Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/pW_2a_Zzh4E/bout-cleverbug-and-more
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Saturday, February 2, 2013
Bout, Cleverbug, and More
New rules aim to get rid of junk foods in schools
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Most candy, high-calorie drinks and greasy meals could soon be on a food blacklist in the nation's schools.
For the first time, the government is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful.
Under the new rules the Agriculture Department proposed Friday, foods like fatty chips, snack cakes, nachos and mozzarella sticks would be taken out of lunch lines and vending machines. In their place would be foods like baked chips, trail mix, diet sodas, lower-calorie sports drinks and low-fat hamburgers.
The rules, required under a child nutrition law passed by Congress in 2010, are part of the government's effort to combat childhood obesity. While many schools already have improved their lunch menus and vending machine choices, others still are selling high-fat, high-calorie foods.
Under the proposal, the Agriculture Department would set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on almost all foods sold in schools. Current standards already regulate the nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, but most lunchrooms also have "a la carte" lines that sell other foods. Food sold through vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has never before been federally regulated.
"Parents and teachers work hard to instill healthy eating habits in our kids, and these efforts should be supported when kids walk through the schoolhouse door," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.
Most snacks sold in school would have to have less than 200 calories. Elementary and middle schools could sell only water, low-fat milk or 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice. High schools could sell some sports drinks, diet sodas and iced teas, but the calories would be limited. Drinks would be limited to 12-ounce portions in middle schools and to 8-ounce portions in elementary schools.
The standards will cover vending machines, the "a la carte" lunch lines, snack bars and any other foods regularly sold around school. They would not apply to in-school fundraisers or bake sales, though states have the power to regulate them. The new guidelines also would not apply to after-school concessions at school games or theater events, goodies brought from home for classroom celebrations, or anything students bring for their own personal consumption.
The new rules are the latest in a long list of changes designed to make foods served in schools more healthful and accessible. Nutritional guidelines for the subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall. The 2010 child nutrition law also provided more money for schools to serve free and reduced-cost lunches and required more meals to be served to hungry kids.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has been working for two decades to take junk foods out of schools. He calls the availability of unhealthful foods around campus a "loophole" that undermines the taxpayer money that helps pay for the healthier subsidized lunches.
"USDA's proposed nutrition standards are a critical step in closing that loophole and in ensuring that our schools are places that nurture not just the minds of American children but their bodies as well," Harkin said.
Last year's rules faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn't be telling kids what to eat. Mindful of that backlash, the Agriculture Department exempted in-school fundraisers from federal regulation and proposed different options for some parts of the rule, including the calorie limits for drinks in high schools, which would be limited to either 60 calories or 75 calories in a 12-ounce portion.
The department also has shown a willingness to work with schools to resolve complaints that some new requirements are hard to meet. Last year, for example, the government relaxed some limits on meats and grains in subsidized lunches after school nutritionists said they weren't working.
Schools, the food industry, interest groups and other critics or supporters of the new proposal will have 60 days to comment and suggest changes. A final rule could be in place as soon as the 2014 school year.
Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said surveys by her organization show that most parents want changes in the lunchroom.
"Parents aren't going to have to worry that kids are using their lunch money to buy candy bars and a Gatorade instead of a healthy school lunch," she said.
The food industry has been onboard with many of the changes, and several companies worked with Congress on the child nutrition law two years ago. Major beverage companies have already agreed to take the most caloric sodas out of schools. But those same companies, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, also sell many of the non-soda options, like sports drinks, and have lobbied to keep them in vending machines.
A spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association, which represents the soda companies, says they already have greatly reduced the number of calories that kids are consuming at school by pulling out the high-calorie sodas.
___
Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rules-aim-rid-junk-foods-schools-081449764--finance.html
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Friday, February 1, 2013
Inmates jump in to rescue three boys from creek
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Prisoners working in a nearby park helped save three boys whose kayak overturned in a Washington state creek, fire officials say.
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We're live from CP+ 2013 in Yokohama, Japan!
It feels like just yesterday that we made our way through hall after hall at Photokina. Cologne, Germany's biennial photo extravaganza is absolutely massive in comparison to Japan's up-and-coming CP+, which admittedly promised a bit more excitement in 2012, but local enthusiasts seem to have come out in droves for this week's show here in Yokohama, likely motivated by an opportunity to check out models that first appeared earlier this month at CES. Still, CP+ is the most prominent camera trade show in Asia, and considering Japan's role in the digital imaging space, it's not to be overlooked. While we're here, we'll be checking out a handful of point-and-shoots from Canon, Nikon, Pentax and Olympus, just to name a few, perhaps joined by a surprise gadget or two.
Protip: Use our "cpplus2013" tag to catch our CP+ hands-ons, posted throughout the week.
Filed under: Announcements, Cameras, Nikon, Canon
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/PSPtphyBpDo/
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Malaysia grapples with elephant murder mystery
Malaysian authorities have a possible elephant murder mystery on their hands after three more pygmy elephants reportedly were found dead on the island of Borneo Wednesday (Jan. 30).
The grim discovery brings the death toll to 13 this month, and according to the AP, authorities are investigating suspicions that the diminutive elephants were poisoned.
Also called Bornean elephants, these creatures are the most endangered subspecies of Asian elephant. While other male Asian elephants can grow up to 9.8 feet (3 meters), male Bornean elephants grow to less than 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) and they have bigger ears and rounder bellies, according to the conservation organization World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Researchers initially believed the babyish-looking mammals were the descendents of captive elephants brought to the island a few centuries ago. Other evidence, however, suggests that the pygmy elephants are a genetically distinct subspecies that arrived thousands of years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch by way of a land bridge. There are thought to be just 1,200 of them in Borneo today, mostly concentrated in Sabah, the Malaysian state at the northeastern corner of the island. [Gallery: The Pygmy Elephants of Borneo]
Though it's still unclear who or what might be responsible for the recent spate of elephant deaths, WWF officials noted that the population has been increasingly threatened by habitat fragmentation, and all the corpses reportedly have been found in areas where forests are being transformed into plantations within the Gunung Rara reserve in Sabah.?
"Conversions result in fragmentation of the forests, which in turn results in loss of natural habitat for elephant herds, thus forcing them to find alternative food and space, putting humans and wildlife in direct conflict," environmentalist Dato' Dr Dionysius S K Sharma, executive director of the WWF's Malaysia division, said in a statement. "All conversion approvals need to be reviewed by the Sabah Forestry Department and assessed not purely from commercial, but the endangered species and landscape ecology perspectives."
Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook?& Google+.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/13-pygmy-elephants-found-dead-malaysia-003931885.html
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Jobless claims rose in latest week
35 min.
The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits bounced off five-year lows last week, pulling them back to levels consistent with modest job growth.?
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 38,000 to a seasonally adjusted 368,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week's claims figure was unrevised.?
Economists polled by Reuters had expected claims to increase to 350,000.?
Claims have been very volatile this month, dropping sharply in the week ended January 12 and maintaining the trend in the following week. That was largely because the model used by the department to smooth out the seasonal variations has been unusually generous during the first three weeks of January.?
The volatility in the so-called seasonal factors has to do with the timing of holidays and when the weekends. The January calendar this year is aligned to 2008 and claims have generally followed a similar pattern.?
The four-week moving average for new claims, a better measure of labor market trends, gained 250 to 352,000, suggesting a steady improvement in labor market conditions.?
A Labor Department analyst said the seasonal factor had anticipated claims would drop 24.8 percent last week. Unadjusted claims, however, only declined 16.1 percent. As a result, the seasonally adjusted claims increased last week.?
He said no states were estimated and there was nothing unusual in the state-level data.?
The claims data has no bearing on January's employment report, which is scheduled for release on Friday, as it falls outside the survey period.?
Employers are expected to have added 160,000 jobs to their payrolls after an increase of 155,000 in December. The unemployment rate is seen holding steady at 7.8 percent.?
The employment report could confirm that the economic recovery remains intact after output unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter. The drag largely came from temporary factors, which were expected to lift this quarter.?
The claims report showed the number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid increased 22,000 to 3.20 million in the week ended January 19.?
The four-week moving average of so-called continuing claims was the lowest since July 2008.?
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.
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