Ever since last Tuesday, Nancy Brinker has been at the center of a firestorm. That was when word finally surfaced that Susan G. Komen for the Cure, of which she is the founder, had decided to defund Planned Parenthood. The repercussions were swift and came from every level: social media, mainstream press, Congress 26 Democratic senators wrote a letter, members of its own board, scientists, donors, and the general public. New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg was so dismayed that he donated $250,000 to Planned Parenthood to ease the shortfall.

The decision quickly became a public-relations fiasco that caught the organization totally off guard and rocked it to its core. "We really were surprised by the backlash, things got totally out of hand,” says former board chair Alexine Jackson. "I guess it will never be completely over, but I hope the reaction will eventually die down.”

via Komen for the Cure: How the Groups Founder Courted Controversy – The Daily Beast.

Vitamin E is one of our most important anti-oxidant vitamins. It fights against free radicals, helping to protect our arteries from cholesterol buildup and our cells from cancer. Vitamin E also keeps our blood cells flexible and healthy, and plays a role in reducing inflammation.

Back in the 1980’s and ‘90’s, many doctors and scientists believed that high doses of supplemental vitamin E offered a safe and easy way to protect the heart. They based this assumption on the findings of studies that suggested that people whose diets included substantial amounts of vitamin E were less prone to heart attacks. Furthermore, since vitamin E is “natural,” how could it cause any harm?

Although only 22.4 International Units (IU) of vitamin E are necessary to maintain health, supplemental doses of 400-1200 IU were routinely recommended, even though no research had been done on the safety of effectiveness of these supplements.

Subsequent research has found that doses in this range may actually increase the risk for congestive heart failure in vulnerable individuals, and reduce the effectiveness of some cholesterol medications. Doses of 1000 IU may prolong bleeding times.

In October, the results of the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial were reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The trial was started with the optimistic idea that perhaps vitamin E and selenium could reduce prostate cancer. Over 35,000 men aged 50 or older were enrolled. They were assigned to vitamin E (400 IU daily), selenium (200 mcg daily), both supplements, or placebo.

The results were disappointing and sobering. After a follow-up period of seven years, those men who took the vitamin E supplements were 17 percent more likely to have developed prostate cancer. Selenium was basically a wash, with no substantial effect on cancer risk.

via Vitamin E: A Supplement Whose Time has Passed | Healthline.

Author Tracy McMillan knows a thing or two about getting over a bad childhood. Her father was a drug-dealing pimp and convicted felon who spent most of his daughter's life behind bars. Her prostitute mother gave her away. Here's what she wants you to know about getting over your past.

1. Get a New Story

There are two ways for me to look at my childhood story. In one, I'm a person who is so unloved and unwanted, my own mother gave me away. In the other, I was born, took a look around at my prostitute mother and criminal father, and said to myself, "I can totally do better than this. Get your stuff, we're leaving." In one I'm a victim, in the other, I'm in power. Guess which viewpoint got me the career I have today?

2. Realize Blame = Same

Blame is awesome. It feels good, right? It feels righteous. It feels powerful. It feels like someone's going to pay for what they did to you. The only problem is—as long as you're blaming—nothing can ever change. Why? Because in order for your life to change, you have to want things to be different. And if it feels good to blame, you have to admit that you like it. And if you like it, you have to admit that you don't really want it to change. Which is why blame just gets you more of the same.

3. Pretend You Work at Target

Sometimes, I look at my bad childhood like it's an unruly customer and I'm working customer service the day after Christmas. It'll be acting up, moaning and complaining about how hard everything is, and how unfair it all is. I just have to say to it, "Yes, I see you, ma'am. I know you have a problem. But right now I'm busy, so please have a seat. I''ll be with you just as soon as I can." Then I do something productive that will actually change my situation, like go to work.

4. Accept the Fact That Some People Don't Really Want to See You Succeed

This sounds harsh, and it is. But it's true. Some of your family and friends "support" you by cosigning all your b.s. about how hard you have it, because if you succeed, two things will happen: 1) You will leave. And 2) They will be left behind. This doesn't mean you have to get rid of your friends and family, you just have to remember that they love you so much, they're perfectly happy for you to stay exactly where you are right now.

5. Decide to KSA (Kick Some Ass)

When my 13-year-old said he hated science class, I told him that getting a 95 on the test was the equivalent of getting in the face of his least favorite teacher and saying, "Have some!" In other words, kicking ass on the test is just like playing a video game. Needless to say, he's getting As now. Channeling your anger will get you a long, long way in life.

Continued at …   7 Best Pieces of Advice for People Who Want to Move Past a Rotten Childhood – Oprah.com.

When U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden visited China last August, he spent many hours bonding over tea with his Beijing counterpart, Vice President Xi Jinping. At one point in their talks, Xi told Biden that his father—a former vice premier—and relatives had suffered during China’s chaotic Cultural Revolution, a candid acknowledgment that things had gone horribly wrong during the country’s bad old days. The official Chinese interpreter apparently was so flummoxed by Xi’s comment that he never translated it into English, according to an informed source. Such eyebrow-raising candor is rare among Chinese apparatchiks. But “Xi communicates quite easily with foreign leaders,” said one European diplomat who met him last year, “He’s quite critical about the Cultural Revolution, saying there were mistakes made. I found that striking.”

Xi, the heir apparent for China’s top party post and the presidency, is the first among equals in a younger generation of Chinese leaders poised to take center stage during the Communist Party’s massive transfer of power this year. The fresh crop of mandarins is more outspoken, individualistic, and self-promoting than the old crew. They are the nation’s first “modern” politicians and pose a startling contrast to the elder generation of gray, straitlaced bureaucrats. But the fact that Xi and his colleagues are more personality-driven means they are less predictable—and more likely to make waves at home and abroad.

Right now Sinologists are scrutinizing who’s up and who’s down in China because the coming succession will signal a profound generational shift. The so-called Fifth Generation of officials, led by Xi, will move up in what’s slated to be the biggest political turnover in the history of the People’s Republic of China. During this autumn’s 18th Party Congress, more than 60 percent of personnel will change within the 370-member Central Committee. This leadership game of musical chairs also means key players in the nation’s economic and financial administration, foreign policy, public security, and military operations “will be mostly newcomers after 2012,” says Brookings analyst Cheng Li, who specializes in Chinese politics.

Such a massive transition is rare in China—it’s happened only three times since 1949. The first, during the 1960s, ended in purges, widespread persecution of intellectuals, and the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution. The second in the late 1980s unraveled when top leaders disagreed over whether to use force to disperse youthful protesters in Tiananmen Square; bloodshed followed. The most recent shift, when current party head Hu Jintao succeeded Jiang Zemin in 2002, was an impressively stable transfer of power. But that was the Communist Party’s only succession plan that went according to script.

Now, in the run-up to the 2012 transition, the party is composed of two increasingly competitive coalitions, referred to as “populists” and “elitists.” The populists, led by President Hu, rely on a powerful nationwide network of cadres in the Communist Youth League; their policies aim to ameliorate the growing gap between China’s have and have-nots, which is most pronounced in China’s impoverished western regions. Elitists are known for their free-market economic views and favoring coastal export industries; they include many “princelings” like Xi who are offspring of former high-level cadres.

Continued at …   Xi Jinping, China’s Next President – The Daily Beast.

Love, when it involves an initial state of bliss, can later make you feel sick or crazy, whether or not the object of your affection has left your life. Bliss is an emotion that people seek. A surge of extreme pleasure and rapture is felt when it is activated, and you seem to transcend your self or merge with another person. Bliss is often felt as love, sensory or sexual pleasure, anticipation of high excitement, or a meditative state (Ekman, 2003). Perhaps its evolutionary purpose was to attach people together regardless of rational thinking. When a blissful state is experienced, such as in an intense romantic encounter, the craving and need to recreate it can be powerful.

Some people are tempted to compare a current long-term relationship with one that potentially can activate, or has activated, a blissful state involving sensual pleasure. Comparing a person with whom you have had a long-term relationship to someone new, unavailable, or forbidden who activates bliss in you makes an appropriate assessment impossible. Psychophysiological responses that are commonly experienced in those who are possessed by new love include highly pleasurable experiences of euphoria and increased energy (Fisher, 2000). Bliss-triggering attraction is associated with altered brain chemistry such as increased levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, and decreased levels of serotonin, all of which return to normal levels between 6 and 18 months into a relationship (Fisher, 2000; Marazzitti, Akiskal, Rossi, & Cassano, 1999).

Longing to be with the one with whom you anticipate experiencing a blissful state leads to thinking that is obsessive and distracted. I've seen many people in my practice who are lovesick because they cannot be with the object of their passion for any number of reasons. Most of the time it is because the one they profess to love happens not to be the person with whom they are partnered or is someone who is inaccessible at the time.   In such cases, being lovesick is a state of being caught up in the fantasy that the passionate love they experience in stolen moments can exist forever in reality. Stolen moments in a blissful state, such as in an affair, simply create physiological responses perpetuating a belief that, in the long term, the impossible is probable. Eventually, however, it can make you sick or crazy even though it begins on an intensely positive note.

Although I have not conducted a formal study, decades of clinical experience has convinced me that a variety of situations having to do with blissful love can produce emotional and physical illness. I am most struck by the confluence of autoimmune disorders when people are involved in blissful relationships that are wrought with conflict and ambivalence. At one moment the partner is sacred and the object of a blissful experience, yet the next moment he or she is the trigger for anger and pain. I don't have proof, and such proof would be difficult to obtain, that such love makes people sick. Nevertheless, I have witnessed numerous accounts in my practice of people who become sick from a blissful love relationship that is intermittent or has turned bad, particularly in those who are involved with narcissistic partners.

Addictions and relapse from addictions are not uncommon in those who are in an intensely blissful but conflicted relationship, or in those who are attempting to recover from one. Longing, grief, anger, shame, or guilt represent emotions that may be activated in the aftermath of a relationship that was colorfully painted by bliss. Addictions mask the pain of an ambivalent relationship or from the loss of bliss, and they hide the longing to experience the blissful state again. In her research on the neurological effects of withdrawing from a romantic (blissful) relationship, Helen Fisher (2004) demonstrated that such experiences ignite regions of the brain that are similar to withdrawal from a cocaine addiction.

Continued at … Blissful Love Can Make You Sick or Crazy | Psychology Today.

Out of reach of regular internet searches is the secretive online world known as the 'dark web' – anonymous, virtually untraceable global networks used by political activists and criminals alike.

"You have the availability of multiple dealers so you can compare products – and customers can review the dealer's product, too."

American student, David – not his real name – explains why he chooses to buy illegal drugs on the so-called 'dark web'.

"You don't have to go in front of a street dealer, where there might be a risk of violence," he adds.

And it is not just drugs which are available on this online black market. Fake passports, guns – even child pornography.

Anonymous drug dealers

The dark web is facilitated by a global network of computer users who believe the internet should operate beyond the supervision of law enforcement agencies.

It allows users like David, and those who sell him drugs, to remain anonymous. Users often do not know the real identity of the fellow users they are dealing with, and it is very difficult – although not impossible – for authorities to track them.

5 live Investigates spoke online with a number of anonymous dark web users.

One told the programme "I feel much safer [online] than doing transactions in the real world. I used to sell drugs in the real world. Nowadays I almost strictly use the dark web for any drug transaction."

Another said: "If you're young and trying to find a contact for drugs harder than marijuana it is practically impossible without risking exposure and arrest."

After a wait of around 3 weeks a package arrived in the post with a Spanish postmark. Concealed between two thin strips of cardboard was a white powder.

Analytical Services International, at St George's University of London examined the drugs.

The lab test proved the powder was DMT – and that the dark web works.

We have no idea who sent the drugs to us. They have now been destroyed by the lab as possession of DMT can lead to a jail sentence of up to seven years.

Dealers of DMT can face a maximum life term in prison.

But what is being done to police the criminal activity that takes place on the dark web?

Continued at …       www.bbc.co.uk

The Wreck of the Costa ConcordiaThe sight of a giant cruise ship, capsized and half-submerged off a rocky Italian shoreline is destined to be one of the enduring images of this new century.  the fifth estates Bob McKeown brings the inside story of disaster and death, from the scene of the tragedy.Featuring previously unseen video combined with the first-hand accounts of Canadian survivors and the rescuers who helped them, the fifth estate presents an incredibly dramatic minute-by-minute reconstruction of The Wreck of the Costa Concordia. Theres the local politician who rushed aboard and stayed to the very last — even as other crew members departed in droves around him. Then theres the ships doctor, who had had growing misgivings about the captain – he treated the injured and witnessed the panic and confusion as people scrambled for safety. There are also survivors stories never told before, and sobering interviews with two sea captains who question the handling of the crisis from the beginning. In the wake of the disaster, urgent questions remain: just how viable are the massive cruise ships which ply the worlds oceans carrying thousands and thousands of passengers? And are the safety and evacuation standards adequate — or, more to the point, are they even achievable, given modern day passenger loads?

via The Wreck of the Costa Concordia – the fifth estate.

MS Costa Concordia (Italian pronunciation: [ˈkɔsta konˈkɔrdja]) is a Concordia class cruise ship operated by Costa Crociere, owned by British-American Carnival Corporation. She was built at Fincantieri’s Sestri Ponente yards in Italy. The name Concordia was intended to express the wish for “continuing harmony, unity, and peace between European nations.”^[3]

Costa Concordia is the first of the Concordia class cruise ships, followed by sister ships Costa Serena, Costa Pacifica, Costa Favolosa and Costa Fascinosa, and Carnival Splendor built for Carnival Cruise Lines. When the 114,137 GTCosta Concordia and her sisters entered service, they were among the largest ships built in Italy until the construction of the 130,000 GT Dream class cruise ships.

On Friday 13 January 2012 Costa Concordia struck a rock in the Tyrrhenian Sea just off the shore of Isola del Giglio, near the western coast of Italy.^[4][5] This tore a 160 ft long gash in her hull; with water flooding in and listing, she sailed to shallow water nearby where she grounded and capsized.^[6][7] All but 32 of the 3,229 passengers and 1,023 crew were saved.

As of 26 January 2012 the ship was lying on her side on an underwater ledge with most of her structure above water, and in danger of shifting and sinking. Industry experts believe that the ship may be a constructive total loss.

Click here to view the embedded video.

INMATE number 61727054, known to the world as Bernie Madoff, is serving a 150-year sentence in a prison in North Carolina, and is one of the world’s most reviled men. For many, he embodies the greed, roguishness and deceit that caused the financial system to implode in 2008. He confessed in December of that year to operating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, the largest in history, but few really understand why he did it or when it began.In “The Wizard of Lies”, Diana Henriques, who covered the Madoff scandal for the New York Times, offers a riveting history of Mr Madoff’s shady dealings and the shattering consequences of his theft. Mr Madoff grew up in Queens. His father’s small business ventures repeatedly failed. Determined to be a success himself, and too proud or afraid to disappoint others a fatal flaw, it would turn out, his first fraud dates back to 1962, when he was managing money for about 20 clients. Mr Madoff invested their money in risky stocks that went belly up. Instead of owning up, he borrowed $30,000 to buy back their shares, erasing the losses and allowing him to keep up the impression he was a brilliant money-manager. It set a pattern. Mr Madoff’s Ponzi scheme probably began after the 1987 stockmarket crash, which prompted investors to withdraw billions from his fund. He used his new investors’ money to pay out the old.

The fraud was especially jarring because Mr Madoff was the consummate Wall Street insider, writes Ms Henriques. He served as chairman of NASDAQ and was on the board of governors for the National Association of Securities Dealers. He saw the opportunity to speed up trading early on, and pushed for automated stock quotes. When the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) had to abandon its downtown offices after the September 11th 2001 attacks, FINRA’s legal team worked out of Mr Madoff’s offices.

His illegal activities were nearly uncovered many times. After numerous tips the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigated him. But, despite hours spent poring through his fabricated trading records, they found nothing. Fraud at another hedge fund, Bayou Group, exposed in 2005, prompted investors to withdraw cash from Mr Madoff and left him $92m short. He had only three days to sign up more investors or his fraud would have been detected. He got the money. Unable to find enough cash to meet all the redemptions in the crash of 2008, he finally confessed to his family about what he had done, and his sons turned him in.

Mr Madoff claimed he pulled off this massive fraud alone, but this seems unlikely. Who else knew? Several of Mr Madoff’s employees falsified records of non-existent trading activity and will probably spend their lives in jail. Jeffry Picower, one of his longtime investors, may have also suspected it. He had been the victim of a Ponzi scheme before but, before he died, he made sure he was one of Mr Madoff’s largest beneficiaries. Last December his widow reached a $7.2 billion settlement with the victims. Her husband, she insisted, knew nothing about the fraud.

via Bernie Madoff: Lord of the lies | The Economist.

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