– Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space firm beat Elon Musk's SpaceX to the punch and launched its Blue Shepard reusable rocket into outer space, then returned to its landing pad in its "first successful uncrewed reusability test," Mashable reports. The BE-3 rocket and empty crew capsule flew to a suborbital height of about 62 miles, at which point the capsule and rocket separated, Engadget reports. The capsule landed on Earth with the help of parachutes, the rocket's engines roared back to life about 5,000 feet above the landing pad, and the rocket touched down at 4.4mph. "Rockets have always been expendable," Bezos wrote in a Monday blog post. "Not anymore. Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts, a used rocket." Bezos also tweeted a video of the event Tuesday morning, noting "Controlled landing not easy, but done right, can look easy." Bezos notes how reusable rockets could economize space travel, telling CNNMoney that current space travel is akin to airlines throwing out every 747 jet after it makes a cross-country journey. "You can imagine how expensive your ticket would be," he notes. Elon Musk tweeted kudos Tuesday, posting, "Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster," though he turned that compliment into a backhanded one with a tweet that read, "It is, however, important to clear up the difference between 'space' and 'orbit.'" His point: that even though SpaceX's rockets have yet to nail an upright landing after leaving Earth's atmosphere, at least his rockets leave the atmosphere—a task requiring 10 times more speed and 100 times the energy of suborbital rockets, per CNN. But Bezos says he doesn't even consider Musk's company, or Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, to be competitors. "I think of our competition primarily as Earth's gravity," he says. "Space is a big place. There's room for all of us." (The last Virgin Galactic launch didn't go well.)

Expand this summary.

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company has landed its rocket back on Earth for the first time after flying to space.

 According to a thrilling new video released by Blue Origin, the private spaceflight company launched its New Shepard rocket to the edge of space and then land it back on the planet during the vehicle's first successful uncrewed reusability test Monday.

 See also: Jeff Bezos wants millions of people to live in space

 "Rockets have always been expendable. Not anymore," Bezos wrote in a blog post announcing the rocket test Tuesday.

 "Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts, a used rocket."

 Other companies like Elon Musk's SpaceX have attempted to land rocket stages coming back from space before, although Musk's rocket company hasn't yet attempted to land the first stage of their Falcon 9 on land after flying a payload to space.

 Blue Origin tested the space system earlier this year, but the company wasn't able to land the rocket back on the ground due to hydraulics issues.

 "Full reuse is a game changer, and we can’t wait to fuel up and fly again," Bezos added.

 For the test, the New Shepard rocket brought the space system's capsule about 100.5 kilometers into the air, reaching a max speed of Mach 3.72.

 The capsule — the part of the craft designed to eventually carry six people to suborbital space — then gently landed back on Earth after deploying its parachutes, but the rocket had a different path to the ground.

 The New Shepard's engine kicked back on about 5,000 feet above its landing pad and, after some maneuvering, and deploying its landing legs, the rocket made a soft touchdown back on Earth. The vehicle was moving at just 4.4 mph when it made its landing, Blue Origin said.

 "This flight validates our vehicle architecture and design," Bezos wrote.

 Eventually, Blue Origin plans to offer suborbital flights to space aboard New Shepard, but the company's ambitions don't stop there. Blue Origin also plans to build and launch an orbital rocket that would fly people and cargo to space from Florida.

 All of these projects focus around Bezos' vision for the future.

 Bezos and others claim that reusable rockets could greatly lower the cost of access to space. Instead of effectively throwing away rocket components after one use, Bezos hopes to use those rocket parts again and again over the course of at least a few missions.

 "The vision for Blue [Origin] is pretty simple," Bezos said during a media roundtable in September. "We want to see millions of people living and working in space, and that’s going to take a long time. It’s a worthwhile goal."

 Bezos' fellow charismatic spaceflight enthusiast and rocket company owner Elon Musk sent some words of congratulation (and a few words of clarification) to Blue Origin Tuesday via Twitter.

 Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015

 It is, however, important to clear up the difference between "space" and "orbit", as described well by https://t.co/7PD42m37fZ — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015

 Getting to space needs ~Mach 3, but GTO orbit requires ~Mach 30. The energy needed is the square, i.e. 9 units for space and 900 for orbit. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015

 For what it's worth, Musk knows what he's talking about. SpaceX also wants to create a fleet of reusable rockets to lower the cost of access to orbit.

 SpaceX has attempted to land their Falcon 9 rockets on a drone ship in the ocean after to orbit, although those tests have not yet been totally successful.

 Updated at 1:33 p.m. ET: This story was updated to include a little more information about Blue Origin and SpaceX. ||||| Jeff Bezos' rocket ship achieved a breakthrough Monday by traveling 329,839 feet into outer space and then landing upright upon its return to Earth.

 In the past, rockets were disposed of after launching space craft into outer space. Reusable rockets would substantially reduce the cost of space flight.

 Amazon (AMZN) founder Bezos started his space company, Blue Origin, in the hopes of using his New Shepard rocket to carry tourists into space.

 "Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts -- a used rocket," Bezos said. "Full reuse is a game changer, and we can't wait to fuel up and fly again."

 Bezos, in an interview with CNN, said current space flight is inefficient -- as if airlines discarded 747 jets after each cross-country flight.

 "You can imagine how expensive your ticket would be," he said.

 Rival rocket business SpaceX, which was started by Tesla Motors (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, has been trying to land rockets upright as well.

 Some SpaceX rockets have landed upright in test flights that never left the atmosphere. But SpaceX's attempts to travel to outer space and return to upright landings have so far been unsuccessful. The rockets have toppled over while attempting to land on a platform in the ocean.

 Blue Origin and SpaceX are two of the main players in the new business of private space launches. Another is Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which hopes to carry passengers to space in a vehicle launched from an airplane and that lands like a plane on a runway.

 Bezos said he doesn't consider those companies Blue Origin competitors.

 "I think of our competition primarily as Earth's gravity," he said. "Space is a big place. There's room for all of us."

 The aim eventually is to carry astronauts, including tourists, into space -- something NASA no longer does with its own rockets.

 Blue Origin is taking names of people interested in hopping aboard a future flight. But it has yet to announce how much it will cost or how many people have signed up.

 SpaceX and Boeing (BA) have won contracts from NASA to carry astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX is already carrying supplies to ISS.

 Related: Amazon CE Jeff Bezos moves up to world's fourth richest man

 Musk tweeted congratulations to Bezos and Blue Origin early Tuesday. But he also took a dig at Blue Origin. Musk noted that rockets that reach the space station have to go 10 times as fast, and use 100 times the energy, of suborbital rockets that reach the edge of space as Blue Origin did.

 "It is ... important to clear up the difference between 'space' and 'orbit,'" he tweeted.

 It is, however, important to clear up the difference between "space" and "orbit", as described well by https://t.co/7PD42m37fZ — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015

 But Bezos said the part of the rocket that Musk is attempting to land is pretty much the same kind of spacecraft as Blue Origin's.

 "What SpaceX is trying to do is very similar," he said.

 Musk also responded to Bezos' tweet by claiming that an earlier SpaceX rocket had completed six "suborbital" flights and successfully landed. But none of those flights got close to outer space. The longest of them only went 744 meters high. That's less than 1% of the altitude that Blue Origin's flight reached on Monday.

 @JeffBezos Not quite "rarest". SpaceX Grasshopper rocket did 6 suborbital flights 3 years ago & is still around. pic.twitter.com/6j9ERKCNZl — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015

 All three companies have had setbacks in their efforts to carry people into space.

 A Virgin Galactic spaceship crashed during a test flight in October 2014, killing one of the two pilots. An unmanned SpaceX supply flight to ISS exploded soon after launch in June. And New Shepard had its first successful launch into space in April, but the rocket was not recovered because of a problem with the hydraulic system.

 Bezos said this time his rocket performed exactly as planned, traveling into the edge of outer space before returning.

 The rocket's engines reignited at 5,000 feet above ground to slow descent, and it was traveling at only 4.4 mph during its final 100 feet. It landed only 4-1/2 feet off the dead center of the the landing pad.

 The space capsule on the top of the rocket that will someday carry space tourists separated from the rocket once it reached space and returned to Earth via parachute.

 The New Shepard is named after Alan Shepard, the first American to go to outer space.

 Bezos said he has wanted to travel into space himself since, as a five-year-old, he watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon in 1969. Like Branson and Musk, Bezos said he plans to take one of his own rockets into space as soon as possible. |||||


Summarize this article:

By Kathleen Doheny

 HealthDay Reporter

 WEDNESDAY, Aug. 28 (HealthDay News) -- Drinking even one alcoholic drink a day in the years before a woman's first pregnancy can increase her risk of breast cancer later in life, according to a large new study.

 Other research has linked alcohol consumption to increased breast cancer risk, as well as finding that delayed childbearing can increase breast cancer risk.

 The new research is thought to be the first to focus on the effect of alcohol intake during the time frame between the start of menstruation and a first pregnancy, the researchers said.

 "The risk increased by 11 percent for every 10 grams a day of intake, about six drinks per week," said study author Dr. Ying Liu, an instructor of public health sciences at Washington University School of Medicine, in St. Louis. "These risk values were estimated as compared with nondrinkers."

 "One drink was defined as one bottle or can of beer, a 4-ounce glass of wine or a shot of liquor," Liu said.

 Drinking about one drink a day also increased the risk for proliferative benign breast disease, a risk factor for breast cancer, by about 16 percent, according to the study, which was published Aug. 28 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

 The researchers analyzed data from more than 91,000 women who took part in the Nurses' Health Study II who had no cancer history when they began. They answered questions on alcohol consumption in 1989 and were followed through 2009 to analyze their risk of breast cancer.

 The new study also looked at whether the women contracted benign breast disease, and whether alcohol may have played a role in that condition, in a subgroup of more than 60,000 women who were evaluated from 1991 through 2001.

 The researchers found more than 1,600 cases of breast cancer and 970 diagnoses of benign breast disease during the study period.

 Drinking alcohol after the first menstrual period and before the first pregnancy was linked with a risk of both, regardless of whether a woman drank after the first pregnancy. The link held after accounting for multiple other risk factors, including family history of breast cancer.

 The more the women drank, the higher their risk.

 The researchers, however, found only a link between pre-pregnancy drinking and breast cancer risk, not a cause-and-effect relationship.

 "Breast tissues are particularly susceptible to environmental exposures between [the onset of menstruation] and first pregnancy because they undergo rapid cellular proliferation," Liu said. During pregnancy, however, other cellular changes make the breast tissue less susceptible to cancer.

 "Our results suggest that alcohol intake before the first pregnancy consistently increases the risk of breast cancer and the risk of proliferative [benign breast disease]," Liu said. She speculated that the benign breast disease may be a pathway linking drinking in early life and breast cancer, ''but not the only route."

 It is crucial to put the 11 percent increased risk in perspective, said Dr. Laura Kruper, co-director of the breast cancer program and director of the Cooper Finkel Women's Health Center at the City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif.

 Overall, a woman's lifetime risk of breast cancer is about one in eight, or 12 percent. "If you take the baseline risk -- 12 percent -- and increase that by 11 percent, it is about 13 percent," Kruper said.

 Liu said the one-in-eight statistic includes both drinkers and nondrinkers, but she did not know of a statistic for lifetime breast cancer risk for nondrinkers.

 So although the study did find an increased risk, Kruper said, "I think the real take-home point is the more you drink the more you increase risk."

 The research is another call for moderation, Kruper and Liu agreed. Liu said all women in the age category she studied "should reduce their drinking to less than one drink a day, especially before first pregnancy, to reduce their breast cancer risk."

 More information

 To learn more about risk factors for breast cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.

 Copyright © 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved. ||||| Drinking alcohol before first pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of benign breast disease (BBD) and breast cancer, independent of drinking after first pregnancy, according to a new study published August 28 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

 Previous studies have shown that alcohol consumed in the past year affects a woman's breast cancer risk. However, data on the relationship between drinking alcohol during the period of time between a woman's first menstrual period and first pregnancy and the risk of proliferative BBD and breast cancer had not been reported. Breast tissue is particularly susceptible to carcinogens during that period of time.

 Ying Liu, M.D., Ph.D., from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO, and colleagues analyzed data from 116,671 female registered nurses, aged 25-44 years, on medical history, reproductive history, and lifestyle. The data were collected using questionnaires as part of the Nurses' Health Study II (NHSII). Alcohol consumption in four age periods were obtained by asking participants about the total number of alcoholic drinks consumed at different ages (ages 15-17, 18-22, 23-30, and 31-40). After excluding women who did not meet the predetermined study criteria, a total of 91,005 women with a history of full-term pregnancy were included in the final analysis. Among these women, 1,609 cases of breast cancer and 970 cases of BBD occurred during the study period. These cases were confirmed by physicians who reviewed information from each patient's medical records.

 Drinking alcohol between the first menstrual period and first pregnancy was associated with risk of breast cancer and proliferative BBD, regardless of drinking after the first pregnancy. The data indicated a dose-dependent relationship, which means the more alcohol a woman drinks during that time, the higher her risk of developing breast cancer. Also, the authors observed longer intervals between first menstrual period and first pregnancy showed stronger associations compared with shorter intervals. The authors also report drinking after the first pregnancy was associated with breast cancer risk but not BBD.

 The authors write, "The general consistency in the patterns of association between alcohol and risk of proliferative BBD and of breast cancer lends support to the hypothesis that alcohol intake, particularly before first pregnancy when breast tissue is likely at its most vulnerable stage, may play an important role in the etiology of breast cancer." These findings have potentially important implications for breast cancer prevention.

 Source: Journal of the National Cancer Institute |||||

– Drinking a glass of wine a day may cut your heart disease risk, help you lose weight, or just make you generally healthier. But if you're a woman who hasn't had kids yet, it might also give you breast cancer, a new study suggests. The study found that women who had at least one drink a day between their first menstrual cycle and their first pregnancy were at significantly higher risk of eventually developing both benign and malignant breast cancer, HealthDay reports. "The risk increased by 11% for every 10 grams a day of intake, about six drinks per week," the study's author says. Previous research has suggested the alcohol-cancer link, and that waiting to have kids could increase your risk. But this is the first study to focus on alcohol in the pre-pregnancy period. Breast tissue is especially vulnerable to carcinogens during that window, Science Codex explains.


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 Sarah Burke (Canadian Ski Team photo) Jim Urquhart | The Salt Lake Tribune Canada's Sarah Burke won the gold at the women's ski halfpipe finals at Snowbasin. The ev Tribune file photo Sarah Burke, a Canadian freestyle skier, sustained "serious" injuries while training in the Eagle Superpipe at In a Jan. 28, 2010, file photo, Sarah Burke, of Canada, reacts after failing to place in the top-three finishers in the slopestyle ||||| It was a routine manoeuvre on a well-worn halfpipe that left Sarah Burke clinging to life and a fledgling sport missing one of its biggest stars.

 The 28-year-old freestyle skier was performing a trick near the bottom of the pipe in Park City, Utah Tuesday afternoon. She landed on her feet, but something went wrong, and she fell, hitting her head.

 More related to this story

 She was treated at the scene by ski patrol, then flown to the University of Utah hospital in Salt Lake City, where she remained Wednesday in a medically induced coma and breathing through a tube. Burke was listed in critical condition.

 While her husband, skier Rory Bushfield, and other family members flew to Utah to be at her side, those involved in her sport took stock of the implications of having a key promoter sidelined.

 Burke’s chosen event is the superpipe – like a halfpipe but wider and with taller walls – a sport that has been steadily gaining attention in recent years. She has dominated the competition at the Winter X Games, winning four gold medals in superpipe, and taken top honours at both the World Cup and world championships. She was set to defend her Winter X title later this month.

 She also played a major role in pushing the sport’s legitimacy, successfully lobbying the International Olympic Committee to add it to the roster in the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia.

 “Sarah in many ways defines the sport. She’s been involved since the early days, in getting into the pipe,” said Peter Judge, CEO of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association. “She has also been more than willing to be part of the grassroots development.”

 Part of that involved coaching children every summer at Whistler.

 “It’s so much fun, the atmosphere, the vibe for the kids,” she told The Globe and Mail last July. “It’s always good to come here and remember ‘why’– the kids are so excited when they do their first 360.”

 A native of Midland, Ont., Burke started skiing in Whistler’s halfpipe herself at 17. Free-skier Mike Douglas discovered her there performing triple 360s.

 Her extent of her injuries remained unclear Wednesday, with doctors in Salt Lake City saying only that she had been sedated. Bob Foxford, the association’s physician, who has not treated her, said inducing a coma and cooling a patient to slow down their metabolism is standard procedure in treating a brain injury. The effect is to put the brain to rest and allow swelling to go down.

 “This is the first serious head injury in an athlete that we’ve seen,” he said.

 A group of Burke's family and friends, sitting in the hospital cafeteria late Wednesday afternoon, declined to speak with reporters. They said they planned to make a statement Thursday morning.

 Meanwhile, an hour’s drive from the hospital through mountains rising from the scrublands, Park City Mountain Resort’s superpipe was deserted in mid-afternoon. The pipe, which slopes toward the base of the hill, has vertical walls as tall as a two-storey building.

 “Sometimes the worst falls don’t look that bad,” said snowboarder Matty Mo, 27, from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. “That thing is 22 feet tall, really icy, and people are going really fast. They’re training for the X Games, so they’re getting into it.”

 It was this same run that felled American snowboarder Kevin Pearce on the last day of 2009. He banged his face on the lip of the halfpipe wall as he practised a trick. At the time, doctors didn’t know if he would ever walk again.

 “I feel like I remember being in my hospital bed and being like, ‘Oh, I’ll be able to go out and ride in a couple weeks,’ ” he recalled last month. “I had no idea what I was in for.”

 Two surgeries and two years of intensive rehabilitation later, he was able to snowboard again a few weeks ago.

 Accidents such as Pearce’s have played a key role in boosting the use of life-saving gear. National Ski Areas Association data shows helmet use among skiers and snowboarders has more than doubled in a decade.

 Officials insisted Wednesday that the level of risk was acceptable, despite the injuries.

 “[Burke’s crash] has the effect of making people more acutely aware of how important safety is,” Judge said. “There are inherent risks in any sport.”

 As for the trick she was performing at the time of the accident, he would only say: “It was nothing out of the norm, nothing on the extreme end of the spectrum.” |||||

– A freestyle skier credited with helping get her sport included in the 2014 Winter Olympics is in a coma in Salt Lake City after a fall, reports the Toronto Globe and Mail. Canadian Sarah Burke, 29, fell yesterday during a training run at a Utah mountain resort. Burke has won gold four times at the Winter X Games in superpipe skiing, which the Salt Lake City Tribune says is similar to snowboarding's halfpipe, but on skis. She was a heavy favorite for Olympic gold in Russia in 2014. "She landed a trick down in the bottom end of the pipe, and kind of bounced, from her feet to her head," says the CEO of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association. "It wasn’t anything that looked like a catastrophic fall, so I’m a bit mystified." The accident happened on the same halfpipe where snowboarder Kevin Pearce fell and suffered a brain injury in 2009. He is now back on the slopes.


Photo by KNS/AFP/Getty Images

 In the 1990s, a large group of prisoners were released from North Korea’s secret labor camps. These were not criminals, nor were they even political enemies. On the contrary, they were, in the words of a defector, the grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of “landlords, capitalists, collaborators with the Japanese colonial government, and other people with bad family background.” The Soviet Union once arrested the wives and children of political prisoners, and Russia recently sent the brother of a dissident politician to prison. But North Korea kept generations of families living in camps for decades on end.

 And some of them are still there. Even some of those who were apparently released 20 years ago never left: With no homes and no ties, and no knowledge of life outside the gulag, many decided to simply stay put. They were “free”—but had nowhere to live except the same prison barracks they had always known. Others do seem to have vanished, but not because they were released. The number of prisoners in North Korean camps is thought to have dropped in recent years, yet there is no evidence of anyone leaving. Instead, prisoners—possibly tens of thousands of them—may well have died of starvation.

 This, then, is the nature of the regime that has been so much in the news for the past month: It imprisons whole families for generations. When food is short, it quietly allows thousands to die off. And it keeps such tight control over its camps that information about them is extremely hard to come by, even in a world of omnipresent telephones and instant messaging. Organizations such as the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea go to extraordinary lengths to follow what happens inside the country using satellite photographs and information from defectors. But those who do escape over the Chinese border sometimes take years to get to South Korea, suffering beatings, rape, and starvation along the way. By the time they arrive, their memories of the prison camps can be years out of date.

 There is something about the harshness and the evil nature of the North Korean regime that defies imagination.

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 Worse, their stories can be hard to absorb. It’s not easy to relate to the defectors themselves. They are often shy, emotionally stunted, and unable to adjust to life in South Korea or anywhere else. I once heard several North Korean ex-prisoners speak of their lives behind barbed wire at an event on Capitol Hill. The stories they told were appalling. But although the audience listened dutifully, it was clear they were waiting for some congressman to denounce the regime in more familiar language.

 Perhaps that helps explain why their years of efforts have had less impact on public policy than the news that North Korean hackers may have broken into the computer system of Sony Pictures, and may even have released some gossip about Angelina Jolie, in revenge for the release of The Interview, an unfunny comedy about the North Korean dictator. I don’t mean to downplay the danger of hacking—the next target could be a nuclear power plant. But it’s still amazing that Sony’s troubles, and North Korea’s possible involvement, persuaded the American president to impose more sanctions last week. Multiple reports of massive human rights abuse over many decades never had the same effect.

 And perhaps they never can. There is something about the harshness and the evil nature of the North Korean regime that defies imagination: It’s so bizarre that it makes us laugh rather than cry. Even the makers of The Interview were unable to conceive of the regime except in the crudest, slapstick form. Kim Jong-un, like his father, Kim Jong-il, is easily made into a figure of fun, a joke of a Hollywood bad guy. We read eagerly about his exploits playing basketball, just as we read about his father’s alleged obsession with Elvis Presley and his fear of flying. ||||| One of the biggest questions facing The Interview was just how offensive its depiction of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was going to be. The hack of Sony Pictures and ensuing mania surrounding the movie had many convinced that we were going to see something super offensive, that either belittled the plight of the North Korean people or turned geopolitics into an excuse for fart jokes.

 I was worried that we were going to be treated to another clownish Asian stereotype.

 Hollywood has had a long track record of producing mystifyingly offensive Asian and Asian-American caricatures, enabling these stereotypes to live on and on in society. One pervasive, harmful type that Hollywood has gone to over and over is portraying Asian men as clueless clowns. And it seemed all but certain that Kim, as portrayed by Korean-American actor Randall Park, would fall into the same clownish role we've seen over and over.

 Thankfully, that assumption was wrong. But there was good reason to fear it. Here's why — and how The Interview surmounted this stereotype.

 The Asian goofball stereotype

 Ten years ago, a tiny Berkeley student named William Hung appeared on the third season of American Idol, then the biggest show on television. His English was splintered, his accent snarled the words of Ricky Martin's "She Bangs," and it didn't seem as if he fully understood why the judges were laughing at him.

 Hung became a star, outshining many finalists from that year. (Just try naming one that isn't Jennifer Hudson or Fantasia Barrino.) His first of three albums sold 200,000 copies.

 The only problem was that Hung was treated as a joke. People laughed at him, at his accent, and at his cluelessness. Hung himself seemed aware of the joke he was perpetuating.

 "OK, so I'm not famous for the right reasons," he told Rolling Stone in 2004. "I'm infamous, a joke. It doesn't make me feel good, because I'm a genuine person, but I don't let it get to me, because I am who I am."

 Hung unfortunately — and perhaps accidentally — played into a stereotype that's run rampant in American pop culture for decades: a clownish, goofy, harmless, clueless, sexless, unattractive Asian man. You can see this stereotype as far back as Mickey Rooney's Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's, or in Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles. You can even see it in the way people look at real life Asian men.

 For instance, consider Korean pop star Psy. When Psy stormed into public consciousness in 2012 on the back of his hit song "Gangnam Style" and some horse-like dance moves, it was unclear if people actually understood his message of satirizing class and wealth in South Korean society or if people just liked the chubby dancing Asian man.

 There are a many talented and ultra-successful K-Pop groups with great hits and massive followings. Any could have hit the American charts. Thus, it's telling that the only K-Pop act to make it in America so far has been Psy.

 "Psy doesn't even have to sing in English or be understood because it's not the social critique offered by the lyrics that matters to the audience, but the marriage of the funny music video, goofy dance, and a rather catchy tune, of which two of the elements are comical and, again, non-threatening," the writer Refresh Daemon wrote on Racialicious.

 You could also look at the flamboyant, savvy, and wealthy Chinese recycling tycoon Chen Guangbiao, who was, not unlike Psy, in on the joke of his image.

 In January of 2014, Chen stated that he wanted to buy The New York Times, then flew to the US to drum up support and attention for this massive and transparent publicity stunt. The tycoon, who has a reported net worth of around $810 million, handed out crazy business cards and took advantage of every sliver of attention the American media wanted to give him:

 The incredible business card of the Chinese businessman who wants to buy the New York Times http://t.co/HhFtQLTBDz pic.twitter.com/fTT2Dw6cTF — Business Insider (@businessinsider) January 9, 2014

 Yet, instead of treating this obviously ridiculous business card and Chen like the Borat-esque gag it clearly was, news outlets framed his stunt as serious and clueless.

 Like any stereotype, this one marginalizes Asian men. It perpetuates the mentality that they're harmless and clueless. Granted, this stereotype pales in comparison to the same harmful, heartbreaking human toll of the perceptions projected onto black men in this country. But it comes from the same vein of ignorance and assumption.

 It shapes the way people think, and paints an inaccurate picture. In Hollywood, the clown is one of the few roles readily available to Asian actors. And in Kim Jong Un's case, the stereotypes makes us see him as someone who's harmless when he's anything but.

 How the media's coverage of North Korea deepens the stereotype

 With Kim and American coverage of him and his country, there's been a tendency of late to seek out North Korean stories that indulge and deepen this clownish, goofy caricature.

 One of the biggest stories about North Korea, and one of the biggest during Kim's tenure as Supreme Leader, was that the country had announced that its archaeologists had found a hidden "unicorn" lair in 2012. A sampling of the reports:

 The idea of mythical beasts being confirmed by scientists and historians was utterly ridiculous, but it was the perfect example of how laughable North Korean propaganda can be — as well as our tendency to pounce on it.

 American media, including myself (the unicorn story was one of the most-clicked on stories I wrote at The Atlantic Wire), puts a premium on these types of ridiculous non-news stories, like magic North Korean sports drinks made from mushrooms, Kim being elected with 100 percent of the vote, or Kim feeding his uncle to 120 dogs. These stories tend to affirm the idea that everyone writing and reading them is smarter than North Korea's ridiculous propaganda machine.

 We often view Kim through a lens of cultural superiority. The result of all these odd, weird, attention-grabbing stories, is an image of a silly, harmless ruler backed by an even sillier propaganda machine. And that image too often overshadows the terrifying human rights abuses that go on in his country.

 The Interview is a product of this cultural consciousness. It tries hard to convince you it's satirizing the media's odd fascination with North Korea, but it doesn't seem to fully aware of the American self-importance that feeds that beast. The running gag in the movie is that North Koreans are so clueless that they don't believe Kim has an anus, a gag that's given more attention than exploring the idea that perhaps North Koreans and Kim are more than products of their propaganda, but in fact products of a century of brutal and often violent history on the Korean peninsula.

 What The Interview and Randall Park did right

 The Interview is not a great movie. But one of its few bright spots is that it attempts — albeit in a ham-fisted way — to not go for the cheap clownish stereotype of Kim and actually show a human being with agency. There are clownish aspects to him, like a fascination with Katy Perry, but Park's Kim is depicted as both someone who's very aware of his image and someone who's clearly a monster.

 Kim's portrayal is already miles more honest than that of his father in Team America, where the central joke was Kim Jong Il's accent ("ronery"). There are even moments in The Interview when you wish the film realized how sharp it could be and leaned into the idea of a savvy, murdering despot. The film could suggest how Kim plays into these clownish stereotypes to get away with horrible things. That it doesn't is one of its greatest failings.

 It says a lot about (the lack of) Asian American representation in pop culture that I'm actually hoping a movie decides to show a more fully realized version of Kim. But when it comes to seeing people who resemble something closer to how I look and act, griping at the offensiveness and lack of awareness in The Interview is part of something bigger.

 And Park himself is part of an upcoming opportunity to push back against shopworn stereotypes. In February, ABC's sitcom Fresh Off the Boat — the first Asian-American family sitcom since 1994's All-American Girl — will premiere, starring Park in one of the main roles. This show might be silly, yes, but both it and The Interview represent attempts to push beyond the goofballs we've already seen and capture something closer to life. |||||

Write a summary.

– The US has imposed new sanctions on North Korea over the Sony hack, and Slate writer Anne Applebaum finds it strange that a screwball comedy forced the hand of the White House, while "multiple reports of massive human rights abuse over many decades never had the same effect." This is a country that sends political foes—and their families—to labor camps for life and that lets its own people starve. And yet it took the hacking of a movie studio to trigger penalties. The problem is that "we can comprehend Sony," writes Applebaum, but we can't seem to comprehend the rest of what's going on there. "There is something about the harshness and the evil nature of the North Korean regime that defies imagination: It’s so bizarre that it makes us laugh rather than cry." But maybe there's hope from an unexpected source? At Vox, Alex Abad-Santos is glad that for all its crudeness and slapstick comedy, Seth Rogen's movie The Interview avoids portraying Kim Jong-Un as a "clownish Asian stereotype." Perhaps it's a sign that we're moving away from the representation of "goofballs" toward something more honest. Click for the full column, or for Applebaum's full column.


Here is a news article: Locking your door isn't always a safeguard against intrusion. Neither is a caretaker, apparently.

 An elderly woman was in for a shock at her home in central Pennsylvania when she and her daughter discovered an unknown man camped out in an upstairs closet where he had secretly been living for several weeks.

 The unidentified homeowner, in her 80s, was limited to the first floor due to difficulty moving, which allowed the man to remain undetected on the second floor until the mother and daughter heard a noise coming from upstairs, NBC News reports.

 Police in Bedford County said that the man, Mark Potts, turned out to be the boyfriend of the woman's caretaker. He had moved several suitcases into the home and even had a small handgun in his possession, according to Bedford County District Attorney Bill Higgins.

 Officials said that Potts faces criminal trespassing charges and the caretaker could face additional charges for aiding him. ||||| text size

 Bedford woman finds man living inside her home

 By: Lauren Hensley

 BEDFORD, Pa.-- In Bedford on Juliana Street, a woman in her mid-80s goes for weeks before discovering a man is living inside of her home.

 "They heard a noise upstairs and they found this man hiding in a closet he had been living there for several weeks,” Bedford County District Attorney Bill Higgins said.

 The homeowner is not as mobile as she, used to be, so she mainly lives on the first floor of her two story-story home. The woman has a caretaker and was introduced to the caretaker’s boyfriend Mark Potts.

 But when the woman's daughter paid a visit, they found Potts was living under her roof.

 “When police searched the upstairs room, they found several suitcases, a duffel bag and other personal items belonging to Potts. He was taking up residence there. He didn't bring in new furniture but he was living there,” Higgins said.

 Police said when they found Potts, he also had a small handgun on him.

 “This guy put this woman in fear and he probably killed any future feelings of security and we are going to make sure he is held accountable for that,” Higgins said.

 Potts is facing criminal trespassing charges.

 The name of the caretaker has not been released just yet but according to Higgins, police are investigating and he expects charges to be filed against her as well.

 Bedford woman finds man living inside her home |||||
A summary of this is?

– A woman in her 80s who lives alone in Pennsylvania wasn't actually living alone, it turns out. Police in Bedford say that a 49-year-old man had secretly moved in and was living on her second floor for several weeks, reports WJAC-TV and the Bedford County Free Press. His rent-free living came to an end when the woman's daughter paid a visit, and she and her mom heard a noise upstairs. A quick investigation turned up Mark Allen Potts hiding in a closet. “When police searched the upstairs room, they found several suitcases, a duffel bag, and other personal items belonging to Potts," says county DA Bill Higgins. "He was taking up residence there." Authorities say Potts, who faces charges of criminal trespassing, also had a handgun. The homeowner had once met him—he was the boyfriend of her caretaker. "Locking your door isn't always a safeguard against intrusion," observes a post at Philly Voice. "Neither is a caretaker, apparently." (Another alleged home intruder got caught after logging into Facebook.)


Here is a news article: Honesty really does pay off.

 An American teenager has been rewarded for returning Chris Hemsworth's wallet, which the Australian actor lost while he was dining with his family in a "rough" area of Los Angeles.

 "I left my wallet on the table, and thought I'm never going to get it back, I'm never going to see it again," Hemsworth said on the The Ellen Show on Monday.

 A photo posted by Ellen (@theellenshow) on Apr 18, 2016 at 12:17pm PDT

 That forgotten wallet was a surprise discovery for 17-year-old Tristin Budzyn-Baker, who was shocked to find who it actually belonged to. "I looked up at my mom, and was like 'mom, do you know who this is?'" Budzyn-Baker said. "We found Thor's wallet."

 Budzyn-Baker then wrote a letter to Hemsworth's management saying that he found the Australian actor's wallet, while sneaking in a request for tickets The Ellen Show for his mom, which Hemsworth was due to appear on shortly.

 Budzyn-Baker got tickets to The Ellen Show as a reward for his honesty and was seated in the audience with his mom as Hemsworth retold the story. The teenager later joined Hemsworth on stage to receive even more of a bonus for his good deed.

 "I expected [the wallet] was going to be empty, and all the cash was in there, so I want to give you the cash — there's a little extra in there," Hemsworth said, handing over a wad of cash to a thrilled Budzyn-Baker.

 It didn't stop there, Hemsworth also wrote a special letter of recommendation for Budzyn-Baker, a boy scout, for his bid to earn the top scouting rank Eagle Scout. Then host Ellen DeGeneres decided to reward the grateful teenager by giving Budzyn-Baker a further US$10,000 (A$12,833).

 "You're an amazing young man, and thank you for being such a honest guy," DeGeneres said. Not a bad prize pool for stumbling across a random wallet.

 It's proof that honesty is the best policy.

 Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments. ||||| By the hammer of Thor: Teen returns actor's wallet, scores $10K reward

 Skip in Skip x Embed x Share Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor in the Marvel cinematic universe, rewarded the teenager who returned his wallet. Wochit

 Even Thor needs a hero sometimes.

 When Australian actor Chris Hemsworth left his wallet in a Los Angeles restaurant, 17-year-old Tristin Budzyn-Baker came to his rescue.

 "I looked up at my mom and was like, 'ma, do you know who this is?'" he recounted Monday on The Ellen DeGeneres Show (H/T Mashable). "We found Thor's wallet."

 Instead of pocketing it, Budzyn-Baker tracked down Hemsworth and returned the wallet full of cash.

 "I expected it was going to be empty, and all the cash was in there" Hemsworth said on Ellen, sitting beside Budzyn-Baker.

 In return, the teen scored his family some tickets, a stack of cash from Hemsworth and a $10,000 reward from the publishing service, Shutterfly. Budzyn-Baker, a boy scout, also got a letter of recommendation from Hemsworth for the Eagle Scout award.

 "Thank you for being such an honest guy," DeGeneres said.

 Thor's brother, Loki, could not be reached for comment.

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1U6ydv6 ||||| Music makes for happy holidays

 Even the scrooges will smile at 3 free months of ad-free music with YouTube Red. |||||
A summary of this is?

– A 17-year-old kid who returned Thor's missing wallet is an even bigger Boy Scout than Captain America—literally. Mashable reports actor Chris Hemsworth was eating with his family in a "rough" area of Los Angeles when he forgot his wallet. "I left my wallet on the table and thought, 'I'm never going to get it back, I'm never going to see it again,'" Hemsworth said on Monday's episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. But he didn't count on Tristin Budzyn-Baker, who found the wallet. "I looked up at my mom and was like, 'Ma, do you know who this is?' We found Thor's wallet,'" Budzyn-Baker told Ellen. Budzyn-Baker wrote a letter to Hemsworth's management, asking only for tickets for his mom to see Hemsworth on Ellen's show. He got that and more, USA Today reports. "I expected it was going to be empty, and all the cash was in there, so I want to give you the cash—there's a little extra in there," Hemsworth told Budzyn-Baker during Monday's show, handing the teen a wad of cash. It didn't stop there. Budzyn-Baker got $10,000 from Ellen for being "such an honest guy," and Hemsworth wrote the Boy Scout a letter of recommendation for the Eagle Scout award. It seems it pays to be a hero's hero.


Summarize this article:

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption One Syrian refugee who said she was 105 years old told the BBC's Fergal Keane she "just wanted to die"

 The number of Syrian refugees who have fled the conflict has reached a million, the UN has said.

 The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said the number of people seeking haven in neighbouring countries had jumped since the beginning of the year.

 Half of the refugees were children, the UN said, most of them under 11 and often traumatised by their experiences.

 The largest numbers of refugees were seeking shelter in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.

 The figure includes registered refugees and newer arrivals awaiting registration.

 "Syria is spiralling towards full-scale disaster," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement, warning that the international humanitarian response capacity was "dangerously stretched".

 "This tragedy has to be stopped," he added, warning that the influx of people had also stretched the resources of Syria's neighbours.

 The millionth refugee recorded by UNHCR was a 19-year-old mother of two called Bushra.

 "Our situation is so bad, everything is so expensive, we can't find any work... The situation is so bad, I live with 20 other people in one room," Bushra told reporters in the Lebanese city of Tripoli.

 'Tremendous burden'

 Many of those who have fled conflict now live in difficult conditions, with poor sanitation and insufficient resources to cope with the harsh winters.

 At the scene Some 2,000 refugees crossed into Jordan from Syria in the past 24 hours. Many were brought to the large tent for new arrivals just inside the Zaatari camp. They could be seen lying sprawled, exhausted and dishevelled, on mats and blankets laid on the floor. "We came because of the shelling and air strikes. They destroyed our houses, they left nothing for us," said an old woman from Homs. "It took us nearly five days to get here walking through fields." A young mother told us how Syrian forces had shot at them as they tried to leave. "We were so afraid we had an accident on the road. We thought we were going to die," she said. By late afternoon, the refugees were registered by the UNHCR and had moved to their own basic shelters. But officials here say the increasing flow of refugees threatens to overwhelm them. "The international community is failing to find a political solution inside Syria and so people are continuing to flee," says Andrew Harper, head of UNHCR in Jordan. "We'll probably have another 100,000 people arrive in the next four or five weeks."

 In Lebanon, for example, the influx of almost a third of a million refugees since last February has swollen the country's population by 10%.

 Turkey, providing a temporary home for some 184,000 refugees, has spent more than $600m (459m euros; £396m) setting up 17 refugee camps, and is building new ones to meet the increasing need, the UN said.

 "These countries should not only be recognised for their unstinting commitment to keeping their borders open for Syrian refugees, they should be massively supported as well," Mr Guterres said.

 On Tuesday, Jordan's King Abdullah called on world nations to help his country, Turkey and Lebanon to shoulder "the tremendous burden" of caring for the huge influx of people.

 'Catastrophic proportions'

 UK charity Oxfam says that only 20% of $1.5bn promised by international donors in January has arrived, "leaving agencies struggling to respond to the urgent needs of refugees".

 The rush of refugees has surprised even UN experts, who had originally estimated that the one million figure would not be reached until the end of June 2013.

 In effect, more than 400,000 have became refugees since 1 January 2013.

 The UN's emergency response plan for Syrian refugees, Oxfam said, currently lacked 75% of the funding required.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Nik Gowing reports as Bushra, 19, registers as the millionth refugee

 Jordan's Petra news agency said that a total of 2,257 Syrian refugees had crossed into the country on Tuesday alone.

 Some 110,000 of those who have sought shelter in Jordan are living in the desert camp of Zaatari, near its northern border with Syria.

 The conflict in Syria began almost two years ago with demonstrations against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

 The protests quickly turned violent as opponents of Mr Assad took up arms to try to resist a brutal crackdown by the authorities.

 The conflict has left more than 70,000 people dead and two million internally displaced, of a pre-conflict population of 20.7 million.

 Also on Wednesday, the Commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army, Gen Selim Idriss, called for the lifting of the EU arms embargo against Syria, saying it is having a much more negative effect on the opposition than on the Assad regime.

 Gen Idriss told the BBC's Chris Morris in Brussels that opposition forces desperately needed weapons and ammunition, and that the war would be longer and bloodier if the embargo remained in place.

 UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Wednesday that the UK was going to provide armoured vehicles and body armour to Syrian opposition forces in a bid to end a crisis that had reached what he called "catastrophic proportions".

 His announcement in the House of Commons stopped short of arming the rebels, but he told the BBC on Sunday that the UK would not rule out doing so in future.

 In a separate development, Arab League foreign ministers invited the Syrian main opposition to take the country's seat at the league.

 The ministers asked the Syrian National Coalition to send its representative to the group's meeting in Doha later this month.

 The 22-member league suspended Syria's membership in 2011. ||||| A line of Syrian refugee women, some carrying children, cross into Jordan from southern Syria. The outflow this year has been staggering. © UNHCR/N.Daoud

 GENEVA, March 6 (UNHCR) - The UN refugee agency, citing data received from UNHCR's offices in the Syria region, on Wednesday announced that the number of Syrians either registered as refugees or being assisted as such has reached the 1 million mark.

 "With a million people in flight, millions more displaced internally, and thousands of people continuing to cross the border every day, Syria is spiralling towards full-scale disaster," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. "We are doing everything we can to help, but the international humanitarian response capacity is dangerously stretched. This tragedy has to be stopped."

 The number of Syrian refugees fleeing their country has increased dramatically since the beginning of the year. More than 400,000 people have become refugees since January 1, 2013. They arrive traumatized, without possessions and having lost members of their families. Around half of the refugees are children, the majority under the age of eleven. Most have fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. Increasingly, Syrians are also fleeing to North Africa and Europe.

 "This number translates into 1 million people who are dependent on the generosity of host countries, the response of humanitarian agencies and the financial support of governments and individuals," said Guterres.

 The High Commissioner noted that the impact of this large number of refugees arriving in neighbouring countries is severe. Lebanon's population has increased by as much as 10 per cent. Jordan's energy, water, health and education services are being strained to the limit. Turkey has spent over US$600 million setting up 17 refugee camps, with more under construction. Iraq, juggling its own crisis with more than 1 million Iraqis internally displaced, has received more than 100,000 Syrian refugees in the past year.

 "These countries should not only be recognized for their unstinting commitment to keeping their borders open for Syrian refugees, they should be massively supported as well," said Guterres.

 Bushra, the 1 millionth Syrian refugee, in Tripoli, Lebanon, with her children. © UNHCR/E.Byun

 UNHCR named Bushra, a 19-year-old mother of two, as the symbolic 1 millionth refugee. She was registered in the coastal city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon on Wednesday. She has been living in a dilapidated two-room building in a Tripoli slum since crossing the border just over two weeks ago.

 When UNHCR visited her earlier this week, she was holding her son Sleiman in the corner where they sleep at night. Her daughter Hanin, aged three, huddled close to her mother in the room they share with 12 other refugees.

 Her flight to Lebanon was a desperate last measure. She moved with her children from the city of Homs, where she lived, and sought safety in several villages to avoid tanks and shelling and gangs of men whom she feared would rape or kill her and her little ones. But soon, she said, the shooting would begin, the shelling would rain down and it would be time to leave.

 Before the conflict, she lived with her husband of five years and his family. He was a truck driver and was able to provide for the family. Now he is missing. "We need help," Bushra said. "We hope this will end so we can go back to our house. We need to feel peace and stability. We cannot ask for anything more."

 In December, the UN's Regional Response Plan for Syrian Refugees estimated that 1.1 million Syrian refugees would arrive in neighbouring countries by the end of June 2013. UNHCR is in the process of adjusting this plan, in light of the new figures. Currently, the plan is only about 25 per cent funded.

 Without a political solution to the conflict, Guterres said, "at a minimum, humanitarian actors should receive the funds needed to save lives and ease suffering."

 The Syria crisis will be two years old next week. High Commissioner Guterres will be travelling to the region later this week to visit UNHCR operations in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon.

 5134a41f9 |||||

– A million people have now fled Syria to avoid the war raging there—and half of them are children, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported today. "Syria is spiraling towards full-scale disaster," commissioner António Guterres said. "We are doing everything we can to help, but the international humanitarian response capacity is dangerously stretched." The defections have accelerated dramatically this year, with more than 400,000 fleeing since January. The UN hadn't expected to pass the 1 million mark for three more months, the BBC reports. The influx has put a real strain on neighboring countries; Lebanon, for instance, has seen its population swell as much as 10%, while Turkey has spent $600 million on refugee camps. Jordan and Iraq have also been sharing the load. Jordan's king yesterday urged other countries to help carry "the tremendous burden," and Guterres echoed that call. "These countries should not only be recognized for their unstinting commitment to keeping their borders open for Syrian refugees," he said, "they should be massively supported."


Summarize this article:

A renowned 104-year-old Australian scientist died Thursday, ending his life in a medically assisted suicide at a Swiss clinic.

 David Goodall, who was not terminally ill, happily sang a few bars of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at a news conference Wednesday on the eve of his assisted suicide in Basel. He told reporters that he was “happy to have the chance tomorrow to end it."

 "At my age, and even at rather less than my age, one wants to be free to choose the death and when the death is the appropriate time,” Goodall said. “My abilities have been declining over the past year or two, and my eyesight for the past five or six years, and I no longer want to continue life."

 Goodall, who wore a shirt that read “Ageing Disgracefully,” said he has considered using lethal injection, but that he’ll defer to doctors on the method.

 Euthanasia is currently banned in Australia where the scientist lived, which prompted the scientist’s trek to Switzerland last week.

 Swiss law currently allows assisted suicide for anyone who acknowledges in writing that they are taking their lives willingly — without being forced. The decades-old legislation that authorized the practice states that people who help others to die cannot do so for "selfish" reasons.

 The state of Victoria in Australia recently passed an euthanasia bill, the Washington Post reported. In 2019, it will be legal for terminally ill patients to undergo the procedure. Six states in the U.S., including California, Vermont and Oregon have passed death-with dignity laws for terminally ill people.

 Goodall said Wednesday that he hopes to be remembered “as an instrument of freeing the elderly” so others could choose death with dignity without traveling to Switzerland.

 The centenarian has already bid goodbye to family members in Australia and France. Four family members and a close friend traveled with Goodall to be at his side when he died.

 "I am glad to have the chance [to die] but would have preferred to have had it in Australia," he said.

 The botanist ruled out a return to his beloved Australian countryside, though he wished to return to the Northwestern Kimberley region, his favorite area, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

 “There are many things I would like to do, I suppose, but it’s too late. I am content to leave them undone.”

 Fox News’ Kathleen Joyce and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

  ||||| (CNN) A 104-year-old Australian scientist who had campaigned for the legalization of assisted dying in his home country has ended his life at a Swiss clinic, a representative from the pro-euthanasia group Exit International said.

 David Goodall, a respected botanist and ecologist, died Thursday at the Life Circle clinic in Basel, Switzerland, after administering a lethal drug under the guidance of doctors.

 Exit International, which represented the scientist, said Goodall passed away while listening to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."

 The grandfather of 12 had attracted over $20,000 in donations from the public to help fund his journey to Europe from Perth, Australia, earlier this month.

 "My life has been out in the field (working), but I can't go out in the field now," said Goodall, who needs a wheelchair and walking frame to get around, during an interview at his Basel hotel.

 "I would love to be able to walk into the bush again, and see what is all around me," added the father of four, who during his long life had three wives.

 "I could still enjoy birdsong," he added. "But my lack of vision would seriously impair it."

 David Goodall in his Basel hotel room, two days before his death.

 Goodall told CNN he would have preferred to have died when he lost his driver's license in 1998, adding that the loss of independence at 84 was a big moment in his life.

 "At my age, I get up in the morning. I eat breakfast. And then I just sit until lunchtime. Then I have a bit of lunch and just sit. What's the use of that?" said the scientist, who appeared to have lost none of his sense of humor on Tuesday, wearing a top inscribed with the words "Aging Disgracefully."

 Bringing 'euthanasia to light'

 Goodall said he hoped his story would lead to the legalization of assisted dying in other countries.

 "I'm looking forward to it," he said of his imminent death. "I'm happy that this period beforehand has been used to interview me, and I've brought the ideas of euthanasia to light."

 The bed at the Life Circle clinic in Basel where Goodall ended his life.

 "What I would like is for other countries to follow Switzerland's lead and make these facilities available to all clients, if they meet the requirements, and the requirements not just of age, but of mental capacity."

 Several US states have a form of physician-assisted suicide, as do a small number of countries including Japan, Belgium and Switzerland.

 'Aging disgracefully'

 Born in London in April 1914, just months before the outbreak of World War I, Goodall and his family moved to Australia when he was a child.

 The respected botanist and ecologist went on to hold academic positions across the world, including in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.

 Goodall at work in the 1950s.

 After his retirement in 1979, Goodall edited a 30-volume series of books called "Ecosystems of the World," written by more than 500 authors. In 2016, the professor was awarded the prestigious Order of Australia Medal.

 A member of Exit International for over 20 years, Goodall said earlier this week that he did not fear death, but instead would "welcome it when it comes."

 "The process of dying can be rather unpleasant, but it need not be," he said. "And I hope it won't be for me." |||||

– David Goodall, the 104-year-old Australian scientist who campaigned for the legalization of assisted suicide, died Thursday in Switzerland, Fox News reports. Goodall, who spoke at length on the eve of his death about why he wanted to end his own life, administered a lethal drug under the guidance of doctors at the Life Circle clinic in Basel, CNN reports. He had traveled there to die, with four family members and a close friend by his side, because euthanasia is illegal in his homeland of Australia. Goodall, a renowned botanist and ecologist, died while listening to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."


Article:

One of France's most feted chefs, whose restaurant has enjoyed the maximum three Michelin stars for the past two decades, has begged the illustrious food guide to strip him of the accolade because he can no longer stand the pressure.

 Sébastien Bras, 46, whose restaurant Le Suquet in Laguiole, central France has been lauded as "spellbinding" by the Michelin guide, said that he wanted to be left out of its 2018 EDITION, published in February.

 Taken aback, Michelin said that this was the first time that a chef had asked not to feature in the food bible without "justifying his choice by a change in (restaurant) concept or closing the business".

 In his chef's whites, Mr Bras announced his decision in a Facebook video with the local Aubrac landscape out behind him, saying: “Today, at 46 years old, I want to give a new meaning to my life ... and redefine what is essential.”

 The cook, who is famed for his young vegetable, herb and poultry juice Gargouillou, said: “Perhaps I am going to lose fame but I accept it, I assume it."

 He added that he wanted to drop the stars before the level of stress that drove Bernard Loiseau, another three-star chef, to suicide in 2003. “That’s in a corner of my mind,” he said. ||||| One of France’s most celebrated chefs, whose restaurant has been honoured with three stars in the Michelin guide for almost 20 years, has pleaded to be stripped of the prestigious ranking because of the huge pressure of being judged on every dish he serves.

 Sébastien Bras, 46, who runs the acclaimed Le Suquet restaurant in Laguiole where diners look over sweeping views of the Aubrac plateau in the Aveyron while tasting local produce, announced on Wednesday that he wanted to be dropped from the rankings of France’s gastronomic bible.

 Humble French restaurant swamped after Michelin mistake makes it a star Read more

 Michelin said it was the first time a French chef had asked to be dropped from its restaurant guide in this way, without a major change of positioning or business model.

 Bras said he wanted to be allowed to cook excellent food away from the frenzy of star ratings and the anxiety over Michelin’s anonymous food judges, who could arrive at his restaurant at any moment.

 Le Suquet had been consistently described by the Michelin guide’s restaurant judges as so good it was “spellbinding”.

 Bras, dressed in his chef’s whites, announced his decision in a Facebook video with the local landscape rolling out behind him, saying: “Today, at 46 years old, I want to give a new meaning to my life ... and redefine what is essential.”

 He said his job had given him a lot of satisfaction but there was also huge pressure that was inevitably linked to the three Michelin stars first given to the restaurant in 1999. He asked to be allowed to continue his work with a free spirit and in serenity away from the world of rankings, without tension. He said he wanted to be dropped from the guide from next year.

 Bras, who took over the family restaurant from his parents 10 years ago, later explained to AFP: “You’re inspected two or three times a year, you never know when. Every meal that goes out could be inspected. That means that, every day, one of the 500 meals that leaves the kitchen could be judged.

 “Maybe I will be less famous but I accept that,” he said, adding that he would continue to cook excellent local produce “without wondering whether my creations will appeal to Michelin’s inspectors”.

 Reacting to his decision, Claire Dorland Clauzel, a member of the French tyremaker’s executive committee, said: “We note and we respect it.” She said the request would not lead to Le Suquet’s automatic removal from the list, and would have to be given due consideration.

 Bras said that like all chefs he sometimes found himself thinking of Bernard Loiseau, the acclaimed French chef who killed himself in 2003, an act widely seen as linked to rumours that he would lose his third Michelin star. “I’m not in the frame of mind,” Bras said.

 Bras is one of only 27 French chefs who hold top rankings in the Michelin restaurant guide. He is not the first chef to walk away from the competitive world of Michelin-star cooking. However, others have only done so as part of a closure or a radical change to their restaurants.

 In 2005, Paris restaurateur Alain Senderens – one of the pioneers of nouvelle cuisine – shocked the culinary world by giving back his three stars, claiming that diners were turned off by excessive luxury. He later reopened the restaurant under another name, with a simpler menu at a fraction of his old prices.

 In 2008, three-star chef Olivier Roellinger closed his luxury restaurant in the Breton fishing village of Cancale, saying he wanted a quieter life. ||||| French chef Sébastien Bras wants to give up the three Michelin stars held by his rural restaurant in the south of France, Le Suquet à Laguiole (some 130 miles northwest of Montpellier). Bras has headed up the restaurant for 10 years, taking over from his father, the legendary chef Michel Bras, who’s credited with pioneering vegetable-focused haute cuisine. According to a report from Agence France-Presse (via Le Monde), Michel Bras agrees with the decision.

 According to AFP, Bras and team are looking to relieve the pressure of expectations that the three-star rating brings. “This was a beautiful challenge and a source of great satisfaction... but there’s a huge pressure as a result of our three-star status, which we’ve held since 1999. Today, we want to proceed with a free spirit and without stress, to offer a cuisine and service that represents that spirit and our land.”

 In another version of the story appearing in Le Figaro, Bras referred to the suicide of chef Bernard Loiseau in 2003, which was reportedly provoked by reports that his restaurant, La Côte d’Or, might lose one of its three stars. Bras said while he “is not in that kind of headspace,” it was indicative of the immense pressure of keeping up a restaurant’s rating.

 On previous occasions in other countries, chefs have given up their restaurants’ stars (for example, Spain’s Casa Julio), although Michelin executive committee member Claire Dorland-Clauzel called it “a first” for the guide, possibly referring specifically to the Michelin Guide for France. Other chefs in France have in effect yielded their restaurants’ stars in the past, either by closing down or changing concepts.

 It’s a big deal in France — although Japan has more three-starred restaurants, Michelin stars hold major cultural clout in a country that effectively prays at the altar of renowned, star-wielding chefs like Joël Robuchon.

 In response to the request, Dorland-Clauzel noted that the process isn’t as simple as a restaurant renouncing its stars, and that while the request would be considered, it isn’t guaranteed: “The guide isn’t made for restaurateurs, but for customers.”

 Dorland-Clauzel added that the pressure that Bras was invoking as a reason for the request is a key part of culinary excellence, in the eyes of the Michelin guide.

 • Sébastien Bras renonce à figurer au guide Michelin [Le Monde]

 • Sébastien Bras demande à sortir du Michelin [Le Figaro] |||||
What is a summary?

– To receive a Michelin star, let alone three, is a coveted honor for most chefs. But Sebastien Bras isn't most chefs, announcing Wednesday he wants his restaurant, Le Suquet in Laguiole, France, out of the famous guide due to the pressure, the Guardian reports. The three-star chef made his wishes known in a Facebook video, noting "at 46 years old, I want to give a new meaning to my life … and redefine what is essential." He called his move "a new chapter of my professional life" that will allow him to have "so much passion for the kitchen." A member of the executive committee for Michelin, which says Bras' request is the first time a chef has opted out without a restaurant undergoing some kind of major overhaul or closing, notes that while "we note and we respect" Bras' plea, her team is still reviewing it and that doesn't mean it's a definite. Bras, who took over the restaurant from his father, Michel, more than a decade ago, tells AFP he can no longer take reviewers showing up unannounced at any time, usually a few times a year. "I want to feel free without asking myself whether my creations will please the Michelin inspectors," he says. He adds that the 2003 suicide of French chef Bernard Loiseau, whose restaurant had been rumored to being close to losing its third star, was a factor. His father is supportive of his decision, AFP reports, via Eater, and another three-star chef who shut his own restaurant tells the Telegraph, "When the Michelin guide is no longer a driving force, it's better to change lanes." Bras knows this may knock him down a few pegs in the cooking world, but it doesn't faze him. "Maybe I will be less famous, but I accept that," Bras tells AFP. (London has become a Michelin hot spot.)


Here is a news article: More from this journal ||||| Photo

 When it comes to mean or destructive social behavior, Pamela Orpinas says “so much of the research has focused on girls.” “We’ve had papers and books and qualitative analyses and focus groups” about the ways girls mistreat one another socially, the professor of health promotion and behavior told Op-Talk, “but we don’t know that much about boys.”

 Dr. Orpinas may be helping to close that gap, with a new paper comparing “relational aggression” in boys and girls. She and her co-authors, Caroline McNicholas and Lusine Nahapetyan, define relational aggression as “harming others through damaging or manipulating peer relationships.” In order to measure the quality, they relied on a survey asking students how often in the past 30 days they had done things like spreading false rumors, ostracizing people or making mean comments about someone to turn other kids against that person. Six hundred and twenty students took the survey regularly from 6th grade through 12th grade.

 The result: Significantly more boys than girls exhibited a pattern of high relational aggression in the early years of the study (overall, such aggression declined with age, a finding the authors expected). Specifically, the group of students reporting high aggression was 66.7 percent male.

 “People say, ‘well, boys are physically aggressive, but girls are aggressive in their relationships,’” said Dr. Orpinas, “and it just does seem to be a myth.”

 Others, too, are questioning whether girls really have a monopoly on social nastiness. A 2012 study of kids from nine countries found no significant difference between boys and girls when it came to relational aggression. And Rosalind Wiseman, whose book “Queen Bees and Wannabes” gave rise to the movie “Mean Girls,” turned her focus to the social lives of boys for her 2013 book “Masterminds and Wingmen.”

 “Boys don’t demand our attention in the same ways that girls do,” she wrote. “We don’t give them a language for talking about their worries and experiences like we do with girls. And we really don’t think enough about what our culture — and ourselves by extension — demands and expects of boys and how it frames their emotional lives, decision-making, self-esteem, and social competence.”

 This, she argued, needs to change: “The reality is that most boys’ days are filled with many of the same social challenges that girls face, and what they learn from those experiences matters now and for their futures, as it does for girls.”

 Dr. Orpinas believes schools need to recognize relational aggression isn’t a single-gender phenomenon: “It’s really important to think about boys and girls when we do prevention programs,” she said. Parents, too, “need to pay attention to what both boys and girls are doing.” And “they need to model the positive behavior, including not being relationally aggressive themselves.”

 Ms. Wiseman offered similar advice in her book: “Don’t lay down your values, expect your son to follow them, and then act differently yourself. If you talk badly about other people (especially other children he knows), it’s only reasonable to assume that he won’t do anything different.”

 As for kids themselves, Dr. Orpinas told Op-Talk, “we need to make it cool to be positive and caring about other kids.”

 The way adults talk about kids’ aggression, she added, may even be contributing to the problem. “We don’t talk as much, for example, about how kids do really cool things for each other.” Most kids aren’t aggressive, and “we do need to emphasize the positive,” she argued. “We have many examples of kids saying good things and kids helping each other, but that doesn’t sell very much so we don’t talk about it.” |||||
A summary of this is?

– A journal called Aggressive Behavior has published research disputing the widely-held theory that boys will beat you up, whereas girls will talk behind your back. Actually, the study suggests, boys do both: In scientific terms, they are both "physically" and "relationally" more aggressive than girls. The study followed 620 students of both sexes through middle school and high school in six Georgia districts, Time reports. Results came from regular surveys asking students about their behavior over the past 30 days. Unfortunately, "almost all of the students surveyed, 96%, had passed a rumor or made a nasty comment about someone over the course of the seven-year study," a researcher says. But physical and relational aggression were both more common in boys. Middle school, the study says, is the worst for meanness both physical and relational: It's most common between sixth and eighth grade. But middle schoolers can look forward to high school, when it begins dropping toward a senior-year low. The researchers aren't the first to point to boys' emotional cruelty, the New York Times reports: The author of the book on which the movie Mean Girls is based wrote a sequel focusing on boys. "The reality is that most boys’ days are filled with many of the same social challenges that girls face, and what they learn from those experiences matters now and for their futures, as it does for girls," writes Rosalind Wiseman. (That advice could be handy for this family, whose first 12 kids were boys.)


News article:

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- A Pakistan government minister has personally offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who kills the man who made the anti-Islam movie that is drawing ire throughout the Muslim world.

 Railway Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour announced the bounty at a news conference Saturday, but he made clear to CNN he was speaking for himself and not as a government representative.

 Asked whether he was concerned about committing or condoning a crime as a government official, Bilour said, "I am a Muslim first, then a government representative."

 Opinion: Pakistanis can debunk myths about Islam peacefully

 He said he invited the Taliban and al Qaeda to carry out the assassination.

 Sen. Zahid Khan, a spokesman for Bilour's political party, said the minister's action is not representative of the Awami National Party.

 "We believe in nonviolence. How could we make such announcements?" Khan said. "Our party has been fighting against militancy and extremism for years. How could we invite Taliban and al Qaeda to kill someone? Taliban and al Qaeda are our enemies who have killed our loved ones."

 "We have lots of concerns over the statement of our colleague," he added.

 The leftist Awami National Party is a coalition partner in the federal government led by President's Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan People's Party. The ANP is a ruling party in northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

 Photos: Anti-U.S. demonstrations worldwide

 Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf condemns the bounty issued by Bilour, his spokesman said Sunday.

 Shafqat Jalil said the prime minister will take up the issue with the head of the Awami National Party.

 Bilour did not mention the filmmaker by name, but he was likely referring to Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man who U.S. officials say is behind the privately produced film.

 Nakoula and his family have already left their California home and gone into hiding amid the worldwide storm of protest, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announced.

 Actress in anti-Islamic film files lawsuit against filmmaker

 CNN's Reza Sayah and journalist Aamir Iqbal contributed to this report. ||||| Image caption Dozens died in clashes between the police and protesters in Pakistani cities

 The US state department has condemned a Pakistani minister's offer of $100,000 (£61,600) for the death of the American maker of an anti-Islam film.

 It said the step was "inflammatory and inappropriate".

 Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour made the offer after a wave of protests against the film across Pakistan and the wider Muslim world.

 Dozens have died in clashes between police and protesters in Pakistan and countries such as Tunisia and Sudan.

 Sunday saw a fresh round of protests over the film in Pakistan, Nigeria, Greece and Turkey.

 Most passed off peacefully, but in the Greek capital Athens, riot police and demonstrators clashed. Six people were arrested.

 A state department official told the BBC: "The president and secretary of state have both said the video at the core of this is offensive, disgusting, and reprehensible - but that is no justification for violence, and it is important for responsible leaders to stand up and speak out against violence.

 "Therefore we find Mr Bilour's announcement is inflammatory and inappropriate. We note that the prime minister's office has dissociated itself from his comments."

 In hiding

 The exact origins of Innocence of Muslims, the low-budget film that has prompted the unrest, are unclear.

 The alleged producer of the trailer of the film, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, is in hiding.

 Anti-US sentiment grew after a trailer for the film dubbed into Arabic was released on YouTube earlier this month.

 US citizens have been urged not to travel to Pakistan, and the US embassy has paid for adverts on Pakistani TV showing President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemning the film.

 Although US targets have borne the brunt of protests against the film, anti-Western sentiment has been stoked further by caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published this week in the satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo.

 France shut embassies and other missions in about 20 countries across the Muslim world on Friday.

 An 18-year-old man who threatened the magazine's editors on Facebook has been charged with terrorism-related activity following his arrest in the southern French city of Toulon, a judicial source told AFP news agency on Sunday. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– A US official has called it "inflammatory and inappropriate" for a Pakistani minister to offer a $100,000 bounty for killing the filmmaker of Innocence of Muslims. Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, who made the offer, said he would pay the bounty out of his own pocket as protests continued yesterday against the anti-Islamic film. Bilour, who called himself a "Muslim first and a government representative second," said he has invited the Taliban and al-Qaeda to carry out the assassination, reports CNN. Pakistani government officials have similarly blasted the offer. A US State Department official told the BBC yesterday: "The president and secretary of state have both said the video at the core of this is offensive, disgusting, and reprehensible—but that is no justification for violence, and it is important for responsible leaders to stand up and speak out against violence." In another threat, this one aimed at the French publication Charlie Hebdo for printing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, an 18-year-old man who threatened the magazine's editors on Facebook has been charged with terrorism-related activity.


Article:

Mom topics Two NYC schools ban 'Rainbow bracelets' because of distraction

 Oct. 26, 2013 at 11:56 AM ET

 Etsy

 When kids really like a toy, it can take over the playground and cause such a distraction that schools feel the need to prohibit it. It’s happened in the past with Pokeman cards. And Silly Bandz.

 The latest schoolyard craze causing a ruckus is the Rainbow Loom, which involves a crochet hook and multicolored rubber bands, and results in colorful bracelets that are the passion of elementary school girls and boys everywhere. Two New York City schools, however, feel the passion may be poisoning recess and classroom time.

 In one Upper West side school, P.S. 87, anything related to Rainbow Looms is considered contraband, while in Brooklyn’s P.S. 107, students are still allowed to wear the bracelets, but they are no longer allowed to bring the “looms” and “related paraphernalia” to school.

 Some parents are scratching their heads over the decision to ban what they see as a highly creative outlet for kids. In a world where arts education budgets can be strapped, prohibiting an artistic recess activity can seem counterintuitive.

 The Rainbow Loom also defies stereotypical gender norms, as boys and girls are similarly obsessed with making, trading and giving the bracelets to their friends. In a story for Time magazine, Annie Murphy Paul expressed surprise when her 7-year old son, who normally plays football and baseball, asked for a kit and embraced “the distinctly feminine activity of making jewelry.” Murphy argues that the Rainbow Loom is more than a toy — it's hope for gender equality.

 “I think it’s a complete overreaction on the part of the administration,” says one P.S. 87 mom who asked to remain anonymous. Rainbow bracelets are an inexpensive and creative source of pride for the students who also use the trend to build community as they collaborate on pretty intricate designs, she says.

 At the same time, other parents applaud the schools for taking action. They believe that the rainbow looms were disruptive to the classroom environment and created a divide between those who have the looms and those who do not.

 Assistant Principal, Suzan Federici, notified P.S. 87 parents on Oct. 15 that the Rainbow Loom bracelets and bracelet-making kits were starting to “get out of hand.” According to Federici’s letter, the bracelets were causing conflict among students during recess and children were no longer allowed to bring any bracelets or bracelet kits to school.

 Eve Litwack, principal of Park Slope P.S. 107, declined to comment on the matter, but corrected previous reports that said she called the bracelets, “addictive.” She said she did not.

 As reported by DNA Info New York, Litwack said the problem was that some students started showing up for “morning line-up toting Ziploc bags stuffed with thousands of rubber bands and tackle boxes of the bracelet equipment.”

 "When a teacher says it's interfering with what she can do in the classroom, it's just not healthy," Litwack said.

 “It’s hard enough to control a class of 9-year-olds as it is,” says Gerald Stinner, a Park Slope father who agrees the toy should be banned. Stinner says his fourth-grade daughter is “kind of obsessed with the rainbow bracelets” and thinks it’s something she can do on her own time at home.

 Rebecca Hughes Parker, a parent of twin fourth-grade girls who attend P.S. 87, defends her school’s bracelet ban as well. There are a thousand kids in the school and parents have to trust the people who are there with the students every day to make the best determination for the community as a whole, Parker says.

 It doesn’t appear that many other cities are taking New York’s lead yet.

 Karen Benjamin Guzzo, a Monclova, Ohio, parent, recalls how her daughter’s Allentown, Pa., school did participate in a multi-state ban on Silly Bandz bracelets in 2010. “As far as I know, the (Rainbow) bracelets aren’t banned in our schools at the moment,” says Guzzo. “But I don’t think most teachers permit the student to bring the loom and a gazillion bracelets into class, although they can wear them.”

 “I think it’s nice when they have indoor recess on rainy days and people bring in the bands and looms,” says Angela Rella, a Saratoga Springs, N.Y. mother of a third-grade girl and a kindergarten-aged boy, who both love the toy.

 While Rella says there is no ban on bracelets, on Friday her daughter Lucia came home with a message from her teacher. Kids are now only allowed to wear one bracelet to school. In an email to TODAY Moms, Rella explained why the new rule was in place: "The boys were wearing them all the way up to the elbow and [the teacher] was worried it would cut off circulation."

 Jacoba Urist is a business, health and lifestyle reporter in New York City. Follow her on Twitter@JacobaUrist.

  ||||| Friendship bracelets? Silly Bandz? Those are SO yesterday.

 This year's hot trend with the elementary school set is Rainbow Loom bracelets. But you probably already know this if you have a young girl or boy in the house, or know a young girl or boy, or ever see a young girl or boy anywhere. The bouncy little bracelets are ubiquitous.

 "My son will spend a week making one. He'll work on it before school, and he'll come home sometimes and that's all he does. All the kids are doing it," says Middleburg Heights mother of four Jenine Black of her 8-year-old, Wyatt. Her 6-year-old daughter also makes the bracelets and her 10-year old son wears them, too.

 Adds Parma mother of three Leeann Hochevar of her 8-year-old, Cecilia, "All of the girls my daughter knows are into it. They go their friends' houses and that's what they do."

 "That" refers to using a plastic loom, about 2-by-8-inches, to create intricately patterned colorful bracelets by weaving tiny rubber bands in a variety of patterns. These range from simple fishtail patterns that can be done by younger children in less than 30 minutes to a complex flag pattern that might take tweens a week.

 These bracelets are everywhere – except on enough store shelves. Shortages have parents across the nation in search of the tiny rubber bands (sold separately) and plastic looms that enable their young ones to make wearable art in patterns such as "Hexafish" and "Starburst" – many of which they learn from thousands of YouTube.com videos devoted to Rainbow Loom bracelets.

 "You hunt high and low for the bands and the looms, and everybody is always sold out. You feel like a crazy person," laughs Black.

 Black got one of her kits on a trip to South Haven, Mich. The other she found at a Michael's location. She also says Learning Express Toys at Southpark Mall in Strongsville has a big supply (at the moment). Other readers noted that many area Walgreens are currently stocking the bands, but not the kits. I found a kit a the Toys-R-Us Parma location, which had a small, but quickly diminishing, pile. You can also find bands at locally owned Nicky Nicole stores in Westlake, Woodmere and Hudson, as well as online at nickynicole.com.

 The trend seems to have hit the area in the summer and quickly picked up when kids went back to school. Credit Michigan father/inventor Cheong-Choon Ng for the hundreds of little bands clogging up your vacuum cleaner.

 Ng made his first loom with his daughter about three years ago, using push pins – just to make crafts at home. But the family project led to some homemade YouTube videos, and interest exploded.

 Today, Ng has sold more than 1 million kits – and there are many similar competitors. His Rainbow Loom YouTube channel has more than 66 videos and close to 4 million views. There are thousands of homemade videos from kids across the world on YouTube, too.

 Hochevar says her daughter got into the bracelets when school started in the late summer. Black says the same thing - but with a twist.

 She first bought a loom for her first-grade daughter, but her 8-year-old son soon became more interested when he saw both male and female classmates making them.

 "You wouldn't think an 8-year-old boy would be really into making bracelets, but they all are," says Black. "My son is making the American Flag design right now. He and his classmates say it's the ultimate. It could take a week."

 "I like that there are so many things you can make with them," says Wyatt Black of the bracelet's appeal. "The flag is really hard, but it's fun. My friends say my bracelets are really cool."

 Black says the bracelets are a project of which she approves.

 "I'm all for it because they're taking the time and making it. He's really proud of it when he makes something complicated, and he'll take it to school and show his friends. It's better than Silly Bandz."

 Still, Parma mom Hochevar is holding off on getting too excited about the bracelets.

 "I spent way too much money on the Silly Bandz craze," she says. "I still have packets of them laying around here."

 For now, her daughter makes them with friends, but does not have her own loom – which is on her Christmas wish list.

 Her school, St. Columbkille in Parma, does not allow students to wear the bracelets. Many area private schools have the same rule. Most area public schools, such as the Berea schools that Black's children attend, do allow them. But schools in some other states have started banning the wearing and trading of Rainbow Loom bracelets during school hours. As one principal in Brooklyn, N.Y. said, the bracelets are addictive.

 You can say that again.

 Share photos of your rainbow loom bracelets with us at photos.cleveland.com/photogallery/index.html, email them to sendphoto@cleveland.com or post them to Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #CLEbracelets. ||||| Courtesy of Rainbow Loom Rainbow Loom bracelets

 The other day, my seven-year-old son asked me for a Rainbow Loom. If you don’t know what that is, you don’t have children under age twelve. The Rainbow Loom is the toy of the season, a contraption for making the woven rubber bracelets that rise in stacks around grade school kids’ arms as they incessantly make them, trade them, and give them to their friends. The Rainbow Loom craze began in the summer, and unlike other fads, it has not yet abated, despite the decision of two public elementary schools in New York City to ban them.

 When I expressed surprise at my son’s request—my son’s interests usually run more toward baseball and football—he was nonchalant. “All the boys in my class have one,” he said, and even accounting for kids’ invariably-inflated claims about what “all” their classmates have, since our conversation I have noticed that this is one toy that does seem genuinely gender-neutral.

 There was nine-year-old son of a friend, for example, who told his mother that “no one talks anymore about Minecraft”—the hugely popular online building game—because they’re too busy talking about hexafishes and zippy chains, two of the more complicated Rainbow Loom bracelet designs (there are an infinite number, he recommends Ashley on YouTube’s demonstration.) And there was the friend who posted on Facebook about her tween son’s response when she gently teased him about giving a bracelet to a female classmate. “Mom, it’s not love, it’s just Rainbow Loom,” he said with an eye roll.

 If boys are indeed embracing the distinctly feminine activity of making jewelry, it’s big news, and not just for the bottom line of toy stores across the country. Toy choice is the single most sex-typed behavior that children display. As neuroscientist Lise Eliot notes in her book Pink Brain, Blue Brain: “There’s a good reason why parents so often comment on boys’ and girls’ different toy preferences: this is one of the largest differences between the sexes that psychologists have uncovered.” In one study from Sweden, Eliot writes, “97 percent of boys were likelier to spend their time playing with toy vehicles, balls, and weapons than the average girl, when given a choice between those or stereotypical feminine toys. This difference is much, much larger than any of the cognitive or personality differences between the sexes.”

 (MORE: School Has Become Too Hostile for Boys)

 What’s delighting a certain set of parents about boys’ affinity for Rainbow Loom is that it requires quiet concentration and fine motor skills to string tiny rubber bands onto a loom and then essentially crochet them with an equally diminuative hook. The overwhelming preference of boys for things they can throw or smash, and of girls for things they craft or groom, is “fascinating, but also misleading,” Lise Eliot points out. Parents and teachers often point to play behavior as a representative difference between the sexes—“See, boys and girls are different, and there’s not much we can do about it”—when really play behavior is an outlier. In every other way, girls and boys are much more similar to each other.

 In her book Cinderella Ate My Daughter, cultural critic Peggy Orenstein elaborates on this point: “Toy choice turns out to be one of the largest differences between the sexes over the entire life span, bigger than anything except the preference (among most of us) for the other sex as romantic partners. But its timing and intensity shore up every assumption and stereotype we adults hold: little boys naturally like backhoes, ergo men won’t ask for directions. That blinds us to the larger truth of how deeply those inborn biases are reinforced by a child’s environment.”

 So if even “one of the largest differences between the sexes that psychologists have uncovered” is now yielding to the call of the Rainbow Loom, perhaps it’s a sign that there may be hope for gender equality yet.

 (MORE: Keeping Teens ‘Private’ on Facebook Won’t Protect Them) |||||
What is a summary?

– It's apparently not too early to anoint this year's hot holiday toy, one that is surprisingly old school: the Rainbow Loom. And as Annie Murphy Paul writes at Time, "If you don't know what that is, you don't have children under age twelve." For those in the dark, the contraption helps kids create intricate rubber band bracelets, usually dispensed to friends. The craze got its start in the summer but intensified with the return to school, writes Laura DeMarco at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. And, crucially, boys are on board. In fact, Time's Murphy Paul finds this the most interesting part of the trend, given the entrenched gender roles in the toy biz. Parents seem to love the looms because they don't involve staring at a screen and theoretically build kids' motor skills and social ones, too. (Thanks to all the bracelet exchanging going on.) Plus, starter kits don't break the bank at about $17—assuming you can find one on store shelves. "The last time parents were this hot and heavy over a toy, it was Beanie Babies," a toy store owner tells the Chicago Tribune. And the obligatory Beanie Babies comparison isn't the only milestone for the looms: Two schools in New York City have banned them because they were deemed too distracting, notes Today.com. (In other toy news, click to read about how Legos are angrier these days.)