07-01-08 - it's back...more from the BBC and I.
Police die in China knife rampage
A man has stormed into a police station in the Chinese city of Shanghai and stabbed at least five officers to death, officials said.
The man was arrested after the attack in the Public Security Bureau office in the city's Zhabei district.
Four policemen and a security guard were also injured and are being treated in hospital for stab wounds.
The attacker was said to be 28 and from Beijing. He was arrested last year on suspicion of stealing bicycles.
The man, who was reportedly unemployed, was subdued at the scene by other officers.
Television pictures showed some of the wounded being taken to hospital.
One eyewitness told TV reporters: "Some of them had stabs in the chest. Blood was all over some of their faces."
Police have cordoned off the building in the north of the city.
* I keep reading about these knife attacks on whole groups of people in countries that don't allow their citizens to own guns and am further reminded of my stance that people are just inherintly violent. You can take away their guns but if they want to, they will just find another way...
Drunken Swede tries to row home
A last drink proved one too many for a 78-year-old Swede who fell asleep while trying to row home - from Denmark.
Reports say the man had been drinking in the Danish town of Helsingor but found he did not have enough money for the ferry home to Sweden.
Instead of waiting until morning, he stole a dinghy and tried to row the 5km (three miles) across the Oresund Strait to Helsingborg, police said.
But he fell asleep half-way and drifted until he was rescued by the coastguard.
The man, who has not been named, was found still asleep in the bottom of the boat, and towed back across the strait - a busy shipping lane - to Denmark.
He was put on the next ferry home after he had sobered up, writes the Danish news service Ritzau.
Police said the owner of the dinghy had decided not to press charges, Reuters reports.
* It seemed like a good idea at the time...
Mother's junk food 'harms child'
Eating a poor diet when pregnant or breastfeeding may cause long-lasting health damage to the child, animal studies suggest.
The offspring of rats fed fatty, processed food had high levels of fat in their bloodstream and around major organs even after adolescence.
The animals had a raised diabetes risk - even if they ate healthily.
The study, by the Royal Veterinary College and London's Wellcome Trust, features in The Journal of Physiology.
Studies by the same team have already shown that rats whose mothers were fed junk food during pregnancy and breastfeeding were more likely to crave similar snacks themselves.
However, the new twist is that even when weaned off this diet themselves, the damage may already have been done, they suggest.
Dr Stephanie Bayol, one of the researchers, said: "It seems that a mother's diet whilst pregnant and breastfeeding is very important for the long-term health of her child.
"We always say: 'You are what you eat', but in fact it may also be true that you are what your mother ate."
Of particular concern was fat gathering around the major organs, which has been implicated in the development of type II diabetes.
The rats with unhealthy mothers were more likely to have this, even if they were weaned off the junk food diet.
However, there were interesting differences between the sexes, with the male offspring of unhealthy mothers having higher levels of insulin and normal blood sugar, while the reverse was true of females, who also tended to be fatter.
Professor Neil Stickland, another of the researchers, said that there was no reason why the same principles should not apply to humans.
"Humans share a number of fundamental biological systems with rats, so there is good reason to assume the effects we see in rats may be repeated in humans."
He said that studies in humans had found links between the weight of parents and the weight of their children.
Early influence
Dr Pat Goodwin, from the Wellcome Trust, said that the study supported the growing evidence that there were many different risk factors which could contribute to someone becoming overweight.
She said: "Pregnancy can be a difficult time for many mothers, but it is important that they are aware that what they eat may affect their offspring."
However, Dr Simon Langley-Evans, a nutrition researcher from the University of Nottingham, said that the study did not prove that a mother's diet could affect the health of offspring beyond the effect on cravings and appetite.
He said: "I'm not convinced they have shown this - everything you are seeing here could be the result of obesity caused by increased appetite. "What it does show is that this early influence from the mother is very important."
Dr Iain Frame, of the charity Diabetes UK, warned against drawing firm conclusions from animal studies.
However, he said: "This study does lend some weight to the established argument that children of mothers who have poor diets during pregnancy have a higher risk of developing diabetes and heart disease later in life."
*The cosmic jokes that surround us are astounding...I've been dwelling on them more and more latley. Body image and the natural predispositions of the genders is a big one. As it mentions here the females showed a higher chance of obesity than the males did, while in the human world this translates into already image obsessed women getting an extra dose of issues out of the deal. I know men can obsess about their weight as well but it seems to be statistically higher in women. I remember going through the Bodies exhibit in Seattle and reading some of the visitor comments that centered around complaints of higher body fat in the female cadavers. The scientific responce of course being that women tend to have higher body fat than males and thus the female doners tended to be heavier...Still, no matter how it's explained and why it makes sense, it's a cruel joke in the universe. At least it's a socially interesting cruel joke, right?
Baby's bottom censored by store
A mother who wanted to give a birthday cake to her son featuring a photo of him as a baby was forced to have it censored because it showed his bottom.
Gail Jordan, 41, had gone to Asda in Liscard, Wirral, on 13 June with the photo of her 21-year-old son David taken when he was five months old.
Staff at the supermarket refused to scan the picture onto a cake as it featured nudity.
They eventually printed the image onto the icing with a star over the bottom.
Mrs Jordan, of Rock Ferry, said: "I took the photo of my son to the store in Liscard and they said we can't do that - it's nudity.
"It was a photo of my son at five-months-old. I could not believe it.
"Eventually another member of staff cut a star out and put it on his bottom on the cake.
"I just wanted a picture on his cake. Staff said it was deemed as pornographic.
"I don't normally shop there, but it would not stop me going back."
She added that her son was embarassed by the debacle but liked his cake.
A spokesman for Asda said: "We did not say it was pornographic. It is policy across the board that we don't do nudity of any sort at any age. It is nothing new.
"They (the staff) made a couple of suggestions - enlarge it so you take the bottom out of it, make the border different and another suggestion was putting a star on the offending area."
*"The offending area"? How sad...I know there are total creeps out there-and several of them, but how disturbing that it's no longer just understood that parents can and will embarass their offspring with baby nudes. This used to be the old cliche, how unfortunate that if I were to have children by the time they are old enough to be annoyed by such a display of parental "charm" it will probably be illegal. I'm waiting for the day I read about the state pressing charges against parents showing their kids boyfriends or girlfriends all those silly baby pictures.
A man has stormed into a police station in the Chinese city of Shanghai and stabbed at least five officers to death, officials said.
The man was arrested after the attack in the Public Security Bureau office in the city's Zhabei district.
Four policemen and a security guard were also injured and are being treated in hospital for stab wounds.
The attacker was said to be 28 and from Beijing. He was arrested last year on suspicion of stealing bicycles.
The man, who was reportedly unemployed, was subdued at the scene by other officers.
Television pictures showed some of the wounded being taken to hospital.
One eyewitness told TV reporters: "Some of them had stabs in the chest. Blood was all over some of their faces."
Police have cordoned off the building in the north of the city.
* I keep reading about these knife attacks on whole groups of people in countries that don't allow their citizens to own guns and am further reminded of my stance that people are just inherintly violent. You can take away their guns but if they want to, they will just find another way...
Drunken Swede tries to row home
A last drink proved one too many for a 78-year-old Swede who fell asleep while trying to row home - from Denmark.
Reports say the man had been drinking in the Danish town of Helsingor but found he did not have enough money for the ferry home to Sweden.
Instead of waiting until morning, he stole a dinghy and tried to row the 5km (three miles) across the Oresund Strait to Helsingborg, police said.
But he fell asleep half-way and drifted until he was rescued by the coastguard.
The man, who has not been named, was found still asleep in the bottom of the boat, and towed back across the strait - a busy shipping lane - to Denmark.
He was put on the next ferry home after he had sobered up, writes the Danish news service Ritzau.
Police said the owner of the dinghy had decided not to press charges, Reuters reports.
* It seemed like a good idea at the time...
Mother's junk food 'harms child'
Eating a poor diet when pregnant or breastfeeding may cause long-lasting health damage to the child, animal studies suggest.
The offspring of rats fed fatty, processed food had high levels of fat in their bloodstream and around major organs even after adolescence.
The animals had a raised diabetes risk - even if they ate healthily.
The study, by the Royal Veterinary College and London's Wellcome Trust, features in The Journal of Physiology.
Studies by the same team have already shown that rats whose mothers were fed junk food during pregnancy and breastfeeding were more likely to crave similar snacks themselves.
However, the new twist is that even when weaned off this diet themselves, the damage may already have been done, they suggest.
Dr Stephanie Bayol, one of the researchers, said: "It seems that a mother's diet whilst pregnant and breastfeeding is very important for the long-term health of her child.
"We always say: 'You are what you eat', but in fact it may also be true that you are what your mother ate."
Of particular concern was fat gathering around the major organs, which has been implicated in the development of type II diabetes.
The rats with unhealthy mothers were more likely to have this, even if they were weaned off the junk food diet.
However, there were interesting differences between the sexes, with the male offspring of unhealthy mothers having higher levels of insulin and normal blood sugar, while the reverse was true of females, who also tended to be fatter.
Professor Neil Stickland, another of the researchers, said that there was no reason why the same principles should not apply to humans.
"Humans share a number of fundamental biological systems with rats, so there is good reason to assume the effects we see in rats may be repeated in humans."
He said that studies in humans had found links between the weight of parents and the weight of their children.
Early influence
Dr Pat Goodwin, from the Wellcome Trust, said that the study supported the growing evidence that there were many different risk factors which could contribute to someone becoming overweight.
She said: "Pregnancy can be a difficult time for many mothers, but it is important that they are aware that what they eat may affect their offspring."
However, Dr Simon Langley-Evans, a nutrition researcher from the University of Nottingham, said that the study did not prove that a mother's diet could affect the health of offspring beyond the effect on cravings and appetite.
He said: "I'm not convinced they have shown this - everything you are seeing here could be the result of obesity caused by increased appetite. "What it does show is that this early influence from the mother is very important."
Dr Iain Frame, of the charity Diabetes UK, warned against drawing firm conclusions from animal studies.
However, he said: "This study does lend some weight to the established argument that children of mothers who have poor diets during pregnancy have a higher risk of developing diabetes and heart disease later in life."
*The cosmic jokes that surround us are astounding...I've been dwelling on them more and more latley. Body image and the natural predispositions of the genders is a big one. As it mentions here the females showed a higher chance of obesity than the males did, while in the human world this translates into already image obsessed women getting an extra dose of issues out of the deal. I know men can obsess about their weight as well but it seems to be statistically higher in women. I remember going through the Bodies exhibit in Seattle and reading some of the visitor comments that centered around complaints of higher body fat in the female cadavers. The scientific responce of course being that women tend to have higher body fat than males and thus the female doners tended to be heavier...Still, no matter how it's explained and why it makes sense, it's a cruel joke in the universe. At least it's a socially interesting cruel joke, right?
Baby's bottom censored by store
A mother who wanted to give a birthday cake to her son featuring a photo of him as a baby was forced to have it censored because it showed his bottom.
Gail Jordan, 41, had gone to Asda in Liscard, Wirral, on 13 June with the photo of her 21-year-old son David taken when he was five months old.
Staff at the supermarket refused to scan the picture onto a cake as it featured nudity.
They eventually printed the image onto the icing with a star over the bottom.
Mrs Jordan, of Rock Ferry, said: "I took the photo of my son to the store in Liscard and they said we can't do that - it's nudity.
"It was a photo of my son at five-months-old. I could not believe it.
"Eventually another member of staff cut a star out and put it on his bottom on the cake.
"I just wanted a picture on his cake. Staff said it was deemed as pornographic.
"I don't normally shop there, but it would not stop me going back."
She added that her son was embarassed by the debacle but liked his cake.
A spokesman for Asda said: "We did not say it was pornographic. It is policy across the board that we don't do nudity of any sort at any age. It is nothing new.
"They (the staff) made a couple of suggestions - enlarge it so you take the bottom out of it, make the border different and another suggestion was putting a star on the offending area."
*"The offending area"? How sad...I know there are total creeps out there-and several of them, but how disturbing that it's no longer just understood that parents can and will embarass their offspring with baby nudes. This used to be the old cliche, how unfortunate that if I were to have children by the time they are old enough to be annoyed by such a display of parental "charm" it will probably be illegal. I'm waiting for the day I read about the state pressing charges against parents showing their kids boyfriends or girlfriends all those silly baby pictures.