones and payments to police officials is serious. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t close profitable newspapers willingly. (Heck, he doesn’t even like to close massively unprofitable papers.) But is it so serious that a top News Corp. executive — perhaps even Murdoch himself — could end up being convicted on criminal charges?

 Andreas Whittam Smith thinks so. He cites the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000, the law used to imprison News of the World reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who teamed up to invade the voicemail accounts of various celebrities. Smith notes that the law, as worded, has remarkably broad scope:

 Where an offence under any provision of this Act… is committed by a body corporate and is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to any neglect on the part of a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or any person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he (as well as the body corporate) shall be guilty of that offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly.

 “If you have presided over an organisation that has conducted criminal activities, either you gave the orders, or you gave permission, or you connived, but if you did none of these things, then you were neglectful,” writes Smith. “That is the trap, that is the box in which the directors of News International will find themselves.”

 I ran this reading by Jonathan P. Armstrong, a partner at the law firm Duane Morris who specializes in corporate law with a concentration in technology and compliance. “My view is that might be a stretch,” he says. That’s because the application of the “attributable to any neglect” clause isn’t quite as broad as it sounds. “That sort of clause exists because it’s lifted out of health and safety legislation,” he says. “Say you had an airplane and you never changed the tires. I don’t think, in the U.K., something like failure to have a policy preventing hacking — that wouldn’t be a big enough neglect to get by a jury.”

 Where the neglect cause could conceivably apply is to Rebekah Brooks, News International’s CEO. Brooks has denied having any knowledge of the illegal hacking, but she was editor of the NotW at the time it published stories that cited voice mail messages obtained that way, and it was Brooks who first hired the private investigator who hacked the voicemail of murdered teenager Milly Dowler. In Brooks’s case, therefore, it’s possible to argue that the only way she wouldn’t have known about the hacking was by making it clear she didn’t want to know. “The quaint old English saying for that we have is ‘Nelsonian ignorance,’” says Armstrong. The phrase refers to Lord Nelson, the famed admiral who was blind in one eye.

 Already, police are reportedly planning to arrest Andy Coulson, who succeeded Brooks as editor, either on similar grounds or because they have evidence that he did, in fact, condone the hacking.

 But don’t expect the arrests to rise to the very top of the News Corp. food chain — to Rupert Murdoch, or even to his son, James — unless evidence tying them directly to the illegal hacks comes to light. “The reality is cases that are that much of a stretch normally don’t run in the U.K.,” says Armstrong. “We don’t have the same system you have in the U.S. of an attorney general who might see a lot of merit, politically, in seeing this go ahead. Generally speaking, prosecutions will only run where the prosecutors are convinced they’ll be able to persuade the jury beyond all reasonable doubt that the guy had his hands all over this.” ||||| The 168-year-old News of the World, the widest-read paper in the English-speaking world, has acknowledged that it hired “investigators” who hacked into the phone accounts of politicians, celebrities and ordinary Britons in an attempt to develop stories. The targets of the paper’s hacking apparently included the families of British troops killed in Afghanistan, victims of the 2005 London transit bombings and a 13-year-old missing girl who was later found dead.

 Murdoch, 80, has weathered criticism and crises before, most notably the near-bankruptcy of News Corp. in 1990. But the phone-hacking scandal is easily the most dire public-relations debacle of the Australian-turned-American’s storied business career.

 Public outrage over the phone tapping has led to rare condemnation of Murdoch in the British Parliament and even from Prime Minister David Cameron, who has enjoyed Murdoch’s political support. Because of his outsize role in the U.K. media, Murdoch has been among the most powerful and influential forces in British politics for many years.

 Although there is no evidence that Murdoch was aware of the News of the World’s illegal behavior, the scandal has shaken his dominant role in the British media establishment and has tarnished his stewardship of an empire that includes such U.S. properties as the Fox TV network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the 20th Century Fox movie studio.

 The scandal has also threatened to derail News Corp.’s bid to gain control of British Sky Broadcasting, the largest pay TV provider in the United Kingdom. News Corp. owns 39 percent of the satellite company and is trying to gobble up the balance in a deal worth about $12 billion. Regulatory approval of its bid is pending, and the outcome could be an indicator of public sentiment toward the newspaper’s behavior.

 Some observers suggested Thursday that the scandal could affect who succeeds Murdoch at the top of his company, which he built into a colossus after inheriting two small Australian papers from his father 58 years ago. Murdoch’s heir apparent, son James, oversees the company’s British newspaper division and announced the tabloid’s demise in its London newsroom.

 Many here are calling for the dismissal of Rebekah Brooks, a former News of the World editor who is chief executive of its immediate parent company, News International. Brooks was editor of the paper in 2002 when a private detective working on its behalf allegedly hacked into the voice-mail of slain teenager Milly Dowling and erased one of the messages. But both Rupert and James Murdoch have remained loyal to Brooks. “I am satisfied that Rebekah — her leadership and her standard of ethics and her standard of conduct — is very good,” the younger Murdoch told BBC News in an interview. ||||| I am going to describe how action should be swiftly taken to curb Rupert Murdoch and his newspapers now that supposition and dark suspicion have become proven fact. News International, a large and powerful media organisation, Mr Murdoch's company, systematically invades people's privacy through phone hacking, corrupts the police by making large payments to individual officers, and compromises fair trials as a result of publishing reports that are likely to prejudice juries.

 It operates without restraint and has no sense of right or wrong. It doesn't yet represent the same threat to British society as the Italian mafia does to Italy. But there are sufficient similarities to tell us that if we don't act now, worse will follow. For unchecked, News International's illegal practices would grow ever more far reaching, more police officers would be suborned, more trials ruined. And more politicians would be bent to Mr Murdoch's will. For, just as Italian politicians have courted the mafia, so British politicians have fawned over News International executives and editors. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, even brought a former editor into Downing Street who, it is now alleged, authorised the payments of bribes to the police. Well meaning though large advertisers may be in withdrawing their business from the News of the World, that won't curb Mr Murdoch. And although I have willingly signed up to the campaign that calls for a public inquiry ( hackinginquiry.org/), that would only be a staging post. In fact, the mechanisms to bring the directors of News International to book already exist. They are part of the law of the land.

 The most important step is to make use of the powers contained in what is known as The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. It was under Section 1 of this Act that the News of the World phone hackers were convicted and imprisoned. So far as the directors and executives of News International in their personal capacities are concerned, the crucial passage in the legislation comes towards the end of the Act. It is Section 79.

 Forgive me for now penetrating deeply into the thickets of the law, but eventually, in the growing scandal of the News of the World's behaviour, everything will turn on Section 79. I hope charges will be brought under this section. It is entitled the "Criminal liability of directors etc". (I like the "etc"). It states that "Where an offence under any provision of this Act... is committed by a body corporate and is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to any neglect on the part of a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or any person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he (as well as the body corporate) shall be guilty of that offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly."

 To see how Section 79 might work, start with the smaller fry, say Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International. In a letter to staff published earlier this week, Ms Brooks, following the revelations that her reporters had hacked into the mobile phone of the murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, when she was editor of the News of the World, attempted to exculpate herself. "We were all appalled and shocked when we heard about these allegations yesterday... At the moment we only know what we have read... I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations." In other words, Ms Brooks is claiming that she was unaware of the criminal invasion of privacy that had the effect of vainly raising the hopes of the parents that their daughter was still alive and that at the same impeded the police operation.

 But go back to the Act. To avoid criminal proceedings, having not initiated or consented to the Dowler phone hacking won't do as a defence because there are other tests. Let us go to these. Connived? That would require an examination of how Ms Brooks habitually conducted herself as editor. "Connived", for instance, might be warmly congratulating reporters who produced stories that could only have been acquired illegally. But perhaps there was no connivance. Even so, Ms Brooks would not be home safe and dry. "Where an offence is... attributable to any neglect", states the Act.

 This is the catch-all section of the Act. If you have presided over an organisation that has conducted criminal activities, either you gave the orders, or you gave permission, or you connived, but if you did none of these things, then you were neglectful. That is the trap, that is the box in which the directors of News International will find themselves. It is also the bit that Ms Brooks would find hard to understand. For, as she indicated earlier this week, she isn't going to resign."I am aware of the speculation about my position. Therefore it is important you all know that as chief executive, I am determined to lead the company to ensure we do the right thing and resolve these serious issues." This comes straight out of the dishonorable, cowardly, defensive, mind-your-back school of management that says that if I didn't know, I cannot be blamed. It doesn't recognise neglect. Instead it substitutes the self-serving, conceited thesis that "only I, who was at the helm during the disaster, can steer us to safety".

 But what about Mr Murdoch? Would he be touched by Section 79? Only a lawyer could give an authoritative opinion. But I note these words in the Act. It bears on a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or "any person who was purporting to act in any such capacity" (my italics).

 Whether Mr Murdoch falls under this rubric would be for a court to decide. But I have no doubt that Mr Murdoch does act as if he were a director or a manager. For although technically News International is part of a public company, for all intents and purposes it is conducted as if it were a court with Mr Murdoch as its sovereign. One reason why Ms Brooks isn't resigning is that she is a courtier. Courtiers don't resign. They stay or go at the monarch's pleasure. And while it may be difficult for company lawyers to understand a monarchical organisation, judges should do so – for they are, after all, "Her Majesty's Judges".

 Rupert Murdoch has owned the News of the World for nearly 42 years. When he arrived in England as an unknown Australian newspaper proprietor to bid for the News of the World in 1969 in opposition to Robert Maxwell, I went to meet him at Heathrow Airport and travelled into town with him. I was a young financial journalist. When we got to the Savoy Hotel, he went up to reception to sign in. As soon as he was given his room number, he demanded that he be given a different room. I asked him why. You see, he said, I fear that my room will have been bugged.

 Even then phone hacking and electronic eavesdropping obsessed him. Now they will be his undoing and Section 79 could be his final reckoning.

 a.whittamsmith@independent.co.uk |||||

– Rupert Murdoch, who yesterday shut down the 168-year-old News of the World, faces the worst PR crisis of his six-decade career, reports the Washington Post. So far, the scandal is threatening to derail Murdoch's $12 billion bid for British Sky Broadcasting. It could even force Murdoch to testify before the British Parliament under oath. But as bad as things are, could Murdoch himself end up in jail? One analyst, writing in the Independent, thinks so. Andreas Whittam Smith explains that phone hackers were convicted under Britain's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and he points readers to Section 79 of the act, which states that when a corporate body commits "an offense under any provision of this act ... with the consent or connivance of ... a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer, he (as well as the body corporate) shall be guilty of that offense and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly." Perhaps Murdoch is a stretch, but observers think Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International and former editor at News of the World, could be in danger of criminal charges. Just like this former editor.


An imaginative, cavern-style house in Malibu that looks like something out of "The Flintstones" has come on the market at $3.5 million. What a contrast then that the owners are seemingly ageless television personalityand his wife,, according to public records.The usual architectural retreat sits on a mountaintop within a nearly 23-acre site. Free-form walls punctuated with expanses of glass bring in ocean views.The one-bedroom, two-bathroom custom house, which has the interior ambience of a bright cave, has vaulted ceilings in the living and dining rooms, a fireplace and a wine cellar.Clark, 82, hosted "American Bandstand" for more than three decades starting in the '50s as well as game shows and "The Dick Clark Show" (1958-60). His "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" show marked its 40th anniversary this year. He started Dick Clark Productions in 1957 and sold it in 2007 for $175 million.Diane Carter of Coldwell Banker's Malibu Colony office is the listing agent, the Multiple Listing Service shows. ||||| The seed for Wide00014 was:

 - Slash pages from every domain on the web:

 -- a ranking of all URLs that have more than one incoming inter-domain link (rank was determined by number of incoming links using Wide00012 inter domain links)

 -- up to a maximum of 100 most highly ranked URLs per domain

 - Top ranked pages (up to a max of 100) from every linked-to domain using the Wide00012 inter-domain navigational link graph ||||| Trulia gives home buyers, sellers, owners and renters the inside scoop on properties, places and real estate professionals. Trulia has unique info on the areas people want to live that can’t be found anywhere else: users can learn about agents, neighborhoods, schools, crime and even ask the local community questions. Real estate professionals use Trulia to connect with millions of transaction-ready buyers and sellers each month via our hyper local advertising services, social recommendations and top-rated mobile apps. Trulia is headquartered in downtown San Francisco and is backed by Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital.

 The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. |||||
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– Dick Clark has put his 23-acre mountaintop home in Malibu up for sale for $3.5 million, reports Forbes. This one seems to be drawing lots of attention because the home looks like it's straight out of the Flintstones, notes the Los Angeles Times, which says the interior has the "ambience of a bright cave." It's no joke, though: Those big expanses of glass make for 360-degree views of the ocean, the mountains, and even Los Angeles sunsets. For a slideshow, click here.


Click image above to view graphic

 Although the prospect of a pill for Alzheimer's remains a long way off, the landmark British study provides a major new pathway for future drug treatments.

 The compound works by blocking a faulty signal in brains affected by neurodegenerative diseases, which shuts down the production of essential proteins, leading to brain cells being unprotected and dying off.

 It was tested in mice with prion disease - the best animal model of human neurodegenerative disorders - but scientists said they were confident the same principles would apply in a human brain with debilitating brain diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.

 The study, published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine, was carried out at the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Toxicology Unit at the University of Leicester.

 “It's a real step forward,” team leader Professor Giovanna Mallucci told The Independent. “It's the first time a substance has been given to mice that prevents brain disease. The fact that this is a compound that can be given orally, that gets into the brain and prevents brain disease, is a first in itself… We can go forward and develop better molecules and I can't see why preventing this process should only be restricted to mice. I think this probably will translate into other mammalian brains.”

 In debilitating brain diseases like Alzheimer's, the production of new proteins in the brain is shut down by a build-up of “misfolded proteins” or amyloids. This build-up leads to an “over-activation” of a natural defence mechanism that stops essential proteins being produced. Without these proteins to protect them, brain cells die off - leading to the symptoms of diseases like Alzheimer's.

 The compound used in the study works by inhibiting an enzyme, known as PERK, which plays a key role in activating this defence mechanism. In mice with prion's disease, it restored proteins to protect brain cells “stopping the disease in its tracks”, restoring some normal behaviours and preventing memory loss.

 Although the compound also produced significant side effects in mice, including weight loss and mild diabetes, which was caused by damage to the pancreas, Professor Mallucci said it would “not be impossible” to develop a drug that protected the brain without the side effects and that work towards doing so had been “very promising”.

 The breakthrough was greeted with excitement by scientists, who nonetheless cautioned that it remained a significant proof of principle and a possible basis for new treatments, rather than a guarantee of an Alzheimer's cure in the near future.

 Computer graphic of a vertical (coronal) slice through the brain of an Alzheimer patient (credit: Science Photo Library)

 Professor Roger Morris, acting head King's College London's department of chemistry, said: “This is the first convincing report that a small drug, of the type most conveniently turned into medicines, stops the progressive death of neurons in the brain as found, for instance, in Alzheimer's disease. True, this study has been done in mice, not man; and it is prion disease, not Alzheimer's, that has been cured. However, there is considerable evidence that the way neurons die in both diseases is similar; and lessons learned in mice from prion disease have proved accurate guides to attenuate the progress of Alzheimer's disease in patients.”

 “From finding the first effective drug in a mouse, to having an effective medicine in man, usually takes decades to bring to fruition, in the very few cases in which it is successful. So, a cure for Alzheimer's is not just around the corner. However, the critical point of principle made by Professor Mallucci's study is that a drug, given orally, can arrest neurodegeneration caused by amyloid in the brain.

 ”This finding, I suspect, will be judged by history as a turning point in the search for medicines to control and prevent Alzheimer's disease.“

 David Allsopp, professor of neuroscience at Lancaster University said that the study had thrown up ”very dramatic and highly encouraging results“, but said that more research was needed to overcome the "problematic side-effects" and to prove the technique would be effective against other disease like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

 There are currently 800,000 people in the UK with dementia and Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause. The number of people living with the condition is set to break one million by 2021, and represents an enormous health burden for the NHS and the social care system. Parkinson's affect 1 in 500 people and around 127,000 people suffer from the condition.

 Dr Eric Karran, director of research at Alzheimer's Research UK, said: "Targeting a mechanism relevant to a number of neurodegenerative diseases could yield a single drug with wide-reaching benefits, but this compound is still at an early stage. It will be important for these findings to be repeated and tested in models of other neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease. While Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, other diseases that cause dementia are also characterised by the abnormal build-up of proteins in the brain.

 “If this process is also working overtime in these conditions too, targeting it could be a promising avenue for investigation. However, what is true in animals does not always hold true in people and the ultimate test for this compound will be to see whether it is safe and effective in people with these diseases.” ||||| Scientists are hailing a landmark British study which has paved the way for a pill that can cure brain diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's by stopping the death of neurons.

 The Medical Research Council (MRC) team focused on the root cause of many degenerative brain diseases - abnormally shaped proteins that stick together in clumps and fibres.

 When enough misshapen protein builds up in the brain it can trigger a reaction that results in the death of nerve cells.

 Other approaches have sought to stop or limit the accumulation of the abnormal protein, whose structure is folded the wrong way.

 But this research, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, targeted the harmful way brain cells react to misfolded proteins.

 Using a drug injected into the stomachs of mice through a mouth tube, they flipped a cellular switch from "off" to "on" to prevent neurons dying.

 Five weeks after treatment one group of mice remained free of symptoms such as memory loss, impaired reflexes and limb dragging.

 They also lived longer than untreated animals with the same brain disease.

 During the study, a neurodegenerative disease caused by abnormal prion proteins was induced in the mice.

 Prion diseases, which include Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), are rare in humans but share the same underlying cause - misfolded proteins - as more common conditions such as Alzheimer's.

 Lead scientist Professor Giovanna Mallucci, from the MRC Toxicology Unit, said: "We were extremely excited when we saw the treatment stop the disease in its tracks and protect brain cells, restoring some normal behaviours and preventing memory loss in the mice."

 The scientists stress human trials are a long way off and point out that the mice suffered serious side effects, including significant weight loss and raised blood sugar.

 But they also believe the research demonstrates in principle the possibility of developing an oral treatment - a pill or swallowed liquid - that can protect the brain from neurodegenerative disease.

 The research is at a very early stage and it could be a decade or more before the medicine is actually developed.

 But experts said the findings were highly significant.

 Professor Roger Morris, from King's College London, said: "This is the first convincing report that a small drug, of the type most conveniently turned into medicines, stops the progressive death of neurons in the brain as found, for instance, in Alzheimer's disease.

 "True, this study has been done in mice, not man; and it is prion disease, not Alzheimer's, that has been cured.

 "However, there is considerable evidence that the way neurons die in both diseases is similar; and lessons learned in mice from prion disease have proved accurate guides to attenuate the progress of Alzheimer's disease in patients."

 He added: "This finding, I suspect, will be judged by history as a turning point in the search for medicines to control and prevent Alzheimer's disease."

 Professor David Allsop, from the University of Lancaster, said: "Inhibiting this pathway has produced some very dramatic and highly encouraging results in mice infected with prion disease.

 "The main caveats of the research, however, are that prion disease is very rare in humans, and it is not yet clear if the same approach will be viable for much more common neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

 "More research is needed to determine if this approach is valid for any condition other than prion disease, and also to find ways of getting around these problematic side-effects." |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Scientists are calling it a breakthrough and a turning point: In a new study, a compound successfully halted brain cell death in mice, meaning we're one step closer to a pill that can treat Alzheimer's, the Independent reports. Neurodegenerative diseases halt the production of key proteins, which in turn results in the unprotected brain cells dying off, and symptoms appearing. The compound blocks the faulty brain signal that causes the initial "shutdown," thus basically flipping the switch from "off" back to "on." Proteins are produced, brain cells are protected, and symptoms are reversed. The mice in the study had prion disease, which is similar to a human neurodegenerative disorder. After receiving the compound, memory loss and other symptoms including impaired reflexes and limb dragging were reversed; the treated mice also lived longer than those who didn't receive the compound, Sky News reports. Though it's still a long way off, scientists think a treatment based on these findings could also help people with Parkinson's disease. Now the bad news: The mice did suffer side effects, including weight loss and diabetes. (In other Alzheimer's news, how well you can smell peanut butter could predict your risk of getting the disease.)


Here is a news article: There’s no denying that sperm whales are amazing. As some of Earth’s largest mammals, they have the largest brain of any creature on the planet and can weigh up to 45 tons. But it turns out that the most impressive secrets of these huge animals are found in something much smaller: Their DNA. As John R. Platt writes for Hakai Magazine, modern sperm whales seem to have all descended from a single female.

 A new study published in the journal Molecular Ecology reveals that deep within sperm whale’s mitochondrial DNA—genes passed on from mother to child—lie connections to a single, “Eve”-like whale.

 The researchers analyzed mitochondrial DNA from 1,633 whales and found low genetic diversity. But that was no surprise: Past research has demonstrated that many of what scientists call “megafauna” (really big animals) aren’t that genetically diverse.

 In 2002, for example, researchers found that killer whales lack diversity in their genes despite their large population size—likely due to some past event that once dramatically reduced their population. It turns out that other species lack diversity, too, because of everything from preferences for the same breeding grounds to loyalty to a certain kind of food.

 So the study’s lead author, Alana Alexander, expected to find low diversity, Platt reports. But she found even lower diversity than she imagined. More data didn’t help uncover more diversity—instead, it confirmed ties to a single female whale who, at some point in the last 80,000 years, became the “mother” of all sperm whales who followed.

 Though it would make sense to have a single mother in a single area—an ancestor who, say, really loved the Pacific Ocean—this mom’s genes have been found in sperm whales all over the world.

 How this happened remains unknown and is even stranger given sperm whales’ social structures. Sperm whales are matrilineal, meaning most females stick together and males come and go, which would limit how far a female's genes could travel.

 Yet these social structures now restrict the ability of sperm whales to differentiate and prevent new DNA from getting into the stream. Right now, it seems that sperm whale populations are “shaped by females being ‘home-bodies’—at the social group, regional and oceanic level,” Alexander said in a release.

 This lack of diversity leaves the whales more susceptible to things like climate change that disturb their preferred habitat. This, in turn, can also threaten future diversity, preventing the whales from straying too far from their region and mixing with others.

 Sperm whales may have an elusive “Eve,” but today’s moms will need to get out more for the sake of their species. ||||| The interplay of natural selection and genetic drift, influenced by geographic isolation, mating systems and population size, determines patterns of genetic diversity within species. The sperm whale provides an interesting example of a long‐lived species with few geographic barriers to dispersal. Worldwide mtDNA diversity is relatively low, but highly structured among geographic regions and social groups, attributed to female philopatry. However, it is unclear whether this female philopatry is due to geographic regions or social groups, or how this might vary on a worldwide scale. To answer these questions, we combined mtDNA information for 1091 previously published samples with 542 newly obtained DNA profiles (394‐bp mtDNA, sex, 13 microsatellites) including the previously unsampled Indian Ocean, and social group information for 541 individuals. We found low mtDNA diversity (π = 0.430%) reflecting an expansion event <80 000 years bp, but strong differentiation by ocean, among regions within some oceans, and among social groups. In comparison, microsatellite differentiation was low at all levels, presumably due to male‐mediated gene flow. A hierarchical amova showed that regions were important for explaining mtDNA variance in the Indian Ocean, but not Pacific, with social group sampling in the Atlantic too limited to include in analyses. Social groups were important in partitioning mtDNA and microsatellite variance within both oceans. Therefore, both geographic philopatry and social philopatry influence genetic structure in the sperm whale, but their relative importance differs by sex and ocean, reflecting breeding behaviour, geographic features and perhaps a more recent origin of sperm whales in the Pacific. By investigating the interplay of evolutionary forces operating at different temporal and geographic scales, we show that sperm whales are perhaps a unique example of a worldwide population expansion followed by rapid assortment due to female social organization. |||||
A summary of this is?

– While investigating samples of toxic levels of heavy metals found in sperm whales, researchers stumbled upon a surprising discovery: All of today's sperm whales appear to have descended from the same female, reports Hakai magazine. They've named her Eve and say she lived between 10,000 and 80,000 years ago. In the journal Molecular Ecology, the researchers explain that the genetic diversity of the whales, one of the planet's largest animals, turns out to be even lower than previously thought. The key was locked away in the species' mitochondrial DNA, a type of DNA passed down through the generations from mothers, not fathers. Conducting genetic tests on 542 samples collected over the past six years by Ocean Alliance and comparing them to another 1,000 whales analyzed in the past 15 years, they found that a single female whale left her thumbprint on all of them. Which doesn't quite make sense given that mothers tend to dominate certain areas without moving around, so the spread of one set of genes across the globe would be unusual. Somewhere along the line one mother whale and her descendants were able to out-compete all other females alive at the time—perhaps there was a sudden global population decline, or female whale behavior was dramatically different then—and their genetic lineage took off. One drawback is that this lack of diversity makes the whales more susceptible to things such as climate change, notes Smithsonian, suggesting that "today’s moms will need to get out more for the sake of their species." (Check out what one diver was sprayed with when encountering a diving sperm whale.)


Write a summary based on this article:

These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| SEATTLE - The suspect in a horrible attack at a University District apartment told police he was high on LSD when he assaulted his girlfriend Sunday afternoon, documents say.

 Meanwhile, police detectives say they don't know if the woman will survive the attack. She is still undergoing treatment at Harborview Medical Center.

 Officers responded to the scene, a home in the 2200 block of NE 50th Street, shortly after 2 p.m. Sunday after receiving reports of a disturbance there, said Detective Mark Jamieson of the Seattle police.

 When police arrived, they could hear people arguing inside the residence. Officers knocked on the door but there was no answer, so they looked in a window and saw a man strangling a woman, according to police documents.

 Officers forced open the door and pulled the man off the woman. Officers then began performing CPR on the woman, who was unresponsive, until medics arrived from the Seattle Fire Department. The woman was then rushed to Harborview Medical Center with life-threatening injuries.

 According to police reports, the suspect told detectives that he and his girlfriend took LSD. He told police he became paranoid and thought she was plotting against him. He also admitted to punching her in the face and head, then strangling her with his hands, police say.

 A neighbor, who doesn't want to be identified, told KOMO News he called 911 when he heard what sounded like a violent confrontation next door.

 "The guy started pounding the wall and kicking stuff, and then I was like, 'Wow, I better call,' because he was continuously yelling like, 'I'm going to (expletive) kill you!'"

 The suspect, identified in documents as Casey Henderson, 21, was arrested and booked him into the King County Jail for investigation of domestic violence assault, Jamieson said. He is being held on $1 million bail and is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.

 Both he and the victim are students at the University of Washington. ||||| Police say the woman, a 22-year-old UW student, was attacked by her boyfriend, 21, who also attends the University of Washington. His bail was set at $1 million.

 A 22-year-old University of Washington student who was severely beaten in her University District apartment Sunday has died, Seattle police said Tuesday.

 Police say the woman was attacked by her boyfriend, 21, who is also a UW student. The case against him will now be investigated as a homicide, police said.

 A judge Monday found probable cause to hold him pending the filing of criminal charges and set bail at $1 million, according to King County prosecutors. Formal charges are expected to be filed Wednesday.

 The Seattle Times generally does not identify suspects until they are charged.

 A neighbor called 911 soon after 2 p.m. Sunday and reported he could hear a male yelling, “You wanna die?” and “I will kill you,” according to the statement of probable cause outlining the police case against the suspect.

 Police forced their way into the apartment, and pulled a man off the woman. She was taken to Harborview Medical Center, where she died.

 Her name has not been released.

 According to police, the man later told detectives he and his girlfriend had taken LSD a day before the attack. Police say the suspect told detectives he became paranoid and believed his girlfriend was plotting against him before he began beating her. |||||

– A 21-year-old college student in Seattle allegedly killed his girlfriend after getting high on LSD over the weekend, the Seattle Times reports. According to the Tri-City Herald, police say the suspect, identified as Casey Henderson, and 22-year-old Katy Straalsund took LSD Saturday and walked around the University of Washington, where they were both students. Things apparently took a turn when they returned to Straalsund's nearby apartment. “He did say that they never slept,” a Seattle Police Department detective wrote in the police report. “He states (that) after a while things ‘started to get weird.'" Henderson allegedly later told police he got paranoid and convinced that Straalsund was plotting against him, KOMO News reports. Police say a neighbor called 911 Sunday afternoon after hearing a man yelling "You wanna die?" and "I will kill you." Officers broke into the apartment and reportedly found Henderson strangling Straalsund. Police say he had already attacked her using techniques he learned in tae kwon do before they got there. Straalsund had no pulse when officers arrived and had no brain activity when she got to the hospital, where she later died. Henderson, who appears to have no criminal history, is being held on $1 million bail. He was expected to be charged with homicide Wednesday.


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Jodie Foster, in a sign things are getting very serious with her photographer girlfriend, Alexandra Hedison, is forsaking booze, and even attending support meetings in an effort to show her lover, a recovered alcoholic herself, how committed she is to the relationship.

 The two-time Oscar winner‘s “joined Alcoholics Anonymous and has embraced a 12-step program,” a friend told Star. “Now Alex has no reservations about spending their lives together … now they are both sober.”

 The actress-director, 51, was persuaded by Hedison — a 44-year-old recovering alcoholic with more than a decade of sobriety under her belt — to make the moves after Foster’s casual drinking became a tangible issue between the two, Star reported.

 PHOTOS: Jodie Foster Selling Los Angeles Estate, Asking $5.75 Million

 Hedison, who dated Ellen DeGeneres from 2001 until 2004, was often prone to watching the comic imbibe with wine as she fought to resist the urges to drink, a predicament Foster has vowed not to repeat.

 The Silence of the Lambs star, who was the talk of Hollywood after her revealing speech at last year’s Golden Globes “refuses to make the same mistake,” Degeneres did, says the pal.

 PHOTOS: Jodie Foster Reunites With Ex-Partner – For Coffee

 “She’s finally found the woman of her dreams,” the source told Star, ”so giving up alcohol was nothing for her.”

 “Alex wants Jodie to be sober for at least a year before they tie the knot and then it’s full-speed ahead with the nuptials. They’re crazy in love.” ||||| We have been hearing for months that Ellen DeGeneres’ marriage to Portia de Rossi is on the rocks in a huge way and apparently things are so bad that it’s affecting the advice that she gives to friends. Jodie Foster and lover Alexandra Hedison were spotted out recently wearing matching gold bands and it caused speculation on whether or not the two had recently married. It seems that they may have had a commitment ceremony but no legally binding vows were swapped, yet.

 According to the March 24th print edition of National Enquirer Ellen couldn’t get to Jodie fast enough to have a conversation about the legalities and realities of marriage. Ellen at one point was actually pleading with Jodie not to pull the trigger. There is a bit of personal back-story to go with this too. Ellen and Alexandra dated for three years before Portia came into the picture. Ellen knows Jodie’s current flame well and fears that she is headed for disaster as well as a huge financial hit if she marries Alexandra.

 Apparently Ellen is having some marital regrets of her own and doesn’t want to see her friend taken advantage of too. Do you think that Ellen’s marriage to Portia will last for much longer? At this point we rarely hear anything good about these two and at best it sounds like Ellen puts on an act in public to try and offset all of the bad press. Are they headed for a split”? Will Jodie take Ellen’s advice or is she going to do as she pleases? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

 Ellen and Alexandra back in the day – 2002

 Photo Credit: FameFlynet |||||

– Jodie Foster is reportedly dating Ellen DeGeneres' ex, photographer Alexandra Hedison—and sources say the relationship is getting so serious that Foster has given up alcohol, because Hedison is a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for more than 10 years. Foster "joined Alcoholics Anonymous and has embraced a 12-step program," one source tells Star, according to Radar. "Now they are both sober ... Alex has no reservations about spending their lives together." But she wants Foster to be sober for at least a year before they get married, the source adds. Hedison, 44, who dated DeGeneres from 2001 to 2004, reportedly had a hard time watching Ellen drink as she tried to resist the temptation. Foster "refuses to make the same mistake," the source says. "She’s finally found the woman of her dreams, so giving up alcohol was nothing for her. ... They're crazy in love." But last month, the National Enquirer reported that DeGeneres warned Foster off of marrying Hedison, over fears Foster would be taken advantage of, according to Celeb Dirty Laundry and the International Business Times. But "Jodie could not care less," says one source. "She thinks Ellen is a fool for letting a good catch get away."


News article:

Most of the Secret Service agents embroiled in a prostitution scandal brought women back to their Colombia hotel rooms before President Obama arrived in town for an international summit, Rep. Pete King said Saturday.

 King said the raunchy rendezvous involved 11 agents and went sour when an agent refused to pay one of the women, who were presumed to be hookers.

 “The agent said, ‘I don't owe you anything,’ but gave the woman some money,” said King (R-L.I.),the head of the House Homeland Security Committee, who was briefed on the matter. “I don't know how much, and it was settled right there.”

 IN COLOMBIA, THE SEX BUSINESS IS SO BIG THAT SOME CALL IT THE 'THAILAND OF LATIN AMERICA'

 As it turned out, the agents’ troubles were just beginning. Local cops were called to the hotel in Cartagena and, because the matter involved foreigners, a report was written up and sent to the U.S. Embassy, King said.

 Embassy officials in turn notified the Secret Service, which immediately launched an investigation.

 At least one supervisor was among the agents involved, King said. He was not certain exactly how many women were involved.

 The scandal — a black eye for the United States’ reputation abroad — was revealed Friday just hours before President Obama arrived in Cartagena.

 The 11 agents were part of an advance team assigned to secure a local hotel before the summit began, yet their attention apparently turned to taking advantage of Colombia’s policy of legal prostitution.

 Five American service members were also accused of misconduct stemming from the scandalous incident at the hotel, according to the U.S. military.

 “They had arranged to have a bunch of prostitutes come by and one of the agents refused to pay a prostitute,” said author Ronald Kessler, one of the leading experts on the Secret Service. “Yes, doubly good judgment there.”

 Fernando Vergara/AP

 Kessler, who was briefed on the investigation by his sources within the agency, told the Daily News Saturday that the spurned hooker told police about the lack of payment.

 The 11 agents were immediately recalled to Washington.

 “Their careers are over,” said Kessler.

 “Number one, it is against basic ethics to go to a prostitute,” he continued. “Number two, it is incredibly embarrassing to the White House.”

 “And number three,” he continued. “It could leave them open to blackmail and a possible assassination attempt.”

 Obama still has “full confidence” in the Secret Service, according to White House spokesman Jay Carney, who declared late Saturday that the incident “has been more of a distraction for the press” than the President.

 Kessler said two of the agents were supervisors who attempted to cover up the mortifying incident.

 The agents were staying at the beachfront Hotel Caribe, which is also hosting the White House staff and the traveling press team.

 Guests at the swanky hotel told reporters that several of the agents had been spotted drinking heavily during their weeklong stay.

 Details of the incident remain murky, but U.S. officials believe one agent took a woman back to his room Wednesday night and threw her out in a dispute over money.

 The woman caused a commotion in the hallway, getting the attention of local cops and other Secret Service agents, a senior official told The New York Times.

 Though it was not known if all 11 members of the Secret Service team are suspected of wrongdoing, they were all recalled as part of the investigation. Several of the agents are married, according to reports.

 Prostitution is legal in Colombia, as long as it is conducted in so-called “tolerance zones.”

 Though the exact boundaries of the zones frequently change and are rarely enforced by police, the coastal city of Cartagena is a popular destination for prostitution and sex tourism.

 Hookers can easily be procured online or in bars or hotels in much of the city. It was not clear how the agents met the women involved in the incident.

 The scandal threatened to overshadow President Obama’s visit to the important summit. He landed in Cartagena Friday night and attended a formal dinner with the other world leaders at Castillo San Felipe de Barajasajas, an historic Spanish fortress.

 The President, who had a full day of summit events Saturday, has not addressed the Secret Service scandal. He is not staying at the Hotel Caribe.

 The Secret Service did not elaborate on the allegations Saturday. The night before, the agency — which is charged with protecting the President — simply confirmed that the officers were pulled back to Washington.

 All of the agents are based in Washington, D.C., according to Kessler, author of “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect.”

 The matter was turned over to the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which handles the Secret Services’ internal affairs.

 With Mark Morales

 jlemire@nydailynews.com

 Sign up for BREAKING NEWS Emails privacy policy Thanks for subscribing! ||||| An embarrassing scandal involving prostitutes and Secret Service agents deepened Saturday as 11 agents were placed on leave, and the agency designed to protect President Barack Obama had to offer regret for the mess overshadowing his diplomatic mission to Latin America.

 President Barack Obama sits in front of a large video screen displaying an image of a U.S. national flag during a three-way conversation with Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff and Colombia's President... (Associated Press)

 People walk past Hotel El Caribe in Cartagena, Colombia, Saturday April 14, 2012. The Secret Service sent home some of its agents for misconduct that occurred at the hotel before President Barack Obama's... (Associated Press)

 President Barack Obama applauds as Colombian singer Shakira arrives, below, as Uruguay's President Jose Mujica stands behind during the arrival ceremony at the sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena,... (Associated Press)

 President Barack Obama smiles to people in the audience taking his picture during the arrival ceremony at the sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, Saturday April 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Carolyn... (Associated Press)

 The controversy also expanded to the U.S. military, which announced five service members staying at the same hotel as the agents in Colombia may have been involved in misconduct as well. They were confined to their quarters in Colombia and ordered not to have contact with others.

 All the alleged activities took place before Obama arrived Friday in this Colombian port city for meetings with 33 other regional leaders.

 Put together, the allegations were an embarrassment for an American president on foreign soil and threatened to upend White House efforts to keep his trip focused squarely on boosting economic ties with fast-growing Latin America. Obama was holding two days of meetings at the Summit of the Americas with leaders from across the vast region before heading back to Washington Sunday night.

 The Secret Service did not disclose the nature of the misconduct. The Associated Press confirmed on Friday that it involved prostitutes.

 The White House said Obama had been briefed about the incidents but would not comment on his reaction.

 "The president does have full confidence in the United States Secret Service," presidential spokesman Jay Carney said when asked.

 Carney insisted the matter was more a distraction for the media than Obama. But Secret Service assistant director Paul Morrissey said in a statement: "We regret any distraction from the Summit of the Americas this situation has caused."

 Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told the AP after he was briefed on the investigation on Saturday that "close to" all 11 of the agents involved had brought women back to their rooms at a hotel separate from where Obama is now staying.

 The New York Republican said the women were "presumed to be prostitutes" but investigators were interviewing the agents.

 The lawmaker also offered new details about the controversy.

 King said he was told that anyone visiting the hotel overnight was required to leave identification at the front desk and leave the hotel by 7 a.m. When a woman failed to do so, it raised questions among hotel staff and police, who investigated. They found the woman with the agent in the hotel room and a dispute arose over whether the agent should have paid her.

 King said he was told that the agent did eventually pay the woman.

 The incident was reported to the U.S. embassy, prompting further investigation, King said

 The 11 employees in question were special agents and Uniformed Division Officers. None were assigned to directly protect Obama. All were sent home and replaced, Morrissey said, given "the nature of the allegations" and a zero tolerance policy on personal misconduct.

 The Secret Service says the incidents have had no bearing on its ability to provide security for Obama's stay in Colombia.

 Another jolt came Saturday when the U.S. Southern Command said five service members assigned to support the Secret Service violated their curfew and may have been involved in inappropriate conduct. Carney said it was part of the same incident involving the Secret Service.

 As for the apparent misconduct by the military members, Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of U.S. Southern Command, said he was "disappointed by the entire incident" and said the behavior was "not in keeping with the professional standards expected of members of the United States military."

 Col. Scott Malcom, chief of public affairs for Southern Command, said of the five service members: "The only misconduct I can confirm is that they were violating the curfew established. He said he had seen the news reports about the Secret Service agents involved in alleged prostitution at the hotel but could not confirm whether the service members also were involved.

 The military is investigating.

 The Secret Service agents at the center of the allegations had stayed at Cartagena's five-star Hotel Caribe. Several members of the White House staff and press corps subsequently stayed at the hotel.

 King credited the Secret Service director for acting quickly to remove the agents in question and replace them before Obama's arrival.

 A hotel employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said the agents arrived at the beachfront hotel about a week ago and said the agents left the hotel Thursday, a day before Obama and other regional leaders arrived for the weekend summit.

 Three waiters interviewed by the AP at the hotel described the agents as drinking heavily during their stay.

 On Friday, the hotel began filling up with the delegations of some of the more than 30 countries whose leaders are convening for the weekend Summit of the Americas.

 The hotel's public relations director, Ana Beatriz Angel, refused to comment on the incident, which she said "concerns only and exclusively the U.S. government."

 On the steamy streets of Cartagena, a resort city with a teeming prostitution trade, there was condemnation for the Secret Service agents for what residents saw as abusing their station and dishonoring their country.

 Edwin Yepes, a souvenir vendor, said "they are supposed to come here and set an example. We are an inferior culture, and so it's better if they don't come than if they damage our image of them."

 ___

 Associated Press writers Ken Thomas and Ben Feller in Washington, Frank Bajak and Pedro Mendoza in Cartagena and Jennifer Kay in Miami contributed to this story. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– The Secret Service prostitution scandal that's threatening to overshadow the Summit of the Americas came to light after one agent refused to pay one of the women involved, reports the New York Daily News. “The agent said, ‘I don't owe you anything,’ but gave the woman some money,” says Rep. Peter King, who as head of the House Homeland Security Committee, has been briefed. The agents, part of an advance team that was supposed to secure President Obama's hotel, were caught with prostitutes in their hotel rooms, and the dispute caused a disturbance that got local police involved. “Number one, it is against basic ethics to go to a prostitute. Number two, it is incredibly embarrassing to the White House,” says one insider, who added that the agents' careers are probably over. “Yes, doubly good judgment there.” Eleven agents have been placed on leave in the incident, notes the AP, and another five military personnel have been accused of similar misconduct after violating curfew. None of the Secret Service agents involved were directly responsible for Obama's protection. A Secret Service rep has apologized "for any distraction."


Summarize this article:

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Health workers are battling to contain the deadliest outbreak of Ebola

 A major West African airline has stopped flying to Liberia and Sierra Leone amid growing concern about the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

 Asky said it took the decision to keep "its passengers and staff safe during this unsettling time".

 The number of people killed by the virus in West Africa has now reached 672, according to new UN figures.

 In Sierra Leone, the doctor who led the fight against Ebola, Sheik Umar Khan, has died of the disease.

 Government officials hailed Dr Khan, 39, as a "national hero".

 The government disclosed last week that he was being treated for Ebola and had been quarantined.

 His death follows that of prominent Liberian doctor Samuel Brisbane at the weekend.

 Police deployed

 Ebola kills up to 90% of those infected, but patients have a better chance of survival if they receive early treatment.

 It spreads through contact with an infected person's bodily fluids.

 The outbreak - the world's deadliest to date - was first reported in Guinea in February. It then spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone.

 Image copyright other Image caption Liberia tied Independence Day celebrations on 26 July to efforts to create more awareness around Ebola

 Image copyright EPA Image caption Greater emphasis is being placed on hygiene in an effort to contain the virus

 Image copyright EPA Image caption People have also been urged to wear protective gloves

 Asky is the second airline, after Nigeria's largest airline, Arik Air, to ban flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone.

 It had not halted flights to Guinea, but passengers departing from there would be "screened for signs of the virus", Asky said.

 Last week, Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, reported its first case - that of Liberian finance ministry official Patrick Sawyer who flew to the main city, Lagos, in an Asky flight.

 Liberia has deployed police officers at the international airport in the capital, Monrovia, to ensure passengers are screened for symptoms of Ebola.

 Football ban

 "We have a presence of the police at the airport to enforce what we're doing,'' said Binyah Kesselly, chairman of the Liberia Airport Authority.

 "So if you have a flight and you are not complying with the rules, we will not allow you to board.''

 Ebola since 1976

 Most border crossings in Liberia have been closed to contain the outbreak and affected communities are being quarantined.

 Liberia has also suspended all football activities in an effort to control the spread of Ebola.

 "Football being a contact sport - people are sweating - they do contact each other, and that could result in contracting the disease," the president of its football association, Musa Hassan Bility, told the BBC.

 "It also has to do with the fans because whenever there is a game, a lot of people come together and we want to discourage gathering at this point," he said.

 The association had also told football governing body Fifa to cancel trips to Liberia scheduled for August and September because "we do not want the life of the Fifa president [Sepp Blatter] to be exposed to this disease", Mr Bility said.

 In a statement, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said that 1,201 Ebola cases had been reported in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

 Of the 672 deaths, the highest number was in Guinea with 319, followed by Sierra Leone with 224 and Liberia with 129, it said.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The current outbreak is the deadliest since Ebola was discovered in 1976

 The BBC's Jonathan Paye Layleh in Monrovia says that public awareness campaigns around Ebola have been stepped up in the city.

 Many people are worried about the outbreak, and fewer people are going to restaurants and entertainment centres, he says.

 Ebola virus disease (EVD)

 Image copyright Science Photo Library ||||| (From L to R) Abdulsalami Nasidi, director of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Lagos state health commissioner Jide Idris and Lagos Special Advisor on Health Yewande Adesina, speak about the update on the Ebola outbreak during a news conference in Lagos July...

 LAGOS The Nigerian city of Lagos shut and quarantined a hospital on Monday where a Liberian man died of the Ebola virus, the first recorded case of the highly-infectious disease in Africa's most populous country.

 Patrick Sawyer, a consultant for Liberia's Finance Ministry in his 40s, collapsed on arrival at the Lagos airport on July 20. He was put in isolation at the First Consultants Hospital in Obalende, one of the most crowded parts of a city that is home to 21 million people. He died on Friday.

 "The private hospital was demobilized (evacuated) and the primary source of infection eliminated. The decontamination process in all the affected areas has commenced," Lagos state health commissioner Jide Idris told a news conference. He said the hospital would be closed for a week and the staff would be closely monitored.

 Ebola has killed 672 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since it was first diagnosed in February. The fatality rate of the current outbreak is around 60 percent although the disease can kill up to 90 percent of those who catch it. Highly contagious, its symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea and internal and external bleeding.

 In Sierra Leone, which has the highest number of Ebola cases in the current outbreak at 525, President Ernest Bai Koroma visited an Ebola center in the northeastern district of Kenema.

 An administration official said President Barack Obama was receiving updates, and noted that U.S. agencies had stepped up assistance to help contain the virus.

 Susan Rice, Obama's national security adviser, said in a televised interview on Monday the outbreak was of "grave concern."

 "We are very much present and active in trying to help the countries of the region and the international authorities like the World Health Organization address and contain this threat. But it is indeed a very worrying epidemic," Rice told MSNBC.

 HOSPITAL STAFF, OTHERS MONITORED

 Authorities were monitoring 59 people who were in contact with Sawyer, including airport contacts, the Lagos state health ministry said, but it said the airline had yet to provide a passenger list for the flights Sawyer used.

 Derek Gatherer, a virologist at Britain's University of Lancaster, said anyone on the plane near Sawyer could be in "pretty serious danger," but that Nigeria was better placed to tackle the outbreak than its neighbors.

 "Nigerians have deep pockets and they can do as much as any Western country could do if they have the motivation and organization to get it done," he said.

 Nigeria's largest air carrier Arik Air has suspended flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone because of the Ebola risk, Arik spokesman Ola Adebanji said in an email on Monday.

 "RED ALERT"

 David Heymann, head of the Centre on Global Health Security at London's Chatham House, said every person who had been on the plane to Lagos with Sawyer would need to be traced and told to monitor their temperature twice a day for 21 days.

 The World Health Organization said in a statement that Sawyer's flight had stopped in Lomé, Togo, on its way to Lagos.

 "WHO is sending teams to both Nigeria and Togo to do follow- up work in relation to contact tracing, in particular to contacts he may have had on board the flight," spokesman Paul Garwood said.

 Liberia closed most of its border crossings and introduced stringent health measures on Sunday, a day after a 33-year-old American doctor working there for the relief organization Samaritan's Purse tested positive for Ebola.

 Nigeria's airports, seaports and land borders have been on "red alert" since Friday over the disease.

 Exacerbating the difficulty of containing the virus, Nigerian doctors are on strike over conditions and pay.

 The WHO said that in the past week, its regional director for Africa, Luis Sambo, had been on a fact-finding mission to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which have 1,201 confirmed, suspected and probable cases among them.

 "He observed that the outbreak is beyond each national health sector alone and urged the governments of the affected countries to mobilize and involve all sectors, including civil society and communities, in the response," the WHO said.

 (Reporting by Tim Cocks, additional reporting by Oludare Mayowa in Lagos, Tom Miles in Geneva, Kate Kelland in London, Roberta Rampton in Washington, and Umaru Fofana in Freetown; writing by Toni Reinhold, editing by G Crosse) ||||| Ebola virus has infected two American health workers, a doctor and a hygienist, working in Liberia. It’s killed more than 660 people in the ongoing West African outbreak, the worst ever seen, and infected more than 1,100.

 It's frightening, mysterious and yes, it could come here. Here are some things you need to know about Ebola:

 It’s Deadly.

 Ebola kills anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of patients, depending on the strain and on where the outbreak is. Doctors say patients die from the effects of high fever, vomiting and diarrhea, but early treatment can often save lives. If patients are treated soon enough, saline solution can help stabilize them while their body fights the infection. In the current outbreak, the mortality rate’s been about 60 percent.

 It Could Come Here.

 No matter where you live, instant jet travel has made any infection capable of spreading worldwide, and that includes Ebola. A Liberian man carried Ebola to Lagos, Nigeria, the biggest city in Africa, by jet. He was isolated quickly but it's possible he could have infected someone else — experts are working to track down people he may have been in contact with.

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 We Don’t Know Where It Came From.

 Bats are the No. 1 suspect, but it is not clear how Ebola jumps from animals to people. Bush meat is one possibility — Ebola can infect apes and monkeys, and people in affected areas often hunt for food. Antelope and porcupines also can spread Ebola when slaughtered. One thing is clear — once there is an outbreak, it’s spread from person to person.

 We Don’t Know All the Ways It Spreads.

 Ebola definitely spreads through bodily fluids — vomit and diarrhea for sure. Doctors and nurses have been infected while caring for patients and many victims have been infected while washing bodies to prepare for burial. Ebola is one disease that remains infectious after a person has died, and so experts urge precautions during funerals and burials. One study has suggested that a man’s sperm can transmit the virus two months after he has recovered from an infection. But most doctors say people are no longer infectious after they stop showing symptoms. The incubation period — the time between when a person encounters another infected person and beginning to show symptoms themselves — is as long as 21 days, according to the World Health Organization. Doctors do not believe people can transmit the virus before they are showing severe symptoms themselves.

 It Doesn’t Make You Pour Blood.

 Fictionalized accounts paint lurid pictures of people bleeding to death from Ebola, and the bleeding is perhaps the most horrific aspect of the infection. But Ebola doesn’t always cause bleeding and it’s hardly ever profuse bleeding on the outside. There are many viruses that can can cause hemorrhagic symptoms — Lassa fever, dengue and yellow fever, for instance. Most usually cause vague, flu-like symptoms such as a high fever, muscle aches as well as vomiting and diarrhea. Only 50 to 60 percent of patients develop hemorrhagic complications, which include internal bleeding as well as bleeding from the eyes and sometimes in spots on the skin.

 There’s No Cure.

 Researchers are working to develop drugs and other treatments for Ebola, but right now there’s nothing doctors can use except what’s called supportive care — giving saline and fever-reducing medication. Viruses are difficult to treat, and the few antivirals on the market don’t seem to help against Ebola. There’s no vaccine, either. There are treatments in the works, including antibody-based approaches.

 First published July 29 2014, 2:01 AM ||||| Crawl of outlinks from wikipedia.org started March, 2016. These files are currently not publicly accessible. Properties of this collection. It has been several years since the last time we did this. For this collection, several things were done: 1. Turned off duplicate detection. This collection will be complete, as there is a good chance we will share the data, and sharing data with pointers to random other collections, is a complex problem. 2. For the first time, did all the different wikis. The original runs were just against the enwiki. This one, the seed list was built from all 865 collections. |||||

– Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, one of the leading doctors fighting Sierra Leone's Ebola outbreak, died today of the virus in yet another high-profile casualty, reports the BBC. The death of the man hailed by the government as a "national hero" comes as Nigeria, the continent's most populous country, recorded its first case of the infectious disease, reports Reuters. The death was that of a Liberian consultant who collapsed in the Lagos airport on July 20, and health authorities have quarantined the hospital that cared for him. Meanwhile, American doctor Kent Brantly has a "grave" prognosis in Liberia as his family in Texas asks for prayers, reports the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The 33-year-old tested positive last week. Liberia has closed its border crossings; Nigeria’s airports, seaports, and borders have been on "red alert"; and West African airports are screening passengers for signs of illness. Since February, 1,200 people have been infected with Ebola, and 672 people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have died; the fatality rate in this outbreak is 60%. Here’s what you need to know about Ebola: It's possible that Ebola can jump from animals to humans through "bush meat" such as apes, monkeys, antelope, and porcupines, reports NBC News. Once an outbreak starts, it moves from person to person. The fatality rate is 50% to 90%. Early treatment is vital. The virus spreads through bodily fluids such as vomit and diarrhea; it’s infectious when the victim shows symptoms and remains so after the patient's death. Many have contracted Ebola by preparing a corpse for burial. Up to 60% of patients will bleed from the eyes and skin. There is no cure, and antivirals aren’t effective. The only way to get a diagnosis is with a blood test, adds the Wall Street Journal.


Article:
Meghann told the New York Post that the concept of "meternity" leave was inspired by her jealousy over co-workers who got to take maternity leave and parents who left the office early to grab their kids from daycare.

 “I came to believe in the value of a ‘meternity’ leave—which is, to me, a sabbatical-like break that allows women, and, to a lesser degree, men to shift their focus to the part of their lives that doesn’t revolve around their jobs,” Meghann told the New York Post.

 Sign up for Women's Health's new newsletter, So This Happened, to get the day’s trending stories and health studies.

 Meghann goes on to talk about how it seemed like her mom friends emerged from maternity leave with a better sense of what they wanted in life. So, Meghann decided to give notice at her job and take her own “meternity.” She eventually returned to work after an extended break, and says she learned that the pressure she'd felt to put in extra hours came from within, and not from others.

 While the concept of a “meternity” is cool and all, moms are pointing out that it really has nothing with a legit maternity leave—which is all about putting someone else’s needs before yours, often to the point of total exhaustion.

 Maternity leave is not "me time". Furthest thing from it. You have to go back to work to get that. #HardestJobEver https://t.co/PBNunDimsa — Becky Quick (@BeckyQuick) April 29, 2016

 Maternity leave gives "time and space for self-reflection". I am crying with laughter. Or possibly exhaustion... https://t.co/GWjJM1Ivxo — C. Dodds Pennock (@carolinepennock) April 29, 2016

 Show me a well-rested woman on maternity leave and I'll show you a baby who spent the day with someone else. #meternity #ridiculous — Amber Hagy (@Atexlaw) April 29, 2016

 Hate the idea of fueling the mommy wars, but the concept of #Meternity (or a sabbatical) is very different from actual #maternityleave. — Logan Levkoff, Ph.D. (@LoganLevkoff) April 29, 2016

 Now, if a “meternity" leave came after maternity leave and took place on a baby-free tropical island, that might be a whole different story... ||||| I have a friend in Denmark who gets time built into his career for "personal fulfillment." As Danish radio host Tore Leifer wrote in the New York Times three years ago, "Sabbaticals ensure that we spend time with our children and families, that we refresh our creative depots, and that we grow and develop as humans and professionals." Last year, my spouse, after several years with his company, earned four paid weeks off to use as he saw fit. The contemporary American work model — one that is so relentless and all consuming that an adult professional woman writer might in all sincerity publish an op-ed that suggests time off to have a baby is some kind "break" — is wildly disordered. People need time off for all kinds of reasons and no, Foye's "My best friend just got ghosted by her OkCupid date and needs a margarita" scenario is not equivalent to my 36 hours of labor. But the idea that time off — for any variety of personal reasons — makes us sharper and more focused and better is a totally valid one. It's not selfish. It's just makes sense. ||||| Yesterday, mothers across the country clicked on the New York Post headline "I want all the perks of maternity leave — without having any kids" with some sense of the irony therein.

 A lighthearted call for some “me” time from a childless woman who works too much? In the New York Post? As a tie-in for a lighthearted novel about a woman who fakes a pregnancy in order to get some time off? Surely we’ve got bigger fish to fry than this. But as I read on, I wasn’t sure I did, actually.

 In fact, I came away wondering if the article wasn’t somehow emblematic of the entire problem our nation has with mothers in particular, and parents in general: i.e. we aren't curious about their lives, we do almost nothing to support them, and we consider them an unwelcome burden on all fronts. We are a nation that hates children, parents, and families — as a matter of policy, not just in bars and airplanes.

 But author Meghann Foye has a point, doesn’t she? Americans work too hard: Study after study suggests that not only are we more stressed out than people living in other industrialized nations, we work a lot more hours than they do, too. So her call for flexibility in the workplace seems at first glance to be totally rational. Unfortunately, it’s couched in numerous assumptions that she hasn’t bothered to investigate.

 Foye defines her concept of “meternity leave” as “socially mandated time and space for self-reflection [that] may never come” otherwise, suggesting that workplaces should build this flexibility in for “women, and to a lesser degree, men.”

 Leaving aside for a moment the fact that, in the United States, almost no women actually get maternity leave — the figure hovers around 13 percent, since leave is not mandated either socially or legally — Foye seems to misunderstand what maternity leave actually is. It has, essentially, two functions: for the body to repair itself from the drastic event that is giving birth (an event that, for one in three U.S. women, includes major abdominal surgery) and to keep the newborn human baby alive and cared for in a particularly fragile period.

 This is a period that most mothers, I suspect, would suggest has little “space for self-reflection.” I didn’t shower for days, wore only sweatpants, and broke out in post-baby acne during my maternity leave. I actively avoided mirrors: no self-reflection here.

 But beyond that, much of what Foye seems to be annoyed about isn’t that birthing women get a "vacation" post-baby: It’s her assertion that they get flexibility once they're back to work. “I couldn’t help but feel envious when parents on staff left the office at 6 p.m. to tend to their children, while it was assumed co-workers without kids would stay behind to pick up the slack,” she writes. “It seemed that parenthood was the only path that provided a modicum of flexibility.”

 Sure, there are jobs that offer some flexibility for parents. There are workplaces with understanding bosses (especially when those bosses have children themselves). But there are many more bosses who don't understand or care, who fire women for being late once again, who say “no” to time off for a doctor’s appointment. In fact, the gender pay gap between women and men is widened when women become mothers. The suggestion that women get perks or a pass professionally when they have children is so unfounded that it verges on absurd, surrounded as we are by evidence that becoming a mother will hurt or end your career, that you’ll make less money for the same work, and that you will have a harder time getting promoted.

 I do sympathize with Foye: Being a parent is one of those things that is completely uninteresting until you become one. I, too, lingered under the supposition that I could blog from home sans child care with a newborn; that I’d get back into the gym six weeks postpartum; that I’d still go to the dentist regularly.

 But two and a half years into my journey as a mother, the reality couldn’t be more different. The truth is that there is nothing in this world less flexible than an infant (besides a toddler), and being a parent means never doing anything spur of the moment again. It means relentlessly planning backups for backups and often, it means constant anxiety about work: Will you get fired if you're late once more because the kid threw up all over you? Will you be passed over for promotion in favor of a woman without children, or literally any man? Probably!

 Foye may have hit upon a cute premise for a novel, but she's ignoring the fact that, after maternity leave, most women's careers will absolutely suffer. And it is much worse for working-class parents than for the ones she worked alongside as an editor at a magazine. Remember: 69.9 percent of U.S. mothers work, yet we have no parental-leave policy in the U.S., nor do we have adequate or affordable child-care options.

 "Bottom line: Women are bad at putting ourselves first," Foye writes. "But when you have a child, you learn how to self-advocate to put the needs of your family first." It's clear she doesn't understand the difference between the needs of an individual woman, and the needs of her family. When that co-worker disappears at six, she's not going home to watch Game of Thrones; she's clocking in to job No. 2, also known as "the second shift." It doesn't take a ton of detective work to figure this out — all it requires is a degree of empathy.

 There are many perks to being a mother: Kids are fun, and they force you to learn a lot about yourself. What they don't do, though, is make your life more flexible. Creating flexibility is all your responsibility — something to try to achieve once all the emails are read and the laundry is folded and lunch is packed for tomorrow. Bottom line: The working mothers of this country could use "meternity leave," too. ||||| Meghann Foye, 38, was jealous of co-workers clocking out for maternity leave, and decided she needed a break of her own. Here, the author of the novel “Meternity” (Mira, out now), tells The Post’s Anna Davies why she believes every woman deserves mandated “me time.”

 I was 31 years old in 2009, and I loved my career. As an editor at a popular magazine, I got to work on big stories, attend cool events, and meet famous celebs all the time.

 And yet, after 10 years of working in a job where I was always on deadline, I couldn’t help but feel envious when parents on staff left the office at 6 p.m. to tend to their children, while it was assumed co-workers without kids would stay behind to pick up the slack.

 “You know, I need a maternity leave!” I told one of my pregnant friends. She laughed, and we spent the afternoon plotting my escape from my 10-hour days, fake baby bump and all.

 Of course, that didn’t happen. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to believe in the value of a “meternity” leave — which is, to me, a sabbatical-like break that allows women and, to a lesser degree, men to shift their focus to the part of their lives that doesn’t revolve around their jobs.

 For women who follow a “traditional” path, this pause often naturally comes in your late 20s or early 30s, when a wedding, pregnancy and babies means that your personal life takes center stage. But for those who end up on the “other” path, that socially mandated time and space for self-reflection may never come.

 When I graduated from college in the early 2000s, I enjoyed the same unspoken expectation shared among my fellow Gen-Xers: If you poured your heart and soul into your career, you would eventually get to a director level and have the flexibility, paycheck and assistants beneath you to begin to create a work-life balance. Then the 2008 recession hit, and people were lucky to have jobs at all. Assistants and perks disappeared across industries, and I felt like the cultural expectation was that we should now be tethered to our desks and our smartphones.

 It seemed that parenthood was the only path that provided a modicum of flexibility. There’s something about saying “I need to go pick up my child” as a reason to leave the office on time that has far more gravitas than, say, “My best friend just got ghosted by her OkCupid date and needs a margarita” — but both sides are valid.

 And as I watched my friends take their real maternity leaves, I saw that spending three months detached from their desks made them much more sure of themselves. One friend made the decision to leave her corporate career to create her own business; another decided to switch industries. From the outside, it seemed like those few weeks of them shifting their focus to something other than their jobs gave them a whole new lens through which to see their lives.

 While both men and women would benefit from a “meternity” leave after a decade or so in the workforce, the concept is one that would be especially advantageous for women. Burnout syndrome is well-documented in both sexes, but recent research suggests that women may experience it at greater rates; researchers postulate that it’s because women (moms and non-moms alike) feel overloaded by the roles they have to take on at work and at home.

 Bottom line: Women are bad at putting ourselves first. But when you have a child, you learn how to self-advocate to put the needs of your family first. A well-crafted “meternity” can give you the same skills — and taking one shouldn’t disqualify you from taking maternity leave later.

 I may not have been changing diapers, but I grappled with self-doubt. - Meghann Foye

 As for me, I did eventually give notice at my job and take a “meternity” of my own. I may not have been changing diapers, but I grappled with self-doubt for the year and a half that I spent away from the corporate world. And I grieved the loss of my dad, who had just died after a long illness. But a “meternity” done right should be challenging. It should be about digging into your whole life and emerging from it more confident in who you are.

 It also gave me the opportunity to help someone achieve their “meternity” dreams — even if that person was a fictional character. My first novel, “Meternity,” was just released, and is about a woman who fakes a pregnancy and discovers some hard truths about what it’s really like to “have it all.”

 Ultimately, what I learned from my own “meternity” leave is that any pressure I felt to stay late at the office wasn’t coming from the parents on staff. It was coming from myself. Coming back to a new position, I realized I didn’t need an “excuse” to leave on time. And that’s what I would love the take-away for my book to be: Work-life balance is tough for everyone, and it happens most when parents and nonparents support and don’t judge each other.

 I want kids in the future, and I might still take a traditional maternity leave. I might not. But either way, I’m happy my “meternity” taught me to live on my own terms and advocate what works for me.

 Counterpoint: The Post’s Kyle Smith says parents in the workplace should be worshiped by their childless peers

 Purchase “Meternity” on Amazon. |||||Summary:

– Fed up with working moms getting all the perks, 38-year-old magazine editor Meghann Foye writes in the New York Post that it's time for childless women to start getting theirs. "There’s something about saying 'I need to go pick up my child' as a reason to leave the office on time that has far more gravitas than, say, 'My best friend just got ghosted by her OkCupid date and needs a margarita'—but both sides are valid," she says. But Foye has bigger fish to fry than working moms getting to leave work on time. She's advocating for "meternity leave" to balance out the maternity leave given to new moms. She defines meternity leave as "a sabbatical-like break that allows women and, to a lesser degree, men to shift their focus to the part of their lives that doesn’t revolve around their jobs." Foye says a meternity leave would allow childless women to get the time to refocus and reevaluate their lives—time that is already afforded to new mothers. Foye actually took a meternity leave for herself and says the experience was invaluable. "I may not have been changing diapers, but I grappled with self-doubt for the year and a half that I spent away from the corporate world," she writes. Obviously, Foye's opinion has been controversial. "I have to laugh pretty hard at a Foye’s description of maternity leave as a 'sabbatical-like break,'" writes Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon. "It’s not exactly a vacation," concurs Korin Miller at Women's Health Magazine. "You're up every three hours to nurse. ... If you can squeeze in a five-minute shower, it's pretty much a damn miracle." And Laura June at New York Magazine points out only 13% of new moms in the US even get maternity leave.