Three foods all men should eat

A varied, balanced diet is the cornerstone of healthy living for everyone, yet healthy eating can sometimes A varied, balanced diet is the cornerstone of healthy living for everyone, yet healthy eating can sometimes mean different things depending on your gender.
While there are some foods we should all be eating more of, men and women also have their own set of dietary requirements as well as their own unique health concerns. Here are three foods all men should eat.


Tomatoes
Tomatoes are possibly one of the best "superfoods" around, and the popular fruit has particular benefits for men. Studies have suggested that the lycopene found in tomatoes may reduce risk of colorectal cancer, lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease; the leading cause of death in men. Research has also shown that men who frequently eat foods rich in lycopene may drastically reduce their risk of developing prostate cancer.


Broccoli
Broccoli - along with other cruciferous vegetables like cabbage and sprouts - contains a strong cancer-fighting chemical, sulphoraphane, which research has suggested may reduce men's risk of developing bladder cancer (a cancer more commonly affecting women than men), prostate cancer and colorectal cancer.


Oysters
Oysters are the highest natural source of zinc; an essential requirement for men's fertility and sexual health. Zinc not only helps to maintain healthy testosterone levels in men, but it is essential for healthy sperm production.  On top of this, zinc deficiency may be responsible for hair loss in men, so an increased intake may benefit men's appearance as well as health. mean different things depending on your gender.

India teacher stunned by $10 billion in her bank account

KOLKATA, January 19, 2012 (AFP) - An Indian high school teacher, with a monthly salary of around $700, was astounded when a routine online check of his bank account showed a balance of almost $10 billion.
Parijat Saha, from the town of Balurghat in West Bengal state, said he had checked his State Bank of India account online last Sunday to confirm reception of a 10,000 rupee ($200) interest payment.
"Instead I saw this astronomical amount," he told AFP by telephone.
The account showed a balance of 496 billion rupees.
After recovering from the initial shock at becoming an overnight billionaire -- at least on paper --Saha, 42, said he immediately called a friend he knew at the bank to point out what was obviously a major accounting error.
The State Bank of India said it was not immediately clear how the amount came to be registered in Saha's account.
"We are trying to ascertain what went wrong," said local branch manager Subhashish Karmakar.
"We have informed our regional headquarters in Kolkata and national headquarters in Mumbai," he said.

Cut soot, methane to curb global warming: Scientists

Environmental activists in Praque.

WASHINGTON, January 12 (AP) — An international team of scientists says it has figured out how to slow global warming in the short run and prevent millions of deaths from dirty air: Stop focusing so much on carbon dioxide.
They say the key is to reduce emissions of two powerful and fast-acting causes of global warming — methane and soot.
Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and the one world leaders have spent the most time talking about controlling. Scientists say carbon dioxide from fossil fuels like coal and oil is a bigger overall cause of global warming, but reducing methane and soot offers quicker fixes.
Soot also is a big health problem, so dramatically cutting it with existing technology would save between 700,000 and 4.7 million lives each year, according to the team's research published online Thursday in the journal Science. Since soot causes rainfall patterns to shift, reducing it would cut down on droughts in southern Europe and parts of Africa and ease monsoon problems in Asia, the study says.
Two dozen scientists from around the world ran computer models of 400 different existing pollution control measures and came up with 14 methods that attack methane and soot. The idea has been around for more than a decade and the same authors worked on a United Nations report last year, but this new study is far more comprehensive.
All 14 methods — capturing methane from landfills and coal mines, cleaning up cook stoves and diesel engines, and changing agriculture techniques for rice paddies and manure collection — are being used efficiently in many places, but are not universally adopted, said the study's lead author, Drew Shindell of NASA.

Chinese women wear masks in Beijing.

If adopted more widely, the scientists calculate that would reduce projected global warming by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 degrees Celsius) by the year 2050. Without the measures, global average temperature is projected to rise nearly 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) in the next four decades. But controlling methane and soot, the increase is projected to be only 1.3 degrees (0.7 degrees Celsius). It also would increase annual yield of key crops worldwide by almost 150 million tons (135 million metric tons).
Methane comes from landfills, farms, drilling for natural gas, and coal mining. Soot, called black carbon by scientists, is a byproduct of burning and is a big problem with cook stoves using wood, dung and coal in developing countries and in some diesel fuels worldwide.
Reducing methane and black carbon isn't the very best way to attack climate change, air pollution, or hunger, but reducing those chemicals are among the better ways and work simultaneously on all three problems, Shindell said.
And shifting the pollution focus does not mean ignoring carbon dioxide. Shindell said: "The science says you really have to start on carbon dioxide even now to get the benefit in the distant future."
It all comes down to basic chemistry. There is far more carbon dioxide pollution than methane and soot pollution, but the last two are much more potent. Carbon dioxide also lasts in the atmosphere longer.
A 2007 Stanford University study calculated that carbon dioxide was the No. 1 cause of man-made global warming, accounting for 48 percent of the problem. Soot was second with 16 percent of the warming and methane was right behind at 14 percent.
But over a 20-year period, a molecule of methane or soot causes substantially more warming then a carbon dioxide molecule.
The new research won wide praise from outside scientists, including a conservative researcher who held a top post in the George W. Bush administration.
"So rather than focusing only on carbon dioxide emissions, where we have to make a tradeoff with energy prices, this strategy focuses on 'win-win-win' pathways that have benefits to human health, agriculture and stabilizing the Earth's climate," said University of Minnesota ecology professor Jonathan Foley, who wasn't part of the study. "That's brilliant."
John D. Graham, who oversaw regulations at the Office of Management and Budget in the Bush administration and is now dean of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, said: "This is an important study that deserves serious consideration by policy makers as well as scientists."
The study even does a cost-benefit analysis to see if these pollution control methods are too expensive to be anything but fantasy. They actually pay off with benefits that are as much as ten times the value of the costs, Shindell said. The paper calculates that as of 2030, the pollution reduction methods would bring about $6.5 trillion in annual benefits from fewer people dying from air pollution, less global warming and increased crop production.
In the United States, Shindell calculates the measures would prevent about 14,000 air pollution deaths in people older than 30 by the year 2030. About 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit of projected warming in the U.S. would be prevented by 2050.
But health benefits would be far bigger in China and India where soot is more of a problem.
The study comes a day after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the most detailed data yet on American greenhouse gas emissions. Of the emissions reported to the government, nearly three-quarters came from power plants. But with methane, it's different. Nineteen of the top 20 methane emitters were landfills.
Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who is a leader in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but wasn't part of this study, praised the study but said he worried that officials would delay cutting back on the more prevalent carbon dioxide. Focusing solely on methane and soot and ignoring carbon dioxide "tends to exacerbate climate change," he said.
Another outside climate expert Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada said the study is good news amid a sea of gloomy reports about climate change.
"This is a no-brainer," he said. "We have solutions at hand."

Syria's First Lady falling from grace

At the Bristol hotel in Paris in 2010.

Asma Al-Assad

BEIRUT, Jan 14, 2012 (AFP) -Not so long ago, she was the darling of the international press, described as a "rose in the desert" and "a ray of light in a country full of shadow zones."
But today, Syria's First Lady is being likened to a modern-day Marie-Antoinette, drawing criticism for staying mum on a crisis that has left more than 5,000 people dead in her country.
The British-born Asma Al-Assad, who virtually disappeared from the public eye after the revolt broke out in Syria in mid-March, made a surprise appearance this week to support her husband Bashar as he spoke at a pro-regime rally.
Pictures of the 36-year-old, all smiles with two of her children, adorned the front pages of many Arab and Western newspapers.
"This shows that she is standing by her man, that she and him are on the same page," said Andrew Tabler, an expert on Syria and former press adviser to local charities run by the First Lady.
"She is clearly part of the regime."
Her appearance, however, has also drawn scathing criticism.
"Bashar's wife and kids cheer on daddy the dictator," one tweet scoffed.
"The British should withdraw Asma Assad's passport and those of her parents as accessories to a war criminal," fumed another.
But the former investment banker continues to attract admiration among supporters of the Assad regime.
"You deserve to be the First Lady of the whole world!" gushed a post on one of the many Facebook pages dedicated to the slim, brown-haired Asma.
Syria's First Lady has emerged as a style icon in the world of politics and has been compared to the likes of Queen Rania of Jordan or France's Carla Bruni, with a reported fondness for Chanel in particular.
Tall, stylish and charismatic, Asma Al-Assad is the picture of glamour: in designer outfits and her trademark Christian Louboutin heels, her impeccable British accent and credentials have helped promote the soft side of an iron-fisted regime.
"She was an important part of the public relations of the regime," Tabler said.
"She has an obsession with fashion," he added. "How do you reconcile this princess-like image with one of the poorest countries in the Middle East?"
The daughter of a prominent London-based cardiologist, Fawaz Al-Akhras, and a former diplomat, Sahar Otri, Asma is seen as the modern, progressive side of the Assad dynasty, with a degree from King's College in London where she was raised.
Ten years her husband's junior, Asma has welcomed the likes of the Spanish king and queen and Hollywood power couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to her country.
During a 2010 visit to France, Asma told French weekly Paris Match that she had married Bashar for the "values" he embodied.
Fashion magazine Vogue even ran a glowing interview with her before the outbreak of the revolt, describing Asma as the "most magnetic of first ladies," but later removed the article from its website.
Bashar's rise to power more than a decade ago symbolized the hope for change in a country long isolated internationally.
Once a banker with J.P. Morgan, Asma herself is credited with having played a significant role in liberalizing the Syrian economy.
But the Syrian revolt has dealt a serious blow to the image of a young, modern couple who captured the attention of press and public opinion around the world.
"This image has been destroyed," said Tabler. "She has a sort of quietly domineering personality and she is a very proper person, very British.
"She has a British passport. So she could go. She is not trapped."
Bashar and Asma for years have been viewed as a symbol of coexistence in multi-confessional Syria. While the president is a minority Alawite, Asma is a Sunni Muslim who originally hails from Homs -- bastion of the current anti-Assad revolt.
But as the death toll in Syria tops 5,000, many find the pair increasingly out of touch with reality.
In a 2009 interview with CNN, the honey-eyed Asma slammed Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip as "barbaric" and, "as a mother and as a human being," called for an end to the violence.
"This is the 21st century. Where in the world could this happen? Unfortunately it is happening," she said in a calm, soft voice.
Now her own words have come back to haunt her.
"Stop being a hypocrite! You are slaughtering your own people!" one YouTube commenter recently wrote beneath the video.
Another summed it up in two words: "Lady Macbeth."

French chef takes cuisine to new heights — in the Alps

Jean Sulpice at the L'Oxalys.

VAL Thorens, France — It's tough at the top they say, and few chefs are better placed to tell you than Jean Sulpice, whose two-star restaurant L'Oxalys perches 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) up in the French Alps.
Though born and bred in the region, when Sulpice took over the mountaintop eatery in the trendy ski resort of Val Thorens in 2002, aged just 24, he knew he had his work cut out for him.
Val Thorens has only two seasons —buzzing from December to April, and dead the rest of the year — and there was no market for the kind of cuisine he wanted to offer.
"People in the mountains didn't do good food," the fresh-faced 33-year-old, who today runs Europe's highest Michelin-starred restaurant, told AFP. "You ate raclette and tartiflette."
These two dishes, which make a virtue out of easily available ingredients — melted cheese, potatoes and cured meats — were standard resort fare.
"There was no such thing as gastronomic food," Sulpice recalled.
The isolated site brought obvious logistical challenges, with deliveries of basic ingredients liable to be suddenly cancelled because of snow on the roads.
But the altitude also posed unique challenges, forcing the chef to relearn parts of his trade from scratch.
That high up, for example, water boils at 90 degrees C (194 degrees F) instead of 100 — which means cooking an egg takes twice the time.
"I also had to invent my own type of bread because the first few years it would turn dry as biscuits" because of the low humidity levels, he said.

Skiers perform at the Alpe d'Huez, Frence Alps. - AP

Likewise, he had to deal with exploding packaging, because of the atmospheric pressure, as well as wine ageing faster than it should.
And sometimes without serving a single customer for three days running.
Though a die-hard mountain-lover who goes climbing in between seatings, one thing Sulpice really struggled with was the thick blanket of snow masking all surrounding plant life for six months of the year.

Two prsons enjoy wonderful winter weather on Alp Sut, Switzerland.

"When you have a blank page in front of your nose every morning, your inspiration is blank too," he said. "There was no smell, no market, no produce. At Val Thorens, you don't see spring."
But that did not stop Sulpice landing his first Michelin star in 2006, and then a second in 2010.
And in increasing numbers, the tourists left their cheese and potatoes behind them.
"Today, there is a clientele who come specially to Val Thorens to eat here," he said.
Sulpice's success story is part of a wider trend, which has seen French ski resorts shift their restaurant offer upmarket over the past decade, to cater to increasingly monied tourists.
The nearby resort of Courchevel — popular with Russian billionaires — counts seven Michelin-starred restaurants, one of the highest concentrations of the coveted stars in the world.
But for all that L'Oxalys is now among the Michelin elect, the atmosphere remains relaxed at the restaurant.
Still in their ski kit and moon boots, holidaymakers tuck into a shoulder of lamb confit with coriander, in a mountain cabin setting with large bay windows opening onto snow-capped peaks.
At the entrance to the restaurant is an impressive collection of Michelin guides, the oldest dating back to 1908, bequeathed to Sulpice by his grandfather, who ran a hotel and restaurant in the Savoie region.
The young chef is perpetuating a family tradition, following in the footsteps of an uncle and a great uncle, the latter also a Michelin-star winner.
And L'Oxalys remains a family affair: his wife is the sommelier and he supplies meals to his son's local nursery school.
Sulpice says he discovered a passion for food at the age of 14, following a stint of work experience in a restaurant. He was not yet 19 when he joined the team of the star chef Marc Veyrat.
"He was a young man full of enthusiasm, of energy and generosity," recalls Stephane Froidevaux, who was Veyrat's sous-chef at the time. "He will end up with three stars for sure".
Sulpice, who is already on to his fourth cook book and gives cooking classes at the restaurant, will not speculate on his chances at a third star -- but admits it would be a crowning glory.
"When you have the bug, it's a natural ambition." — AFP

Warmer summers cause colder winters

Alaska Department of Transportation snow plows clear a highway

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A man shovels snow off his home in Alaska.(Both photos by AP)

By David Fogarty
Reuters

SINGAPORE — Warmer summers in the far Northern Hemisphere are disrupting weather patterns and triggering more severe winter weather in the United States and Europe, a team of scientists say, in a finding that could improve long-range weather forecasts.
Blizzards and extreme cold temperatures in the winters of 2009/10 and 2010/11 caused widespread travel chaos in parts of Europe and the United States, leading some to question whether global warming was real.
Judah Cohen, lead author of a study published on Friday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, and his team found there was a clear trend of strong warming in the Arctic from July to September.
Existing predictions would also expect a warming trend during winter as well. But Cohen and his team found this was not the case for some regions, in a counter-intuitive finding that reveals more about the complexity of the world's climate system than any flaws in the science of global warming.
"For the last two decades, large-scale cooling trends have existed instead across large stretches of eastern North America and northern Eurasia. We argue that this unforeseen trend is probably not due to internal variability alone," the scientists say in the study.
Using temperature, rainfall and snow and ice data, the team found that rising summer temperatures in the Arctic meant the atmosphere could hold more moisture, leading to an increase in autumn snowfall in high-latitude areas.
Analysis of data showed the average snow coverage in Eurasia had increased over the past two decades. This additional snow cover in turn has led to a change in the Arctic Oscillation, the main atmospheric pressure pattern that governs winter weather in the far Northern Hemisphere.
When the oscillation is in a negative phase, high pressure cells over the Arctic push colder air towards the mid-latitudes, triggering colder than usual temperatures and fierce snow storms.
A positive phase tends to bring milder winter weather, such as the case at present in the United States and Europe.
The team say the winter cooling trends cannot be entirely explained by natural variability of the climate system and need more study.
Cohen said the finding could improve long-range forecasting.
"Using the snow cover in a seasonal forecast can provide a more skilful or accurate forecast," Cohen, of Atmospheric and Environmental Research, a US firm that helps businesses and governments manage climate risks, said in a statement.
The team's research is one of recent studies to highlight the complexity of the climate system and that scientists are still learning how much mankind and natural factors can influence long-term patterns.
Last October, a study led by the UK Met Office, found that a cyclical drop in the sun's radiation can trigger unusually cold winters in parts of North America and Europe. — Reuters

Astronomers see more planets than stars in galaxy

WASHINGTON  (AP, Jan. 12) — The more astronomers look for other worlds, the more they find that it is a crowded and crazy cosmos. They think planets easily outnumber stars in our galaxy and they are even finding them in the strangest of places.
And they have only begun to count.
Three studies released Wednesday, in the journal Nature and at the American Astronomical Society's conference in Austin, Texas, demonstrate an extrasolar real estate boom. One study shows that in our Milky Way, most stars have planets. And since there are a lot of stars in our galaxy — about 100 billion — that means a lot of planets.
"We're finding an exciting potpourri of things we didn't even think could exist," said Harvard University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, including planets that mirror "Star Wars" Luke Skywalker's home planet with twin suns and a mini-star system with a dwarf sun and shrunken planets.
"We're awash in planets where 17 years ago we weren't even sure there were planets" outside our solar system, said Kaltenegger, who wasn't involved in the new research.
Astronomers are finding other worlds using three different techniques and peering through telescopes in space and on the ground.
Confirmed planets outside our solar system — called exoplanets — now number well over 700, still-to-be-confirmed ones are in the thousands.
NASA's new Kepler planet-hunting telescope in space is discovering exoplanets that are in a zone friendly to life and detecting planets as small as Earth or even tinier. That is moving the field of looking for some kind of life outside Earth from science fiction toward plain science.
One study in Nature this week figures that the Milky Way averages at least 1.6 large planets per star. And that is likely a dramatic underestimate.
That study is based on only one intricate and time-consuming method of planet hunting that uses several South American, African and Australian telescopes. Astronomers look for increases in brightness of distant stars that indicate planets between Earth and that pulsating star. That technique usually finds only bigger planets and is good at finding those further away from their stars, sort of like our Saturn or Uranus.
Kepler and a different ground-based telescope technique are finding planets closer to their stars. Putting those methods together, the number of worlds in our galaxy is probably much closer to two or more planets per star, said the Nature study author Arnaud Cassan of the Astrophysical Institute in Paris.
Dan Werthimer, chief scientist at the University of California Berkeley's search for extraterrestrial intelligence program and who wasn't part of the studies, was thrilled: "It's great to know that there are planets out there that we can point our telescopes at."
Kepler also found three rocky planets — tinier than Earth — that are circling a dwarf star that itself is only a bit bigger than Jupiter. They are so close to their small star that they are too hot for life.
"It's like you took your shrink ray gun and you set it to seven times smaller and zap the planetary system," said California Institute of Technology astronomer John Johnson, co-author of the study presented Wednesday at the astronomy conference.
Because it is so hard to see these size planets, they must be pretty plentiful, Johnson said. "It's kind of like cockroaches. If you see one, then there are dozens hiding."
It's not just the number or size of planets, but where they are found. Scientists once thought systems with two stars were just too chaotic to have planets nearby. But so far, astronomers have found three different systems where planets have two suns, something that a few years ago seemed like purely "Star Wars" movie magic.
"Nature must like to form planets because it's forming them in places that are kind of difficult to do," said San Diego State University astronomy professor William Welsh, who wrote a study about planets with two stars that's also published in the journal Nature.
The gravity of two stars makes the area near them unstable, Welsh said. So astronomers thought that if a planet formed in that area, it would be torn apart.
Late last year, Kepler telescope found one system with two stars. It was considered a freak. Then Welsh used Kepler to find two more. Now Welsh figures such planetary systems, while not common, are not rare either.
"It just feels like it's inevitable that Kepler is going to come up with a habitable Earth-sized planet in the next couple of years," Caltech's Johnson said. — AP

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Rare Moon mineral found in Australia

Sydney, Jan 5, 2012 (AFP) -A mineral brought back to Earth by the first men on the Moon and long thought to be unique to the lunar surface has been found in Australian rocks more than one billion years old, scientists said Thursday.
Named after Apollo 11's 1969 landing site at the Sea of Tranquility, tranquillityite was one of three minerals first discovered in rocks from the Moon and the only one not to be found, in subsequent years, on Earth.
Australian scientist Birger Rasmussen said tranquillityite had "long been considered as the Moon's own mineral" until geologists discovered it, by chance, in rock from resources-rich Western Australia.
"In over 40 years it hadn't been found in any terrestrial samples," Rasmussen, from Curtin University, told AFP.
When the Moon samples first came back Rasmussen said they were considered to be "extremely precious" and had been subjected to intense, detailed study when -- ironically -- their contents were "right here all the time."
"They were always part of Earth, they haven't come from the Moon," he said of his work on the discovery, published in the journal Geology.
"It tells you that broadly overall you have similar chemistries and similar processes operating on the Moon as on Earth."
As well as being "quirky and surprising" Rasmussen said the discovery also had important practical applications, with the mineral proving to be an excellent dating tool which had allowed scientists to pin down the rocks' age.
"We used this mineral ... to date the dolerite which has previously been undated, so that helped us understand the geological history," he said.
They were 1.07 billion years old, more ancient than rocks in the area had previously been thought to be, and Rasmussen said tranquillityite would be useful in dating similar rocks in the future.
"I think it will be a lot more widespread than just the six locations we've found it so far," he added of the rare mineral.