Planetsave

TORONTO (Reuters Life!) - While adults may relish the gore of Halloween, most children enjoy the night for another reason — the vast amount of candy they receive which is prompting warnings to parents.

With concern growing about rising childhood obesity rates, medical experts advised parents to limit how much candy they allow their children to eat.

“I don’t think the indiscretion of a single day or a couple of days around Halloween would have any measurable impact on that child’s health,” said Dr Michael Kramer, a child health and development expert at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

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Happy Halloween Planetsavers! If you’re like me, without fail, you are just now thinking of a Halloween costume for tonight’s festivities. As a woman, you really have only a few options, whore, whore or whore. What’s it going to be, sexy alien version of Alice in Wonderland (Paris Hilton’s Costume choice), sexy bat girl or global warming…aka Hot Earth. Sure men may applaud this, but there’s really a lack of creativity in a simple lack of clothing. This year, I’m going ugly…really ugly. I want to look like a domestic fight gone bad, a zombie past dead and a malnourished vampire all in one.

Regardless of the partying that awaits, we still can have a green Halloween. There are great tips on how to recyle our ghoulish pumpkins long after the holiday has past. When you toss you Jack-O’-Latern into the garbage it ends up in a landfill spewing out methane instead of simmering in your stove. Here are some great tips to keep your Halloween green, think Pumpkin Ravioli in a sage butter sauce.

Pumpkins are surprisingly versatile and people are being encouraged to get in their kitchens and come up with creative cookery to transform them into soup, cakes, pies and even lasagne.

The shell of the pumpkin, which is inedible, can also be transformed into compost and, by adding a few autumn leaves, can help give your bin the right mix.

Ian Monson, the county council’s cabinet member for environment and waste, said: “When pumpkins are sent to landfill, they break down without any oxygen and create methane - a potent greenhouse gas.

“By having a go at using the pumpkin for cooking, much of the waste is avoided. Composting the rest of the pumpkin at home as well is more good news for the environment, as it creates a useful compost to feed your garden.”

Green county councillor Andrew Boswell said he loves pumpkin soup and also eats the vegetable as a casserole with roasted potatoes and parsnips. He said: “Most years we have about two organic pumpkins and we freeze the flesh outwards. It can last you the whole winter. Pumpkin soup is delicious and very nutritious. I would urge people to make use of their pumpkins after Halloween.”

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Electric Co said it is developing a control panel that should allow homeowners to trim rising utility bills by helping manage power and water consumption.

The “eco-dashboard” will be available in December in new home developments in southern and western U.S. states, areas where power and water supplies are particularly stressed, Juan de Bedout, a renewable energy specialist at GE’s global research center in Niskayuna, New York said late last week.

The panel is designed to show ratepayers how much money they would save if, for example, they pre-cooled or pre-heated their homes before electricity prices went up during periods of peak load, typically in the early evening. They also could set the panel to turn up the air conditioning, or run the clothes drier only when the power price gets below a certain level.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The AIDS virus invaded the United States in about 1969 from Haiti, carried most likely by a single infected immigrant who set the stage for it to sweep the world in a tragic epidemic, scientists said on Monday.

Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist, said the 1969 U.S. entry date is earlier than some experts had believed.

The timeline laid out in the study led by Worobey indicates that HIV infections were occurring in the United States for roughly 12 years before AIDS was first recognized by scientists as a disease in 1981. Many people had died by that point.

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NEW YORK (AP) - Her trip to Rwanda has been postponed, but Paris Hilton is still determined to use her celebrity status for good causes.

“I want to travel the world,” the 26-year-old socialite says in an interview posted on the Web site of the syndicated entertainment TV show “Extra.” “I feel like there’s a lot I can do, and a lot I can do to help.”

The Playing for Good Foundation announced last week that Hilton’s philanthropic trip to Rwanda has been postponed due to restructuring of the children’s charity. On her itinerary: visits to schools and health-care clinics.

Hilton told “Extra” she will now pack her bags for the African country sometime next year.
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CLEVELAND—How can some people live at high altitudes and thrive while others struggle to obtain enough oxygen to function?

The answer for Tibetans who live at altitudes around 14,000 feet is increased nitric oxide (NO) levels. High levels of NO circulate in various forms in the blood and produce the physiological mechanisms that cause the increased blood flow that maintains oxygen delivery despite hypoxia—low levels of oxygen in the ambient air and the bloodstream. Researchers from Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic report that Tibetans have 10 times more NO and have more than double the forearm blood flow of low-altitude dwellers. The findings from a comparison of NO levels in the high and low altitude dwellers are reported in the article, “Higher Blood Flow and Circulating NO Products Offset High-altitude Hypoxia among Tibetans,” in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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Australians face increasingly large-scale health risks from our expanding impact on the natural environment, ranging from increases in weather extremes and dengue fever to obesity, diabetes and mental health.

Twelve of Australia’s top health and medical researchers have contributed to a new report which concludes that rapid environmental and climatic changes pose increasing risks to the health of Australians.

Released today by Research Australia, the ‘Healthy Planet, Places and People’ Report found that:

- Deaths from heart attacks, strokes and respiratory disease, from increases in heatwaves, could double or triple by 2050;

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City may follow an international trend and crack down on plastic shopping bags, seeking to cut their use with a plan officials hope will be a model for other cities.

A proposal introduced on Monday requires stores larger than 5,000 square feet to set up an in-store recycling program and sell reusable bags.

Some 700 food stores plus large retailers such as Target and Home Depot would have to collect used bags and provide a system for turning them over to a manufacturer or to third-party recycling firms.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - A northern Chinese city has banned the use of “seductive” words like “foxy lady,” “handsome guy” and “moneybags” in marriage advertisements in a bid to stamp out fraud, domestic media reported Tuesday.

Many Chinese people still go to marriage brokers to arrange suitable life partners for their children, and often turn to adverts carried in newspapers, magazines and on the Internet.

But after a series of complaints from people who said they had been cheated — although how was not explained — Henan provincial capital Zhengzhou is reining in the industry, the Beijing News said.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing residents have highlighted spitting, dumping rubbish, barbecues and smoking as the annoyances they would most like to see disappear from the city before next year’s Olympics.

More than 200,000 people responded to a survey conducted by the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau which asked for suggestions of what residents could do to clean up the city, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

“The air quality reflects the civilization of a city,” Zhang Baosen, an official of the EPB, told Xinhua. “To improve Beijing’s air quality during the Olympics needs the combined efforts of the government and the … city residents.”

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