Dad Grounded After Kid Doodles on Passport

Add this to the "Things you just can't do" section of your vacation itinerary. A Chinese family, mother, father and four-year-old son, were on a vacation trip to South Korea. Well, the dear little four-year-old apparently got bored and decided to pass the time by doodling in his coloring book. But, since his mom didn't pack the book with his travel things, he decided to use the next best thing, his father's passport. He drew some really nice pictures of animals and made interesting alterations to his father's passport picture, in ink, with a permanent black pen. A lot of scribbles and some added flair too, by accentuated some features on his dad's face, and he also gave his dad, known only as Chen, a beard and a little more hair.

Well, apparently the uniformed authorities at the Korean passport check-in station weren't at all amused. None of them thought the alterations were as cute as the little boy did, and so the guy is now stuck in South Korea because of "unrecognizable documentation." 

It's not likely he'll be able to travel back home to China, at least not as originally scheduled. Sounds like he might be spending the rest of his holiday on the phone to the Chinese embassy.

30 Percent of World Population Now Fat!

More than 2 billion people on our planet are now considered heavier than they ought to be, and no country has been able to curb obesity rates in the last three decades, according to a new global analysis. The highest rates are in the Middle East and North Africa, where nearly 60 percent of men and 65 percent of women are heavy. The U.S. has about 13 percent of the world's fat population, a greater percentage than any other country. China and India combined have about 15 percent. "It's pretty grim," said Christopher Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, who led the study. He and colleagues reviewed more than 1,700 studies covering 188 countries from 1980 to 2013. "When we realized that not a single country has had a significant decline in obesity, that tells you how hard a challenge this is."

Murray said there was a strong link between income and obesity; as people get richer, their waistlines also tend to start bulging. He said scientists have noticed accompanying spikes in diabetes and that rates of cancers linked to weight, like pancreatic cancer, are also rising. The new report was paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and published online Thursday in the journal, Lancet.

"Our children are getting fatter," Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general, said bluntly during a speech at the agency's annual meeting in Geneva. "Parts of the world are quite literally eating themselves to death." Earlier this year, WHO said that no more than 5 percent of your daily calories should come from sugar. "Modernization has not been good for health," said Syed Shah, an obesity expert at United Arab Emirates University, who found obesity rates have jumped five times in the last 20 years even in a handful of remote Himalayan villages in Pakistan. His research was presented this week at a conference in Bulgaria. "Years ago, people had to walk for hours if they wanted to make a phone call," he said. "Now everyone has a cellphone."

Shah also said the villagers no longer have to rely on their own farms for food. "There are roads to bring in their processed foods and the people don't have to slaughter their own animals for meat and oil," he said. "No one knew about Coke and Pepsi 20 years ago. Now it's everywhere." In Britain, the independent health watchdog issued new advice Wednesday recommending that heavy people be sent to free weight-loss classes to drop about 3 percent of their weight. It reasoned that losing just a few pounds improves health and is more realistic. About two in three adults in the U.K. are overweight, making it the fattest country in Western Europe.

"This is not something where you can just wake up one morning and say, 'I am going to lose 10 pounds,'" said Mike Kelly, the agency's public health director, in a statement. "It takes resolve and it takes encouragement."

Species Going Extinct Far Faster Than Before

The world is on the brink of a great extinction according to a new study by biologists. Numerous species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at least 1,000 times faster than they did before humans arrived on the scene. There have been five previous "mass extinctions" dating back to hundreds of millions of years ago, and now biologists are saying the world is on the brink of a sixth one.

The study looks at past and present rates of extinction and finds a lower rate in the past than scientists had thought. Species are now disappearing from Earth about 10 times faster than biologists had believed, said the study's lead author, biologist Stuart Pimm of Duke University. "We are on the verge of the sixth extinction," Pimm said from research at the Dry Tortugas. "Whether we avoid it or not will depend on our actions." The work, published Thursday by the journal Science, was hailed as a landmark study by outside experts.

Pimm's study focused on the rate, not the number, of species disappearing from Earth. It calculated a "death rate" of how many species become extinct each year out of 1 million species. In 1995, Pimm found that the pre-human rate of extinctions on Earth was about 1. But taking into account new research, Pimm and his colleagues refined that background rate to about 0.1.

Numerous factors are combining to make species disappear much faster than before, said Pimm and co-author Clinton Jenkins of the Institute of Ecological Research in Brazil. But the No. 1 issue is habitat loss. Species are finding no place to live as more places are built up and altered by humans. Add to that invasive species crowding out native species, climate change affecting where species can survive and overfishing, Pimm said. 

The buffy-tufted-ear marmoset (pictured above) is a good example, Jenkins said. Its habitat has shrunk because of development in Brazil, and a competing marmoset has taken over where it lives. Now it's on the international vulnerable list. Five times before, a vast majority of the world's life has disappeared in what have been called mass extinctions, often associated with giant meteor strikes. About 66 million years ago, one such extinction killed off the dinosaurs and three out of four species on Earth. Around 252 million years ago, the Great Dying wiped out about 90 percent of the world's species.

Pimm and Jenkins said there is hope. Both said the use of smartphones and applications such as iNaturalist will help ordinary people and biologists find species in trouble, they said. Once biologists know where endangered species are, they can try to save habitats and use captive breeding and other techniques to save the species, they said.

One success story is the golden lion tamarin. Decades ago the tiny primates were thought to be extinct because of habitat loss, but they were then found in remote parts of Brazil and bred in captivity, and biologists helped set aside new forests for them to live in, Jenkins said. "Now there are more tamarins than there are places to put them," he said.

SpaceX Unveils Spacecraft to Ferry Astronauts

SpaceX, the California company that has been flying unmanned capsules to the International Space Station, has unveiled a spacecraft designed to ferry up to seven astronauts to low-Earth orbit and, according to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the new Dragon V2 spacecraft will lower the cost of going to space. The futuristic, cone-headed craft, dubbed Dragon V2, features landing legs that pop out and a propulsion system designed to land almost anywhere "with the accuracy of a helicopter."

The technology would enable rapid reloading and reusability of the spacecraft, according to Musk. He noted that in the past, many rockets and space craft return to Earth in a fireball, rendering them unusable. "You can just reload, propel it and fly again," Musk said. "This is extremely important for revolutionizing access to space because as long as we continue to throw away rockets and space crafts, we will never truly have access to space. It'll always be incredibly expensive."

"If an aircraft is thrown away with each flight, nobody will be able to fly or very few (can)," he said. "The same is true with rockets and spacecraft." The capsule also features a bright, sleek interior with swing-up computer screens at the control station, a two-level seating system to accommodate up to seven astronauts and large windows for them to marvel at Earth's curvature. The cone-shaped cap can open to allow for the manned craft to dock at the Space Station on its own. The spacecraft also has more powerful engines, better heat shields, landing legs and backup parachutes to ensure a soft landing. In a NASA briefing with reporters last year, Musk said Dragon V2 would look futuristic like an "alien spaceship" and promised "it's going to be cool."

Since the shuttle fleet retired in 2011, NASA has depended on Russian rockets to transport astronauts to orbit and back, paying nearly $71 million per seat. That agreement is now considered in jeopardy because of the US reaction to the recent crises in Ukraine. NASA has said it wants U.S. companies to fill the void by 2017 and has doled out seed money to spur innovation. SpaceX — short for Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — has made four cargo runs to the giant orbiting outpost some 200 miles above Earth. Just last month, its Dragon capsule splashed into the Pacific, returning nearly 2 tons of science experiments and old equipment.

Thursday's event included a dramatic unveiling of the new spacecraft, which stands about 15 feet tall, with a rounded, cone-shaped top. At one point, Musk even went inside and sat in one of its four reclined seats. While such an undertaking likely has been in the works for some time, it comes at a pivotal time for the International Space Station and space travel.

White House Reveals Top CIA Spy to Journalists

Our White House has screwed up again. This time, in case you haven't already heard, they accidentally revealed the name of our top CIA spy in Afghanistan to a group of some 6,000 journalists. Well, somebody in the group noticed the error, Scott Wilson of The Washington Post, and he did what any red-blooded American should do, he told them about it. Oops, they said! And then what did they do? They issued the exact same list but with the CIA spy's name deleted. Oh, sure, like wouldn't that have made the error a little obvious? Like one reporter said, it was sort-of like "trying to un-ring the bell."

The official's name, identified as "chief of station," was included in the White House press office's basic list of senior officials President Obama met with during his surprise visit to Afghanistan on Sunday. The list of 15 names apparently came first from the military, and was circulated by the White House press office. 

"There's simply no excuse for it," John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, saying the blunder left him "speechless. In a White House that is filled with press flacks ... was there no one who understood the significance of what they were doing?" he said. "Somebody's head should roll for this. ... This is utter incompetence." 

Wilson says it appeared that some "very junior people" were just trying to follow an order without realizing the "ramifications." He also said he wishes he had caught the mistake before sending out the list in the pool report. "I wish I had, I regret it," he reportedly said. Oh, by the way, they also did the same thing before, back in 2003, when they exposed another CIA agent.

Mystery Giver Leaves $6000 - More to Come

So there's this mystery guy out in the San Francisco Bay area who apparently made a lot of money in real estate over the years and now wants to have some fun giving at least some of it away. And he's chosen a really cool way to do it. Last Friday he launched what's being called a "scavenger hunt" on Twitter. What he does is to fill up envelopes full of money and hide them in oddball places around town. Then he goes on the Internet and tweets clues and photos of where he stuck the envelopes.

So far, some tens of thousands have been running around looking for the envelopes which are taped to park benches, fire hydrants and even parking meters. The anonymous donor is only known by his Twitter handle of @HiddenCash and hasn't revealed who he is or how much more he's going to distribute. He has, however, revealed to reporters via email that he's between 35 and 45 years old, and that he made his money investing in real estate. He calls the scavenger hunt a social experiment, and says he hopes people will take the money and pay it forward.

So far, nearly $6,000 has been found and the guy says he plans to give away upwards of $1,000 a day for the foreseeable future with additional distributions in Los Angeles this coming weekend and New York soon after. How cool can that be?

Wikipedia 90% Wrong in New Medical Survey

There's a new study out by a rather prestigious medical journal reporting that if you use Wikipedia to check on a costly medical condition, 9 out of 10 times the information is going to be wrong, or at least full of errors and inaccuracies. Campbell University scientists reported in the current issue of The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, that they found “many errors” in Wikipedia articles concerning the 10 costliest medical conditions. 

The report cross-checked Wikipedia entries on coronary disease, lung cancer, hypertension and back pain, among other ailments, against the latest research from peer-reviewed journals. Nine out of 10 entries analyzed on the crowd-sourced encyclopedia contained assertions that were contradicted by the peer-reviewed sources. Only the entry on concussions escaped the review error free. “Health care professionals, trainees, and patients should use caution when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care,” wrote the study’s authors. The basis of the study challenges the quality of content found in Wikipedia and builds on previous studies that have shown widespread use by physicians and medical students of Web tools including Wikipedia, to find information for patient care. 

The authors laid particular stress on medical professionals; a recent study found that 50 percent of physicians admitted using Wikipedia as a reference source. The findings of their study demonstrate that assertions (facts) presented in Wikipedia for these medical conditions were mostly in discordance with peer-reviewed literature. These results cast serious doubt on Wikipedia's authority as a medical reference repository. Overall, the study adds credence to the message librarians have heralded: medical professionals should be educated about and engaged in the critical analysis of online information. In other words, information literacy should provide a basis for evidence-based practice.