"Kristina Fiore"-Spicy Food May Boost Metabolism

Spicing up dinner may have metabolic benefits, particularly when it comes to insulin and triglyceride levels, a small study showed.

Adding a combination of various spices -- including turmeric, cinnamon, rosemary, oregano, garlic powder, and paprika -- to a plain meal significantly reduced postprandial insulin and triglyceride levels (P<0.05), Sheila West, PhD, of Penn State University, and colleagues reported online in the Journal of Nutrition.

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"LA Times"-Drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in U.S

Propelled by an increase in prescription narcotic overdoses, drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States, a Times analysis of government data has found.

Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While most major causes of preventable death are declining, drugs are an exception. The death toll has doubled in the last decade, now claiming a life every 14 minutes. By contrast, traffic accidents have been dropping for decades because of huge investments in auto safety.

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"University of New South Wales"-Laughter lift Humor Better than Drugs to Treat Agitation

Humour therapy is as effective as widely used antipsychotic drugs in managing agitation in patients with dementia – and avoids serious drug side effects, a new study to be presented this week at the National Dementia Research Forum shows.

The first major study of the impact of humour therapy on mood, agitation, behavioural disturbances and social engagement in dementia patients found both short term and persisting decrease in agitation, according to lead researcher, Dr Lee-Fay Low, a Research Fellow at UNSW's School of Psychiatry.

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"Mitchell Rabin"- The World in Transformation

On a horizontal level, there is a mounting volume of chaos occurring in virtually every country in the world. There is economic, social and political turmoil, which one feels, is swelling. History shows us that this kind of chaos-to-order occurs cyclically and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Having lived through several cycles already, and of course having missed the World War time periods, I may not be the most qualified to say, but I do sense that we are going through something right now that really is world-transforming nation-to-nation, culture-to-culture. The Arab Spring, the uprisings in England, France, Greece, Wisconsin, the growing economic disparities in the so-called 'richest' nation on the planet, the vast deterioration of ethics, it's awesome to contemplate what is happening in this world.

And then to contemplate the vertical level, and ask about what's happening in the Heavens is a whole other level of inquiry. We are facing potentially cataclysmic solar and comet activity (Elenin, see under Articles at www.abetterworld.net), and terrestrial disruptions such as earthquakes, volcanoes and hurricanes of significant magnitude. The activities in both directions are powerful enough to wipe out our entire electrical and communication grids, returning us to a pre-19th century 'state of mind'.

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"Paul Krugman" -The Social Contract

This week President Obama said the obvious: that wealthy Americans, many of whom pay remarkably little in taxes, should bear part of the cost of reducing the long-run budget deficit. And Republicans like Representative Paul Ryan responded with shrieks of “class warfare”

It was, of course, nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it’s people like Mr. Ryan, who want to exempt the very rich from bearing any of the burden of making our finances sustainable, who are waging class war.

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"Richard Wolff"- The Truth About "Class War" in America

Republicans and conservatives have done us a service by describing federal policies in terms of "class war." But by applying the term only to Obama's latest proposals to raise taxes on the rich, they have it all backward and upside down. The last 50 years have indeed seen continuous class warfare in and over federal economic policies.

But it was a war waged chiefly by business and conservatives. They won, as we show below, and the mass of middle-income and poor Americans lost. Obama's modest proposal for tax increases on the rich does not begin a class war. On the contrary, it is a small, modest effort to reduce the other side's class war victories.

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"Sandy Tolan"- It's the Occupation, Stupid

The State to Which the U.N. May Grant Membership Is Disappearing

It's the show that time and the world forgot. It’s called the Occupation and it’s now in its 45th year. Playing on a landscape about the size of Delaware, it remains largely hidden from view, while Middle Eastern headlines from elsewhere seize the day.  Diplomats shuttle back and forth from Washington and Brussels to Middle Eastern capitals; the Israeli-Turkish alliance ruptures amid bold declarations from the Turkish prime minister; crowds storm the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, while Israeli ambassadors flee the Egyptian capital and Amman, the Jordanian one; and of course, there’s the headliner, the show-stopper of the moment, the Palestinian Authority's campaign for statehood in the United Nations, which will prompt an Obama administration veto in the Security Council.

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"Tomoko Otake"-Hold the cesium: Ways to reduce radiation in your diet

Six months into the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No.1 power plant, this is a question many consumers have been asking -- particularly those in eastern Japan who get most of their daily foods from Tohoku, the nation's agricultural heartland.

While readings of radiation in the air have returned to pre-3/11 levels in most areas of Japan -- not including areas close to the plant and the so-called hot spots -- the contamination of soil, which affects the food chain, could pose a long-term health risk, experts say. Iodine-131, cesium-134 and cesium-137 were released in large quantities by the nuclear plant, and if they are accumulated in the body, they could cause cancer.

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"Ethan A. Huff"-Global cost of chronic disease treatment to top $47 trillion by 2030, more than triple current US national debt

(NaturalNews) Between now and 2030, the aggregate global cost of treating the five most common, non-infectious diseases -- cancer, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, and mental health disorders -- will top $47 trillion, according to a new report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF). And experts warn that if nothing is done to curb this escalating healthcare crisis, the global economy will most certainly collapse due to insurmountable financial insolvency.

To put this astronomical $47 trillion figure into perspective, consider the fact that the current US national debt is just under $15 trillion -- this means that at the current rate of growth, global healthcare costs associated with treating just these five diseases will exceed the US national debt by more than 300 percent in less than 20 years.

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"John Vidal"- Oxfam Warns of Spiralling Land Grab in Developing Countries

Many of world's poorest 'being left worse off by unprecedented land deals', despite claims by governments and speculatorsl

The scale of the rush by speculators, pension funds and global agri-businesses to acquire large areas of developing countries is far greater than previously thought, and is already leading to conflict, hunger and human rights abuses, says Oxfam.

The NGO has identified 227m ha (561m acre ha) of land – an area the size of north-west Europe – as having being reportedly sold, leased or licensed, largely in Africa and mostly to international investors in thousands of secretive deals since 2001. This compares with about 56m ha identified by the World Bank earlier this year, again predominantly in Africa.

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