- Look at you, China! You might still be the biggest, ugliest example of communism still alive and kicking in this great big world, but that doesn’t mean you can't take time out from oppressing citizens’ basic human rights to do something good. Not only would I characterize a plan to make Beijing "tobacco free" by the end of 2015 as good, I would go so far as to call it great. According to China’s capital's health authorities, the plan is to make all of the city’s public spaces, including work sites and public transport, no smoking zones by the end of 2015. An article in a major Chinese daily on Monday stated that the Beijing Health Bureau is also aiming significantly to reduce the proportion of men who smoke. A 2005 estimate by the government pegged the number of smokers in China at 350 million, including 60 percent of its male population. Just three percent of women smoked according to that study, so reducing the number of men choking down cancer sticks would make a significantly higher impact on air and health quality in the capital city. This news pumps me up so much that I don’t care that the Beijing Health Bureau has yet to reveal details of its plan. For all I know, it could center on parading every smoker out into Tiananmen Square and running them over with a tank and from where I stand, there are only a few minor issues with that plan. Beijing residents may be ignorant of many things going on in the world because their restrictive government shields them from any information it deems to run contrary to its aims and beliefs, but a study released last week showed that 95 percent of respondents knew that smoking could cause lung cancer and that nearly 60 percent of interviewees knew smoking could lead to cardiovascular and heart problems. Those figures are markedly higher than the 16 percent nationwide who know that smoking can be harmful to health, which would insinuate that China’s more educated and worldly capital city residents are more aware of the potential harms of smoking than their 1.3 billion fellow countrymen. In a city of 22 million, that means something. Likewise, 11.5 percent of teenagers admitting that they smoked is also noteworthy. Du Hong, an official from the Health Bureau, confirmed that the agency sent out more than 25,000 posters and 20,000 handbooks promoting smoke-free living to hospitals, residential clinics and medicine stores this year and also conduced a pilot project to train general practitioners how to offer advice about how to become tobacco-free to patients in their communities. Health authorities estimate that at present, 80 percent of doctors in residential clinics have now been trained in how to help patients quit smoking. Let’s raise that number to 100 and ratchet the attack on cancer sticks up to full strength……….
- Raise your hand if you’re surprised to hear that Hugh Hefner, the octogenarian founder of Playboy, is tying the knot for the third time. Good, good. Always nice to know how many morons are in the crowd. For most of his adult life, Hefner has lived the dream life of every so-called “red-blooded American male” by hanging around with as many Playboy Playmates as he wants, sleeping with them whenever he wants and trading in one young, smokin’ hot blonde or brunette for another on his every whim. He never has a shortage of eye candy or sleeping partners and while he has only been married twice, the fact remains that an 84-year-old guy, even one as lively as Hefner, is bound to see the end coming not that far in the distance. Knowing that he doesn’t have many years left, why not give marriage another whirl? And when the lucky bride-to-be is Crystal Harris, December 2009 playmate of the month, where’s the downside. Hefner proposed on Christmas eve and shared the news in the same place everyone communicates their big life developments these days, Twitter. “When I gave Crystal the ring, she burst into tears,” Hefner posted on his Twitter account. "This is the happiest Christmas weekend in memory. Yes, the ring I gave Crystal is an engagement ring." The engagement ring came at the end of a night of movie watching and present giving, including several pricey baubles Harris tweeted pictures of, one of which was the legendary diamond Playboy watch. The capper was the engagement ring and needless to say, it was a big hit, making for a "memorable Christmas Eve together," Hefner tweeted. This time around, his love life wasn’t documented by a soul-less reality show as it was a few years ago on the E! network’s "The Girls Next Door." Hefner didn’t wait long to remarry after he and his previous wife, 1988 playmate of the year Kimberley Conrad, divorced earlier this year after nearly 21 years of marriage. His third wedding will come some 52 years after his first marriage in 1959 to Mildred Williams. For those who insist that Harris is in for a short and unfaithful marriage, Hefner begs to differ. "I was married and completely faithful for eight years," he countered. "I lived a single life, a playboy lifestyle, before and after it, but while I was married I was faithful to it." Whatever you say Hef, whatever you say………
- This can’t be good. After bending over so far backwards to promote its annual Winter Classic, to be held on New Year’s Day in Pittsburgh, that it sent its two biggest stars on a fourth-rate game show (The Price is Right) hosted by a FAT, foul-mouthed, C-list comedian, the NHL cannot be pumped up that rain showers and temperatures in the low 50s are being forecast for the Capitals-Penguins outdoor game Saturday at Heinz Field. The game has been a hit in all three years it has been played, starting with 2008’s game between the Penguins and Sabres in Buffalo, 2009’s edition in Chicago and 2010’s version in Boston at Fenway Park. The weather has been virtually ideal for all three games, but if the forecast plays out according to script this time, the conditions on the ice could become dangerous and unsafe in a hurry. The game is set to start at 1 p.m. ET, but the league has reserved the right to push it back to later in the day if improved conditions are expected or hold the game on Sunday, when the forecast is more favorable. Pushing the game back one day would not be ideal because the NHL is already the fourth- or fifth-biggest professional sport in the United States and playing the game on Sunday would force it to compete with a full slate of Week 17 NFL games, including the Steelers' game in Cleveland in which Pittsburgh’s favorite sons can claim the AFC North title and No. 2 seed in the AFC playoffs. The biggest weather concern is the rain, not necessarily the above-freezing temperatures. NHL operations facilities manager Dan Craig said warmer temperatures wouldn't necessarily affect a 2½-inch thick ice surface that is refrigerated to a very low temperature -- 22 degrees. However, any sort of rainfall could be disastrous because even a light rain could freeze almost immediately after hitting the ice, creating an uneven surface that could quickly become unplayable. If that rain worsened from light to steady, it could flood the surface. Both AccuWeather, based in State College, Pa., and the National Weather Service after forecasting temperatures at or above 50 degrees with a chance of rain for Saturday. Sunday’s forecast is marginally better, with predicated temperatures in the high 30s or low 40s and a chance of rain. Unfortunately for the NHL, Saturday and Sunday are its only options for playing the Winter Classic outdoors in Pittsburgh because after that, the stadium must be turned back over to the Steelers so the turf has can be replaced for the second time this season before any Steelers home playoff game. If weather precludes the game from being played this weekend, it would be rescheduled for later this season at Consol Energy Center. Craig holds out hope that improved ice maintenance technologies than existed for the first three Winter Classic games will help fend off any possible problems this time around. "We have instrumentation that we put into the system called Eye on the Ice that we monitor; [it] sends us signals all the time," Craig said. "Every 15 minutes we'll log and trend it so we can graph what's happening on any given day. And every city we go to, we have a complete weather breakdown of our area so we know what [weather] systems are coming through." The rink for this year’s game has been finished on top of a platform above Heinz Field's grass turf, and icemaking began Sunday. After the ice was finished, it was painted white and will now be decorated with rink markings and logos. And to think all of that effort could be for naught………
- Would you like some chromium-6 with your water, America? If you live in one of 31 cities identified in an alarming new study by the non-profit Environmental Working Group, you may not have a choice. According to the study, millions of Americans in at least 31 U.S. cities could be drinking tap water contaminated with the harmful chemical hexavalent chromium, a dangerous carcinogen otherwise known as chromium-6. That name is not familiar to most Americans, but it’s the very carcinogen that famed do-gooder Erin Brockovich fought against after it was discovered in the water supply of Hinkley, Calif. - before her story was co-opted and turned into another bad Julia Roberts movie. Brockovich helped bring about a lawsuit that ultimately ended in 1996 with the utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric, paying more than $330 million in damages to those affected by the pollution. So who are the biggest culprits this time around? Norman, Oklahoma; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Riverside, California, top the non-profit organization's list of cities with water supplies contaminated by chromium-6. The Environmental Protection Agency has classified the toxin as a carcinogen to humans only if it is inhaled, but a designation of "likely to be carcinogenic to humans" if ingested is under consideration. Chromium-6 is a natural byproduct of total chromium and according to the EPA, water utilities are required to test for total chromium levels in the water but not explicitly for chromium-6. "In order to protect people's health, EPA has had drinking water standards for total chromium, which includes chromium-6," the agency said in a statement. "When this scientific assessment is finalized in 2011, EPA will carefully review the conclusions and consider all relevant information, including the Environmental Working Group's study, to determine if a new standard needs to be set." The level of chromium present in the water came as a surprise to those conducting the study. "I was expecting to find hexavalent chromium in some of the cities we checked, but I didn't expect it to be so widespread," said Rebecca Sutton, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group and the lead author of the study. Sutton also cited a well-documented corollary between exposure to chromium-6 and a greater risk of stomach cancer in humans and evidence showing a broad risk of gastrointestinal tumors in rats and mice exposed to the toxin. Even switching from tap water to bottled water is not a guaranteed solution to the problem, as no one can be certain that bottled water comes from a pure source. Among the major cities on the list are: San Jose, Calif., Tallahassee, Fla., Albuquerque, N.M., Salt Lake City, Utah, Los Angeles, Calif., Phoenix, Ariz.,
Washington, D.C., Chicago, Ill. and New York, N.Y. Drink up, all………
- A potentially rigged criminal trial and related riots in the streets? Count me in! Mix in an über-wealthy Russian oil tycoon and you have an award-winning, must-see legal event. The tycoon in question is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is in legal limbo after a court in Moscow found him guilty on Monday of theft and money laundering in a politically charged trial that is seen as a barometer of Russia’s future economic and judicial landscape. Viktor Danilkin, the trial judge, informed a crowded courtroom that Khodorkovsky, 47, and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, 54, "carried out the embezzlement of property entrusted to the defendants". Where the proceedings differ from the American legal system is that Khodorkovsky will not be sentenced until Danilkin finishes reading his full 250-page verdict, which could take several days. That’s right - 250 pages. Within the Kremlin, the debate over how much longer Khodorkovsky should remain in prison has created political fault lines between rival factions. Because he has already spent seven years in jail on earlier fraud charges, Khodorkovsky’s supporters argue that he should receive a more lenient sentence for this conviction. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev whispered to each other and completely ignored the judge as he said the court had established their guilt. Outside the court in the Khamovniki district of southern Moscow, hundreds of angry protesters shouted "freedom" and "Russia without Putin.” They also clashed with police, who arrested 20 people in a disturbing show of force, dragging their targets out of the crowd and crushing their signs. Khodorkovsky's lead lawyer, Vadim Klyuvgant, used a recess in the proceedings to blast the trial and its outcome. “The trial was a charade of justice, the charges were absolutely false, but I fear the sentencing will be very real," fumed. Another of Khodorkovsky's attorneys, Yury Shmidt, another lawyer, blasted Danilkin as "not talking, but droning" throughout the reading of his verdict. But disputed conviction or not, the day marked another sad note in a downward spiral for Khodorkovsky, who part-owned the Yukos oil company and was once Russia's richest man. His supporters blasted the court’s decision as an arranged outcome determined by the Kremlin because it has a vendetta against Khodorkovsky for funding opposition politicians. So wait……we’re adding a conspiracy theory to the mix? This is a true holiday gift to the masses, most definitely. Even the story around Khodorkovsky's capture is epic, as he was seized by special forces as his plane landed to refuel on a Siberian runway in 2003 and has been jailed ever since. While imprisoned, he was then put on trial for the charges for which he was convicted Monday. Prosecutors want the men to stay in prison until 2017. Political analysts view the verdict as a harbinger of which dueling political faction has the upper hand for 2012’s presidential election. Former dictator and current Prime Minister “Bad” Vlad Putin frequently expresses his hatred for Khodorkovsky and says publicly that he is guilty of theft, so there’s no mystery where he comes out on the issue. Thanks to the good folks at WikiLeaks, we also know that prominent U.S. diplomats believe the case is emblematic of attempts by the Russian government to put "lipstick on a political pig" by following the proper steps of due process in the trial. Expect plenty more fireworks when the trial resumes tomorrow………
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