- China is looking to cut its exports…..of organs harvested from death row inmates, that is. The communists are still exporting lead-paint-laden products and other hazardous items, but they are no longer going to harvest organs from death row inmates to serve those in need of transplants. Chinese officials announced a plan to phase out the practice and in the process, overhaul a transplant system that has for years relied on prisoners and organ traffickers. Huang Jiefu, China's vice minister of health, announced the new plan Thursday and explained that Chinese officials plan to abolish the practice within the next five years and to create a national organ donation system. "The pledge to abolish organ donations from condemned prisoners represents the resolve of the government," The state-controlled Xinhua News Agency quoted Huang as saying. How the system will work remains a mystery, as the Ministry of Health didn't respond to requests for comment and no one is quite sure how the world's most populous country will eliminate its dependence on executed prisoners as its main source of organ supply for ailing citizens. Of course, China wouldn’t be China without a sinister plot to strip its people of their rights and dignity, so the new system should be equally shady and mysterious. Human rights groups have long denounced the sinister influences of organ harvesting on the pace of China's executions and claimed that the rights of death-row prisoners have been overlooked to provide organs for those in need. With an estimated 1.5 million people in China in need of organ transplants annually and only 10,000 receiving them, odds are the new means of procuring livers, kidneys and hearts will undoubtedly be just as stomach-churning………
- “The Hunger Games” was competing against history in its opening weekend and in that respect, the film fell just short. With $155 million made from the wallets of swooning females of all ages, the film based on the popular novel blew away its immediate competition but fell shy of an all-time record by posting the third-best opening weekend ever behind “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2” and “The Dark Knight.” On the positive side, “21 Jump Street” was the closest competitor for the weekend with $21.3 million to finish second. Down one spot from its opening weekend, “21” boosted its two-week total to $71 million. “Dr. Seuss' The Lorax” was third with $13.1 million and has compiled $177.3 million in domestic earnings through four weeks. “John Carter,” on its way to the undesirable title of biggest box office bomb ever, was fourth with $5 million and has amassed $62.3 million in three weeks of work. Holding strong in fifth place was “Act of Valor,” which remained fifth in its fifth weekend, adding $2.1 million to its cumulative tally for a five-week haul of $65.9 million. That was enough to edge out the quickly fading “Project X,” which dropped to sixth on the strength of $2 million in earnings for a four-week total of $51.7 million. Fading even faster is the abysmally awful “A Thousand Words,” seventh for the weekend and making a mere $1.75 million to raise its meager three-week total to $14.9 million. “October Baby” managed an eighth-place finish despite extremely limited release (just 390 theaters nationwide) and made $1.7 million in its debut. Ninth place went to “Safe House” with $1.4 million, raising its overall total to $122.6 million for six weeks. “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” rounded out the top 10 with $1.3 million, while “Casa De Mi Padre” (No. 11) and “This Means War” (No. 12) fell out of the top 10 from last weekend……….
- Earthquakes are a laugh riot. Not only that, they are an opportunity to cash in and market that most who “suffer” through them completely miss. Clintonville, Wis. Mayor Judy Magee is not one of those people. Mageee, the mayor of an eastern Wisconsin city that's been dealing with unexplained booming sounds believed to be linked to small earthquakes in the area, has found a way to cash in on the mystery bumps in the night. She is planning to order T-shirts that say, "I Survived the 1.5," a reference to the 1.5-magnitude earthquake that federal geologists confirm struck Tuesday just after midnight. The minor earthquake could explain some of the mysterious sounds residents reported overnight from Monday night into Tuesday. However, the majority of the booms occurred in the pre-dawn hours Sunday and Monday. Unless a mysterious, as-of-yet-undetected earthquake struck the region during that time, then the mystery remains. What doesn’t remain, however, is Magee’s respect for the destruction earthquakes produce. With her overwhelming respect for natural disasters, she should be mayor of New Orleans or any number of Southern California cities that suffer hurricanes, floods and earthquakes on a regular basis. City administrator Lisa Kuss insisted the shirts are intended to show unity, not to make light of the situation. That may be a lie, but no one can deny that in a town of 4,600, Magee’s marketing genius is operating on far too small of a scale………
- Living alone: It’s not just depressing for old people who have Drew Carey hosting “The Price is Right” as the highlight of their day. New research shows that living alone can also lead to depression for younger, working-age adults. A study of nearly 3,500 men and women ages 30 to 65 found that people who lived alone were more likely that their peers to receive a prescription for antidepressant drugs. Finnish researchers studied their subjects over a period of seven years and found that one quarter of people living alone filled an antidepressant prescription during the study, compared to just 16 percent of those who lived with spouses, family or roommates. "Living alone may be considered a mental-health risk factor," said lead author Laura Pulkki-Råback, Ph.D., a lecturer at the University of Helsinki's Institute of Behavioral Sciences. The primary drawback for the study is that it shows only an association, not cause and effect. Left unanswered is the question of whether living alone causes depression or if depressed (or depression-prone) individuals are more likely to live alone because of their temperament, preference, or difficulty with relationships. Surveys of participants showed that living alone tends to weaken social networks and produce "feelings of alienation from society" that would push a person toward depression. "People living alone were more cynical in their attitudes," Pulkki-Råback said. "Being cynical and living alone may predispose to hopelessness and negative feelings, ultimately leading to depression." However, she hedged her bets by laying out the opposing line of thought as equally viable. "Cynical people may also have ended up living alone because they are difficult to deal with,” she added. For the study, Pulkki-Råback and her colleagues interviewed each person about their living arrangements, overall health and work life. At the start of the study, 15 percent of participants reported living alone, with only 40 percent of that number citing divorce or widowhood as a reason. Seventeen percent of participants filled at least one antidepressant prescription during the study, but those living alone were 81 percent more likely to do so. Extenuating factors accounted for only a small portion of the elevated risk for depression. One flaw in the study was researchers’ inability to distinguish between those who preferred to live alone and those for whom the arrangement was involuntary. Critics have also pointed out that antidepressant prescriptions are an inaccurate measure of depression rates because not everyone who is depressed seeks professional help. Flawed or not, the study was published in the most recent edition of the journal BMC Public Health………….
- Stadium and arena DJs around the world are idiots and wannabe comedians. Not everyone can be the comedic genius who blasts Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Down on the Corner” the way Heinz Field’s sound guy did when then-Ravens running back Willis McGahee suffered a serious knee injury and was laying on the turf during the 2009 AFC Championship game. However, that doesn’t stop these wise-cracking musical maestros from giving their best effort. The pursuit extends as far as Kuwait, where the sound guy at the Arab Shooting Championships seized upon a golden opportunity that presented itself when a shooter from Kazakhstan won a gold medal. When the moment arrived to hatch the hilarious hijink, this kook got off an all-timer by substituting t the spoof anthem from the 2006 movie "Borat" in place of the actual Kazakh anthem. The “Borat” version of the anthem is, for some odd reason, a sore point with many Kazakhs on account of it portraying their country as backward and degenerate. Thus, playing the spoof anthem is a reason to fight and for the Kazakh government to call the incident "a scandal" and demand an investigation of the incident. The drama began after Maria Dmitrienko won a gold medal for Kazakhstan on Thursday in Kuwait, only to have the medal ceremony marred when the joke anthem was played. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ilyas Omarov called the incident “a scandal” that “demands a thorough investigation, which we intend to conduct.” Asian Shooting Federation President Sheikh Salman al-Sabah’s apology to the Kazakh team clearly did not soothe tensions, not did his explanation that the awards ceremony was conducted by a firm under contract. According to Kazakh coach Anvar Yunusmetov, tournament organized told him they had downloaded various countries' national anthems from the Internet. In other words, they were either too lazy or unprepared to have the anthems ready in advance and hurriedly downloaded them at the last minute, weren’t smart enough to make sure they downloaded the correct anthem or had a wannabe comedian running the PA and sound systems. Very classy, Kuwait………….
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