- The NFL continues to aspire to become a global league just like the NBA even though football is a decidedly American enterprise. To achieve that goal, the league is committed to playing regular-season games in London on an annual basis. Thus far, different teams have made the flight to the UK each year to compete at Wembley Stadium in London. For the next three years, Brits will see a lot more of one particular team. The St. Louis Rams have agreed to rip one home game from their hometown fans for each of the next three seasons in order to play in the NFL’s annual London game. Whether they can actually become Britain's "home" team is highly doubtful, but the Rams will attempt to do that beginning Oct. 28 when they play the New England Patriots at Wembley in the first game of the deal. The game will take place about two months after the closing ceremony of the London Olympics and be followed by games at Wembley against undetermined opponents in 2013 and 2014. Rams fans in and around St. Louis will certainly be angry about losing a home game, but odds are owner Stan Kroenke doesn’t care. He is the majority shareholder in English Premier League club Arsenal and clearly sees dollar signs dancing in his eyes over the prospect of growing the Rams’ and NFL’s following internationally. "We've seen first-hand the increased popularity of the NFL not only in London but throughout Europe," Kroenke said in a statement. "To play a role in that growth over the next three years will be incredible and is a testament to the many good things happening not only in the NFL but also in the St. Louis Rams organization." This year’s game will be the sixth regular-season game at Wembley and with NFL owners committed to play regular-season games in the UK for the next five seasons, maybe the Rams can find a way to play in all of them……….
- Is it really better to know exactly how bad the air pollution problem in Beijing is? Sure, it could help in figuring out just how to attack the problem of oppressive pollution that makes breathing a hazardous exercise, but the sheer terror of realizing how toxic the skies are could also induce a heart attack or 1,000. Throwing caution to the wind and ultimately caving to public pressure, Beijing environmental authorities began releasing more detailed air quality data Saturday that may better show how bad the Chinese capital’s air pollution is. The government conveniently chose to begin releasing the more detailed information on a day where blue sky was visible and the skies over the city were being cleared by a north wind. In a report posted on Beijing’s environmental monitoring center’s website, the initial readings of PM2.5 — particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in size or about 1/30th the average width of a human hair - illustrated just how bad the air quality over Beijing is. That size particle can penetrate deep into the lungs and accurately measuring them is generally considered a more accurate reflection of air quality than other methods. Saturday marked the first time the government revealed PM2.5 data and began offering clues as to just why the air over the capital is an ugly shade of gray and yellow. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing has its own PM2.5 monitor, but the readings released by the Chinese come from a single monitoring site about 4 miles west of Tiananmen Square, the monitoring center’s website said Saturday. In typical Communist Party fashion, officials insisted the data was for research purposes and the public should only use it as a reference. The initial reading was 0.015 mg/m3, which would be classed as “good” for a 24-hour exposure at that level, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards. However, a U.S. Embassy reading taken from its site on the eastern edge of downtown Beijing said its noon reading was “moderate.” Environmental observers expressed immediate skepticism about Beijing’s PM2.5 data, with positive readings similar to those supposedly taking several times Saturday having occurred about 0.1 percent of the time since the U.S. Embassy began monitoring air quality in the city in 2006. More good, ol’ fashioned Communist Party propaganda………….
- Finding items that were lost is usually a great feeling. Coming across money left in a coat pocket or a hat in the back of a closet that one believed lost are great. Rediscovering a large, gray monkey so rare it was believed by many to be extinct has to be a pretty solid feeling for scientists working in the dense jungles of Indonesia. A team led by Brent Loken, a Ph.D. student at Simon Fraser University in Canada, recently came across the Miller’s Grizzled Langur, a money distinguished by a black face framed by a fluffy, Dracula-esque white collar. Researchers found the creature in an area well outside its previously recorded home range after setting up hidden camera traps in the Wehea Forest on the eastern tip of Borneo island. They installed the cameras in June, hoping to captures images of clouded leopards, orangutans and other wildlife known to congregate at mineral salt licks. Instead, they received images of groups of monkeys none of them had ever seen. Few have seen langur monkeys and virtually no photographs of them exist. Confirming the find was difficult for that and other reasons, Loken explained. “We were all pretty ecstatic, the fact that, wow, this monkey still lives, and also that it’s in Wehea,” he said. Langurs once inhabited the northeastern part of Borneo, as well as the islands of Sumatra and Java and the Thai-Malay peninsula. In recent years, many scientists expressed suspicions the pink-nosed creatures may have become extinct. Their former habitats had been destroyed by fires, human encroachment and conversion of land for agriculture and mining and a survey in 2005 failed to locate any langurs. Next, Loken’s team will return to the 90,000-acre forest to try to find out how many grizzly langurs there are. The findings from their initial research were published in the American Journal of Primatology on Friday…………
- There are several amazing facts of a state lawmaker introducing legislation known as "The Rat Trafficking Act." First, it’s amazing that New York City, the Mecca of rats, is not involved. Secondly, it is astonishing that delegate Pat McDonough feels the need to introduce a bill that will stop any government entity from allowing rats and other rodents into Maryland on Friday at 1 p.m. The bill is in reaction to a law that was passed in Washington, D.C. called the Wildlife Protection Act. The law doesn't allow pest control, government agents, or anyone else to kill a District of Columbia rat. It mandates that a person capture the rat, cause no harm to it whatsoever and release it somewhere else. If it sounds like the ultimate example of bleeding heart, tree-hugging, treat-animals-better-than-humans liberalism gone wild, it is. McDonough and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took notice of the law and realized its potentially negative effect on their states. Rather than allow Virginia and Maryland to become rat dumps for D.C. pest control workers and companies, these forward-thinkers got to work on legislation to make sure that disease-carrying rodents weren't transported across the border. Passing up the opportunity to have filthy rodents carrying diseases such as rabies and Lyme disease may sound illogical, but such is life. And no, the Wildlife Protection Act still does not make any sense at all………
- The “Underworld” franchise has a pale, bizarre and loyal following (often clad in leather) and that following helped “Underworld Awakening” to a victory in its debut weekend, topping the box office earnings list with $25.4 million. Kate Beckinsale led the film to the triumph, which came at the expense of the insanely over-promoted “Red Tails.” George Lucas’ World War II aviation epic seemed like it must have spent as least as much on commercials as the $19.1 million it brought in for the weekend. That was good enough to land it in second place and best last weekend’s top flick, “Contraband.” Mark Wahlberg’s newest film dropped to third with $12.2 million in domestic earnings and has scored $46.1 million in its first two weeks of release. “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” had the biggest surge of the weekend, jumping from No. 36 to fourth place as it expanded from six theaters to more than 2,6000 and made $10.5 million in the process. It was actually the fifth weekend of release for the film, but its first in wide release. Spy thriller “Haywire” completed the top five with a $9 million effort in its debut. The shameless cash grab that is Disney’s 3-D revival of “Beauty and the Beast” fell four spots to sixth in its second weekend, garnering $8.6 million to raise its two-week domestic haul to $33.4 million. Next on the list was the annoyingly cheesy, lame “Joyful Noise,” finishing seventh with $6 million for an overall tally of $21.9 million after two weeks. “Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol” slid all the way to eighth thanks to a $5.6 million weekend that raised its six-week domestic haul to $197.4 million and counting. On its heels was “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” which notched a ninth-place result on the strength of its $4.8 million weekend. Through six weeks in theaters, it has earned $178.7 million. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” hung on in the top 10 for one more weekend with $3.7 million and still has yet to crack the $100 million barrier in the U.S. ($94.7 million). Several films dropped out of the top 10 from last weekend: “War Horse” (No. 12), “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” (No. 13), “We Bought a Zoo” No. 14 and “The Devil Inside” (No. 15)………
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