Panda bites student seeking a hug
BEIJING (AP) -- A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear's enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday.
Don't be deceived. Pandas might look cute, but they're not to be trifled with.
Don't be deceived. Pandas might look cute, but they're not to be trifled with.
The student was visiting Qixing Park with classmates on Friday when he jumped the 6.5-foot (2-meter) high fence around the panda's habitat, said the park employee, who refused to give his name.
The park in Guilin, a popular tourist town in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, houses a small zoo and a panda exhibit. It was virtually deserted when the student scaled the fence surrounding the panda, named Yang Yang, the employee said.
He said the student was bitten on the arms and legs. Two foreign visitors who saw the attack ran to get help from workers at a nearby refreshment stand, who notified park officials, the employee said.
The student was pale as he was taken away by medics but appeared clearheaded, he said.
"Yang Yang was so cute, and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn't expect he would attack," the 20-year-old student, surnamed Liu, said in a local hospital, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
Liu underwent surgery Friday evening and was out of danger but will remain in the hospital for several days, Xinhua said.
Yang Yang, who was flown to Guilin last year from Sichuan province, was behaving normally on Saturday and did not seem to suffer any negative psychological effects, the park employee said.
He said it was not clear whether the facility would add more signs around the enclosure or put more fences up.
"We cannot make it like a prison. We already have signs up warning people not to climb in," he said. "There are no fences along roads but people know not to cross if there are cars. This is basic knowledge."
Pandas, which generally have a public image as cute, gentle creatures, are nonetheless wild animals that can be violent when provoked or startled.
Last year, a panda at the Beijing Zoo attacked a teenager, ripping chunks out of his legs, when he jumped a barrier while the bear was being fed.
The same panda was in the news in 2006 when he bit a drunk tourist who broke into his enclosure and tried to hug him while he was asleep. The tourist retaliated by biting the bear in the back.
Fla. teen commits suicide with live Web audience
By RASHA MADKOUR, Associated Press Writer Rasha Madkour, Associated Press Writer – Sat Nov 22, 12:13 am ET
MIAMI – A college student committed suicide by taking a drug overdose in front of a live webcam as some computer users egged him on, others tried to talk him out of it, and another messaged OMG in horror when it became clear it was no joke. Some watchers contacted the Web site to notify police, but by the time officers entered Abraham Biggs' home — a scene also captured on the Internet — it was too late.
Biggs, a 19-year-old Broward College student who suffered from what his family said was bipolar disorder, or manic depression, lay dead on his bed in his father's Pembroke Pines house Wednesday afternoon, the camera still running 12 hours after Biggs announced his intentions online around 3 a.m.
It was unclear how many people watched it unfold.
Biggs was not the first person to commit suicide with a webcam rolling. But the drawn-out drama — and the reaction of those watching — was seen as an extreme example of young people's penchant for sharing intimate details about themselves over the Internet.
Biggs' family was infuriated that no one acted sooner to save him, neither the viewers nor the Web site that hosted the live video, Justin.tv. The Web site shows a video image, with a space alongside where computer users can instantly post comments.
Only when police arrived did the Web feed stop, "so that's 12 hours of watching," said the victim's sister, Rosalind Bigg. "They got hits, they got viewers, nothing happened for hours."
She added: "It didn't have to be."
An autopsy concluded Biggs died from a combination of opiates and benzodiazepine, which his family said was prescribed for his bipolar disorder.
Biggs announced his plans to kill himself over a Web site for bodybuilders, authorities said. But some users told investigators they did not take him seriously because he had threatened suicide on the site before.
Some members of his virtual audience encouraged him to do it, others tried to talk him out of it, and some discussed whether he was taking a dose big enough to kill himself, said Wendy Crane, an investigator with the Broward County medical examiner's office.
A computer user who claimed to have watched said that after swallowing some pills, Biggs went to sleep and appeared to be breathing for a few hours while others cracked jokes.
Someone notified the moderator of the bodybuilding site, who traced Biggs' location and called police, Crane said.
As police entered the room, the audience's reaction was filled with Internet shorthand: "OMFG," one wrote, meaning "Oh, my God." Others, either not knowing what they were seeing, or not caring, wrote "lol," which means "laughing out loud," and "hahahah."
An online video purportedly from Biggs' webcam shows a gun-wielding officer entering a bedroom, where a man is lying on a bed, his face turned away from the camera. The officer begins to examine him, as the camera lens is covered. Authorities could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video, though it matched their description of what occurred.
Montana Miller, an assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said Biggs' very public suicide was not shocking, given the way teenagers chronicle every facet of their lives on sites like Facebook and MySpace.
"If it's not recorded or documented then it doesn't even seem worthwhile," she said. "For today's generation it might seem, `What's the point of doing it if everyone isn't going to see it?'"
She likened Biggs' death to other public ways of committing suicide, like jumping off a bridge.
Crane said she knows of a case in which a Florida man shot himself in the head in front of an online audience, though she didn't know how much viewers saw. In Britain last year, a man hanged himself while chatting online.
In a statement, Justin.tv CEO Michael Seibel said: "We regret that this has occurred and want to respect the privacy of the broadcaster and his family during this time."
The Web site would not say how many people were watching the broadcast. The site as a whole had 672,000 unique visitors in October, according to Nielsen.
Miami lawyer William Hill said there is probably nothing that could be done legally to those who watched and did not act. As for whether the Web site could be held liable, Hill said there doesn't seem to be much of a case for negligence.
"There could conceivably be some liability if they knew this was happening and they had some ability to intervene and didn't take action," said Hill, who does business litigation and has represented a number of Internet-based clients. But "I think it would be a stretch."
Condolences poured into Biggs' MySpace page, where the mostly unsmiling teen is seen posing in a series of pictures with various young women. On the bodybuilding Web site, Biggs used the screen name CandyJunkie. His Justin.tv alias was "feels_like_ecstacy."
Rosalind Bigg described her brother as an outgoing person who struck up conversations with Starbucks baristas and enjoyed taking his young nieces to Chuck E. Cheese. He was health-conscious and exercised but was not a bodybuilder, she said.
"This is very, very sudden and unexpected for us," the sister said. "It boggles the mind. We don't understand."
Rare blood transfusion attempted on tiger cub
NEW DELHI – Veterinarians carried out a rare blood transfusion in an attempt to save a 7-month-old wild tiger that had been attacked and beaten by angry villagers in central India. The female cub received the emergency treatment late Sunday after blood taken from captive adults was airlifted to the zoo where the cub is being cared for, said Bimal Majumdar, the chief wildlife officer in the region.
He said it was the first time a transfusion had been given to a tiger in India.
The cub, which doctors named Juhi after a fragrant white flower native to India, was still in serious condition Monday at the zoo in the city of Nagpur, some 530 miles southeast of New Delhi, he said.
India's wild tiger population has plummeted to just some 1,500 — down from about 3,600 six years ago and an estimated 100,000 a century ago. Shrinking habitats have brought them into conflict with farmers and poachers have killed them for their pelts and body parts, which are highly prized in traditional Chinese medicine.
Juhi and her sister were rescued two weeks ago from villagers who tried to kill them, fearing they would go after their children and cattle. The cubs also appear to have been abandoned by their mother.
"The cubs were in bad shape at the time they were rescued. They were starving," said Majumdar. "The villagers had also beaten them with sticks so they were injured as well."
While the other cub Jai, or Victory, responded well after being brought to the zoo, Juhi's condition deteriorated.
On Sunday, veterinarians treating the cat discovered that her hemoglobin levels had suddenly dropped to a dangerously low level and decided the only way to save her was to carry out a blood transfusion.
They sent a request to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai, where doctors tranquilized two healthy adult tigers and drew three-fourths of a pint of blood from each of them. Four hours later the blood reached Nagpur, said Vinery Jangle, the park's head veterinarian.
Jangle, who oversaw the transfusion, said she remained uncertain whether it would prove successful because only rudimentary tests were done to determine whether the donor blood matched Juhi's type.
"The blood grouping procedure is critical, but in India there has been no work done on blood groups. There are no studies on blood types and wild tigers," she said, adding that she was unaware of a transfusion being performed on a tiger elsewhere.
Transfusions for rare animals can be difficult because blood types and antibodies vary from species to species, according to the Web site of Brown University's Division of Biology and Medicine.
While rare, transfusions have been done in the past on turtles, pandas and a baby elephant at Western zoos, which sometimes bank an animals own blood in case it needs a transfusion, the Web site said.
Pandurang Munde, the Mumbai park's director, said it was worth the risk.
"We needed to save the young one's life. If the hemoglobin was low, there was only one remedy: blood transfusion," he said.
The cub was on a saline drip and cameras had been installed in her enclosure so they could monitor her around the clock, said Majumdar.
"She is still not in good shape," he said. "So we have our fingers crossed."
Unhappy People Watch Lots More TV
Unhappy people glue themselves to the television 30 percent more than happy people.
The finding, announced on Thursday, comes from a survey of nearly 30,000 American adults conducted between 1975 and 2006 as part of the General Social Survey.
While happy people reported watching an average of 19 hours of television per week, unhappy people reported 25 hours a week. The results held even after taking into account education, income, age and marital status.
In addition, happy individuals were more socially active, attended more religious services, voted more and read a newspaper more often than their less-chipper counterparts.
The researchers are not sure, though, whether unhappiness leads to more television-watching or more viewing leads to unhappiness.
In fact, people say they like watching television: Past research has shown that when people watch television they enjoy it. In these studies, participants reported that on a scale from 0 (dislike) to 10 (greatly enjoy), TV-watching was nearly an 8.
But perhaps the high from watching television doesn't last.
"These conflicting data suggest that TV may provide viewers with short-run pleasure, but at the expense of long-term malaise," said researcher John Robinson, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, College Park.
In this scenario, even the happiest campers could turn into Debbie-downers if they continue to stare at the boob-tube. The researchers suggest that over time, television-viewing could push out other activities that do have more lasting benefits. Exercise and sex come to mind, as do parties and other forms of socialization known to have psychological benefits.
Or, maybe television is simply a refuge for people who are already unhappy.
"TV is not judgmental nor difficult, so people with few social skills or resources for other activities can engage in it," Robinson and UM colleague Steven Martin write in the December issue of the journal Social Indicators Research.
They add, "Furthermore, chronic unhappiness can be socially and personally debilitating and can interfere with work and most social and personal activities, but even the unhappiest people can click a remote and be passively entertained by a TV."
The researchers say follow-up studies are needed to tease out the relationship between television and happiness.
Dunwoody becomes first female four-star general
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer Robert Burns, Ap Military Writer – Fri Nov 14, 5:53 pm ET
Dunwoody becomes first female four-star general Play Video AP – Dunwoody becomes first female four-star general
* First Female Four-Star General Slideshow: First Female Four-Star General
* Dunwoody becomes first female four-star general Play Video Video: Dunwoody becomes first female four-star general AP
Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody gives a thumbs up to recognize her father, retired Brig. AP – Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody gives a thumbs up to recognize her father, retired Brig. General Harold H. Dunwoody, …
WASHINGTON – Call it breaking the brass ceiling. Ann E. Dunwoody, after 33 years in the Army, ascended Friday to a peak never before reached by a woman in the U.S. military: four-star general. At an emotional promotion ceremony, Dunwoody looked back on her years in uniform and said it was a credit to the Army — and a great surprise to her — that she would make history in a male-dominated military.
"Thirty-three years after I took the oath as a second lieutenant, I have to tell you this is not exactly how I envisioned my life unfolding," she told a standing-room-only auditorium crowd. "Even as a young kid, all I ever wanted to do was teach physical education and raise a family.
"It was clear to me that my Army experience was just going to be a two-year detour en route to my fitness profession," she added. "So when asked, `Ann, did you ever think you were going to be a general officer, to say nothing about a four-star?' I say, `Not in my wildest dreams.'
"There is no one more surprised than I — except, of course, my husband. You know what they say, `Behind every successful woman there is an astonished man.' "
In an Associated Press interview after the ceremony, Gen. George Casey, the Army's chief of staff, said that if there is one thing that distinguishes Dunwoody it is her lifetime commitment to excelling in uniform.
"If you talk to leaders around the Army and say, `What do you think about Ann Dunwoody?' almost unanimously you get: `She's a soldier,'" Casey said, adding that he admires the fact that, "she's a soldier first."
Dunwoody, 55, hails from a family of military men dating back to the 1800s. Her father, 89-year-old Hal Dunwoody — a decorated veteran of World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam — was in the audience, along with the service chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, plus the Joint Chiefs chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen.
Dunwoody, whose husband, Craig Brotchie, served for 26 years in the Air Force, choked up at times during a speech in which she said she only recently realized how much her accomplishment means to others.
"This promotion has taken me back in time like no other event in my entire life," she said. "And I didn't appreciate the enormity of the events until tidal waves of cards, letters, and e-mails started coming my way.
"And I've heard from men and women, from every branch of service, from every region of our country, and every corner of the world. I've heard from moms and dads who see this promotion as a beacon of home for their own daughters and after affirmation that anything is possible through hard work and commitment.
"And I've heard from women veterans of all wars, many who just wanted to say congratulations; some who just wanted to say thanks; and still others who just wanted to say they were so happy this day had finally come."
In remarks opening Dunwoody's Pentagon ceremony, Defense Secretary Robert Gates underscored the tradition of military service in Dunwoody's family, spanning five generations, beginning with her great-grandfather, Brig. Gen. Henry Harrison Chase Dunwoody, who graduated from West Point in 1866 and was the chief signal officer in Cuba from 1898 to 1901.
"As she's been known to say, olive drab runs in her veins," Gates said.
Later Friday, at Fort Belvoir, Va. — her birthplace — Dunwoody was sworn in as commander of the Army Materiel Command, responsible for equipping, outfitting and arming all U.S. soldiers across the globe. Just five months ago, she became the first female deputy commander there.
Dunwoody was nominated by President George W. Bush in June for promotion to four-star rank, and she was confirmed by the Senate in July.
There are 21 female general officers in the Army — all but four at the one-star rank of brigadier. It was not until 1970 that the Army had its first one-star: Anna Mae Hays, chief of the Army Nurse Corps.
Women now make up about 14 percent of the active-duty Army and are allowed to serve in a wide variety of assignments. They are still excluded from units designed primarily to engage in direct combat, such as infantry and tank units, but their opportunities have expanded over the past two decades.
At a Pentagon news conference following her promotion ceremony, Dunwoody was asked whether she believed women should be allowed to serve in the infantry and whether women's role in the Army should otherwise be expanded.
"I don't have a personal view on it," she replied. "I think we have a law that precludes that (serving in the infantry) right now, and we are in compliance with that law. If that law needs to be revisited, I think we have a deliberate process to do that."
Dunwoody received her Army commission after graduating from the State University of New York in 1975.
Her first assignment was to Fort Sill, as supply platoon leader in June 1976, and she remained at Sill in various positions until she was sent to quartermaster officer school at Fort Lee, Va., in July 1980.
She later served in Germany and Saudi Arabia.
After graduating from the Command and General Staff College in 1987, she was assigned to Fort Bragg, N.C., where she became the 82nd Airborne Division's first female battalion commander.
She has numerous decorations, including the Distinguished Service Medal and Defense Superior Service Medal.
(This version CORRECTS Corrects year of great-grandfather's West Point graduation in 13th graf to 1866 sted 1966. AP Video.)
CrossFit: The Fast, Furious Workout Craze
Can CrossFit whip you into shape in just 15 minutes a session—safely?
By Sally Wadyka for MSN Health & Fitness
Fitness for All // CrossFit (C) Ben Kerns
If your gym suddenly looks like a cross between a gymnastics studio and a Marine Corps boot camp, chances are it's offering CrossFit classes. This fitness craze that's swept the nation in recent years was developed by a former gymnast in Santa Cruz, California, named Greg Glassman. The grassroots movement started with Glassman's rudimentary Web site on which he posted a daily workout routine (officially known as the "workout of the day" or simply the "WOD"). A dedicated following of police officers, firefighters and military types soon discovered the workouts, and from there, the wave just kept growing. Now, CrossFitters (as devotees are called) number in the thousands, and gyms across the country are offering this intense workout program.
"The workouts include elements of Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics, and track and field done in combinations that increase core strength and conditioning," explains Jake Platt, owner of Northwest CrossFit in Seattle. There are about 50 basic exercises that are mixed and matched to create the "WOD," and every day is different. "Routine is the enemy," says Platt, an N.A.S.M. Certified Personal Trainer. "We want to keep your body guessing and make sure that no adaption is happening that will lead you to plateau and stop seeing progress."
That variety is one of the biggest selling points of the program. "I had been going to the gym for about six months, and I was just bored with it," says Roger Parks, a software engineer in Seattle who discovered CrossFit four months ago. He has now traded his hour of treadmill time for a high-intensity CrossFit session four to five days a week. "Now I crank through my workout in 20 minutes and then I'm done for the day," says Parks. He also supplements his workouts with biking and running, and has seen his flag football and soccer playing improve thanks to the strength and stamina he's gained doing CrossFit.
Efficiency, intensity—and safety concerns
CrossFit workouts are modeled on full-body functional movements—like lifting, pulling, twisting, running, crawling and pushing. And because every move is designed to incorporate the entire body, a full workout can be accomplished in an efficient 15- to 20-minute session. The other trademark of the sessions is their intensity. "We're looking to get people to move as quickly as they possibly can through the entire workout," says Platt.
Critics of the workouts (and even some CrossFitters themselves) worry about the high intensity of the moves. "You're doing things fast with a bunch a weight, and I can see how that could be dangerous if it's done wrong," admits Parks. To avoid any potential risk, Parks started slowly. At the CrossFit gym he attends, the "WOD" comes in two versions—the prescribed routine and a modified version of it. Trainer Jake Platt agrees that there could be potential for injury if the moves aren't done perfectly. "Safety is our number-one concern, so in the beginning we work on very basic exercises and make sure people are learning perfect form and movement," he says. That's especially important considering the weights that are used in the exercises (for example, a 20-pound "wall ball" for men and a 12-pound one for women, or a 75-pound Olympic bar for men and 50-pound one for women).
OMg. I'm going to die of cuteness. 
Surfing net alters the way brain works
CANBERRA: The internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing that this is an
evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order.
Gary Small, a neuroscientist at UCLA in California who specializes in brain function, has found through studies that Internet searching and text messaging has made brains more adept at filtering information and making snap decisions.
But while technology can accelerate learning and boost creativity it can have drawbacks as it can create internet addicts whose only friends are virtual and has sparked a dramatic rise in Attention Deficit Disorder diagnoses.
Small, however, argues that the people who will come out on top in the next generation will be those with a mixture of technological and social skills.
"We're seeing an evolutionary change. The people in the next generation who are really going to have the edge are the ones who master the technological skills and also face-to-face skills," Small said in a telephone interview.
"They will know when the best response to an email or instant message is to talk rather than sit and continue to email."
In his newly released fourth book 'iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind', Small looks at how technology has altered the way young minds develop, function and interpret information.
Small, the director of the Memory & Aging Research Center at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior and the Center on Aging at UCLA, said the brain was very sensitive to the changes in the environment such as those brought by technology.
He said a study of 24 adults as they used the web found that experienced internet users showed double the activity in areas of the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning as internet beginners.
"The brain is very specialized in its circuitry and if you repeat mental tasks over and over it will strengthen certain neural circuits and ignore others," said Small.
"We are changing the environment. The average young person now spends nine hours a day exposing their brain to technology. Evolution is an advancement from moment to moment and what we are seeing is technology affecting our evolution."
Small said this multi-tasking could cause problems.
He said the tech-savvy generation, whom he calls "digital natives", are always scanning for the next bit of new information which can create stress and even damage neural networks.
"There is also the big problem of neglecting human contact skills and losing the ability to read emotional expressions and body language," he said.
Angelina: Twins' Personalities Are Starting to 'Shine'
By Sara Hammel
Originally posted Sunday November 09, 2008 07:00 PM EST
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's twins may be only four months old, but they're already characters of their own.
"They're great. They're still so little, but they do [have their own personalities]," Jolie told reporters at the DVD launch for Kung Fu Panda and the premiere of its companion adventure story, Secrets of the Furious Five in Hollywood on Sunday.
Knox and Vivienne are "starting to get very smiley," their proud mom said. "They're at that [stage] where their personality really starts to shine."
As for the rest of the brood, they share a love of their mom's work. "I think it's a great film, and it's brought a lot of joy to children – and to my children, absolutely," Jolie told PEOPLE at the event. "My kids love it. They're very very proud, they've got mom [Tigress] dolls."
While Jolie – looking slim in a long-sleeved black dress and beige pumps with spiked heels – didn't let on whether she'd be attending any of President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural balls in January, she did say she was happy with the election last Tuesday.
"I was pleased to see how excited so many people were," she told PEOPLE.
At the premiere, held at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, furry Panda characters wandered around and danced while costars Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman chatted with fans and press. Jolie and the rest of the cast were on hand also as DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg presented a check for $1 million to the Conservation International in support of their efforts for the preservation of pandas in their natural habitat.
Jolie told PEOPLE shortly before the presentation, "We are so privileged in everything we get to do in this business, and the amount of money this film has made. To be able to share that and do some good always feels good."
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