- Even elite, gold-medal-winning athletes are not above
America’s obesity crisis. OK, so technically Brooklyn Nets point guard Deron
Williams isn't obese or really even overweight, but don’t tell that to USA
Basketball president Jerry Colangelo. Williams, out the past two games for the
with ankle injuries, pointed to his time in London with Team USA as the
starting point for his current woes. He previously explained that his ankle
swelled in London and he never allowed his body to rest -- a decision he said
he would have changed in hindsight. Colangelo responded by saying that Williams
was overweight last summer before he hurt his ankle in London. "Deron
Williams, for the Olympics, was not in the best shape," Colangelo.
"He was a little overweight, and I told him that at the time."
Colangelo seemed to take exception to the suggestion that playing at the
Olympics and the grind of being part of the buildup to the games was the root
cause of Williams’ current injury problems. "If you look at the track
record of all the players who participated with us, how they came into their
seasons and had outstanding years," Colangelo said. "So there are
injures that have taken place that have nothing to do with participating with
us. If anything, they're in better shape and they're better prepared going into
training camp with their teams." Whatever the cause, Williams is battling
inflammation in both ankles and this week he received platelet-rich plasma
injections in both of them. He has also battled ankle, thigh, wrist and shoulder
injuries while playing in 50 of the Nets’ 53 games. However, his averages have
dipped to 16.7 points on 41 percent shooting and 7.6 assists, all well below
his career averages……..
- Call it the Great Girl Scout Cookie Controversy of 2013.
Southern California was rocked by (a largely irrelevant) controversy after a
local news report that more than 13,000 boxes of perfectly fine Girl Scout cookies were trashed
— rather than donated. Video of the cookies being thrown away as a worker
laughed at the sight and proclaimed “Goodbye, Girl Scout cookies!” was filmed
in May, but the practice has allegedly been going on for years. The cookies
trashed in May were thrown away well before their expiration date and could
easily have been donated to a local food pantry or soup kitchen if they weren’t
going to be sold. Who did the cast-aside cookies belong to? That would be the
San Gorgonio Council of the Girl Scouts in Redlands. Council leader Chuck
MacKinnon claimed complete ignorance when questioned about the cookies being
trashed and claims he had no idea what was going on. “We didn’t know that was
the way they were being disposed of, no,” MacKinnon said. “To look at it, it’s
a waste of food.” However, MacKinnon was quick to shovel blame off of his
organization and onto their supplier, ABC Bakery, explaining that the bakery
was responsible for destroying the cookies. In this case, MacKinnon claims the
Girl Scouts ordered too many boxes, but can only return 1 percent of the unsold
cookies back to the bakery without paying for them. That explanation doesn’t
seem to match up with the reality of the video, given that the council
over-ordered the cookies and apparently returned the unused ones. According to
a Girl Scouts spokesman, there is no national policy for dealing with unused
cookies, but it shouldn’t take a 13,200 boxes of them being thrown away to
realize that the San Gorgonio Council of the Girl Scouts could just as easily
have given them to someone in need………
- Exciting times are here once more in Britain. Well, as
long as you consider the burgeoning epidemic of a new, potentially fatal SARS-like virus which was
unknown in humans until a few months ago to be exciting. A fourth person in
Britain has contracted the virus and although health officials believe the risk
to the population remains very low, there’s always a chance. The latest case is
the third confirmed this week alone the new virus - known as novel coronavirus,
or NCoV - and the Health Protection Agency said the patient was one of a cluster of
three in the same family. It brings the total number of confirmed cases
globally to 12, with one-third of those originating in Britain. So far, five of
the 12 struck by the virus have died and most of the infected lived or had
recently been in the Middle East. The World Health Organization (WHO) first
identified NCoV when it issued an international alert in September 2012 saying
a virus previously unknown in humans had infected a Qatari man in Britain who
had recently been in Saudi Arabia. NCoV belongs to the same family as SARS, or
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which burst onto the pandemic scene in China
in 2002 and killed about a tenth of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.
Symptoms of this virus clan include severe respiratory illness, fever, coughing
and breathing difficulties. There is still work for NCoV to do if it wants to
terrorize the world the way SARS did because while two patients from the same
family were being treated in intensive care units in separate hospitals in
northern and central England, the HPA reported that the third case in the
cluster was mild. "The patient ... is recovering from a mild respiratory
illness and is currently well," the agency said in a statement. Coronaviruses
are typically spread like other respiratory infections, traveling g in airborne
droplets when an infected person sneezes or coughs. "We would like to
emphasize that the risk associated with novel coronavirus to the general UK
population remains very low," said John Watson, the HPA's head of
respiratory diseases. Oh well, maybe next coronavirus……..
- Uh-oh. Iran’s relationship with the rest of the world was
already on shaky footing, but no one ever expected it would go this far.
Despotic Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done almost everything in his
power to antagonize world powers that oppose his developing nuclear program, but
he hadn’t launched the ultimate offensive prior to this week, when the other
shoe dropped with a thunderous echo. That’s right, Iran has ordered a six-month ban on
pistachio exports. And yes, Iran does actually export something other
than contempt for the West, oil and terrorism. That something is the popular
nut that sadly, found itself being promoted by a Super Bowl commercial
featuring noted Korean pop music hack Psy two weeks ago. Iran’s pistachio
embargo is allegedly part of an attempt to control the price of the nut, which has
doubled in the past month. Pistachios are among Iran's top non-oil exports, but
they are also very popular in the Middle Eastern nation. The pistachio industry
is a $1.5 billion business annually and provides work for hundreds of thousands
of people. Iran has long been the world's largest pistachio exporter, with over
200,000 tons a year, but the United States ripped that title last year and
perhaps the shame of being overshadowed by America once again has led Iran to
take drastic measures. First Vice President/Assistant Dictator Mohammad Reza
Rahimi announced the ban Friday on Iranian state TV, saying the ban is
temporary and meant to help bring down the price of pistachios that doubled
from about 250,000 Iranian rials per kilogram ($3.18 per pound). Cutting off
pistachio exports may not be the wisest economic policy for a nation struggling
under the weight of Western sanctions over its controversial nuclear program
that have slowed the country's economy and disrupted foreign trade, but
pistachio problems can often transcend such issues………..
- John McClane was the preferred way to spend Valentine’s
Day weekend for those taking their sweetie to a movie, although McClane’s pull
doesn’t appear to be as strong as it once was. “A Good Day to Die Hard” narrowly
edged out the über-mediocre “Identity Thief” to wrest the box office crown,
making $25 million domestically in its opening weekend. That put it just ahead
of “Thief,” last weekend’s winner, which dipped to second place with $23.5
million for a two-week domestic tally of $70.7 million. New films claimed four
of the top six spots for the weekend, with the mega-cheesy, Josh Duhamel-led
romantic drama “Safe Haven” right behind the top two at $21.4 million for its
first frame. Fellow new arrival “Escape From Planet Earth” churned out $16.1
million for fourth place and from there, the earnings numbers dropped off
substantially. “Warm Bodies” was fifth with $9 million and has banked $50.2
million in three weeks. “Beautiful Creatures” was the last new movie to ding
the top 10 leaderboard, securing sixth place with $7.5 million for its first
weekend in theaters. Seventh place belonged to “Side Effects,” owner of a $6.3
million take for the weekend and $19.1 million in cumulative domestic earnings.
“Silver Linings Playbook” dropped four spots from last weekend to rank eighth,
adding $6 million to his bank roll for a 14-week total of $98.4 million. “Hansel
and Gretel: Witch Hunters” took ninth place and made $3.5 million to up its
overall haul to $49.7 million in four weeks. “Zero Dark Thirty” took the last
top 10 slot with $3.1 million and has earned $88 million in nine weeks. “Mama”
(No. 11), “Argo” (No. 12) and “Django Unchained” (No. 15) all slipped out of
last weekend’s top 10………
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