Bengo’s
Latest News Clips 2013.08.12
1. Taiwan protests throw spotlight on Asia's military service
CNN August 8, 2013
Protesters hold
placards during an anti-military rally in front of Taiwan's presidential office
in Taipei.
STORY
HIGHLIGHTS
·
More than
100,000 protest in Taipei after military punishment leads to conscript's death
·
Protests
may deal a blow to Taiwan's plans to scrap military service by 2015
·
Singapore's
military service, at 24 months, is one of the longest after South Korea and
Israel
·
South
Korea's military scraps its "celebrity" unit after discipline
problems
(CNN) -- It could have been a scene lifted straight from
the classic Sean Connery film "The Hill" -- a drama in which a
military prison erupts into riot after an inmate dies following a repetitive
drill on an artificial hill in the blazing desert sun.
But
in Taiwan's real life version of the film, 18 army officers have been charged,
a defense minister has resigned and the parents of 24-year-old Hung Chung-chiu
are still demanding justice after their son died following an arduous
punishment drill in Taiwan's searing summer heat.
Corporal
Hung was just three days short of completing his military service last month
when he was reportedly put in solitary confinement for bringing a mobile phone
with a camera onto his military base, normally a minor military transgression.
Later
subjected to a series of tough punishment exercises, doctors say he died of
organ failure brought on by severe heatstroke.
Since
then, Taipei has erupted in protest.
More
than 100,000 placard-waving people protested outside the Presidential Palace on
the weekend, according to organizers Citizen 1985, and another large protest is
scheduled for this weekend.
The
protest underscores the increasing unpopularity of military service, not just
in Taiwan, but in Asia's other developed economies such as South Korea and
Singapore where young people see compulsory military service as an unwelcome
interruption to university and a career.
Singapore,
with a conscription period of 24 months and a further six months of reservist
obligations, has one of the longest periods of national service behind South
Korea and Israel.
"Conscription
takes away two years of a citizen's freedom in the name of 'national
interests'," said former conscript Gordon Lee in aSingapore political blog. "Unfortunately, in the case of
Singapore, where tensions are cool, these 'national' or 'security' interests do
not outweigh two years of the lives of every male citizen."
"Even
though the government often compares Singapore to Israel, South Korea and
Taiwan as being a small and vulnerable state, the fact is, they live in situations
of greater tension (than we do in Singapore)."
The
Singapore government promotes military service as a cheaper way of building a
standing army and as a means of bonding recruits regardless of their
backgrounds.
"If
anything, Singaporeans are just further trained to blindly obey instructions
from their superiors," Lee said in the post. "This culture is
detrimental to society as a whole, and seems to affect creativity in the
society, which is important for the spirit of free enterprise. Surely two years
of a person's life is more important than this 'bonding' that presumably takes
place?
2. Why I changed my mind on weed
CNN Dr. Sanjay Gupta
August 09, 2013
(CNN) -- Over the last year, I have been working on a new
documentary called "Weed." The title "Weed" may sound
cavalier, but the content is not.
I traveled around the
world to interview medical leaders, experts, growers and patients. I spoke
candidly to them, asking tough questions. What I found was stunning.
Long before I began this
project, I had steadily reviewed the scientific literature on medical marijuana
from the United States and thought it was fairly unimpressive. Reading these
papers five years ago, it was hard to make a case for medicinal marijuana. I
even wrote about this in a TIME magazine article, back in 2009, titled "Why I would Vote No on Pot."
Well, I am here to
apologize.
I apologize because I
didn't look hard enough, until now. I didn't look far enough. I didn't review
papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research, and
I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate patients whose symptoms
improved on cannabis.
Instead, I lumped them
with the high-visibility malingerers, just looking to get high. I mistakenly
believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1
substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must
have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most
dangerous drugs that have "no accepted medicinal use and a high potential
for abuse."
They didn't have the
science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana
neither of those things are true. It doesn't have a high potential for abuse,
and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes
marijuana is the only thing that works. Take the case ofCharlotte Figi,
who I met in Colorado. She started having seizures soon after birth. By age 3,
she was having 300 a week, despite being on seven different medications.
Medical marijuana has calmed her brain, limiting her seizures to 2 or 3 per
month.
I have seen more
patients like Charlotte first hand, spent time with them and come to the
realization that it is irresponsible not to provide the best care we can as a
medical community, care that could involve marijuana.
We have been terribly
and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I
apologize for my own role in that.
STORY
HIGHLIGHTS
·
Oprah
Winfrey says Zurich shop assistant refused to show her an expensive handbag
·
Shop
manager: "This was a misunderstanding and had nothing to do with
racism"
·
Billionaire
talk show host Winfrey was in Zurich for Tina Turner's wedding
·
She told
the story in an interview about racism she has suffered
(CNN) -- Billionaire U.S. media mogul Oprah Winfrey says
she was the victim of racism on a recent trip to Switzerland when a shop
assistant refused to show her a handbag because it was "too
expensive."
Winfrey was in Zurich
for Tina Turner's wedding in late July when she left her hotel alone and popped
into an upscale handbag shop.
She told Entertainment Tonight: "I was in Zurich the other day at
a store whose name I will not mention. I didn't have my eyelashes on, but I was
in full Oprah Winfrey gear. I had my little Donna Karan skirt and sandals, but
obviously The Oprah Winfrey Show is not shown in Zurich."
"I go into a store
and say to the woman, 'Excuse me, may I see that bag over your head?' and she
says to me 'No, it's too expensive.'"
Winfrey says she asked
again to see the bag -- a $38,000 crocodile skin number by Tom Ford -- and the
woman again refused, saying, "No no no, you don't want to see that one,
you want to see this one, because that one will cost too much and you will not
be able to afford that."
Winfrey says she asked a
final time to see the bag: "One more time I tried -- I said, 'But I really
do just want to see that one,' and she said, 'I don't want to to hurt your
feelings,' and I said, 'Ok thank you so much, you're probably right, I can't
afford it and walked out of the store. Now why did she do that?"
While Winfrey did not
specifically identify the shopping trip as a racist experience she told the
story during a larger interview on racism and how racism she has suffered..
The talk show host is
the first and only female African-American billionaire, with an estimated net
worth of $2.8 billion. She said: "I could've had the big blow up thing and
thrown down the black card and all that, but why do that?"
Winfrey chose not to
identify the shop, but the name of the high-end boutique -- Trois Pomme -- was
soon revealed. The shop's manager told CNN the entire incident was a "200
percent misunderstanding" and had nothing to do with racism.
"Mrs. Oprah said
she just wanted to look at the bag, she didn't want it taken down, and because
my sales assistant felt a little embarrassed about the price, she quickly said
that she also had the model in other materials such as ostrich and suede, which
weren't so expensive," explained Trudie Goetz, the manager of Trois
Pommes.
Calling it a
"normal selling discussion," Goetz said: "Mrs. Oprah got the
impression she didn't want to sell the bag to her because she wanted to show
her other bags. This had nothing whatsoever to do with racism."
"Who wouldn't want
to sell a bag like that? Everyone would. My saleswoman just wanted to do her
best. She feels very bad because she feels the way it's being represented is
very unfair."
4. Exercises to Prevent Dementia?
The New
York Times APRIL 25, 2013
Are there exercises to ward off dementia?
I am 66 years old and exercise three to four times a week. How much more or what kind of exercise should I do in addition to cardio to maintain brain health and ward off dementia?
You might want to add
several weight-training sessions
every week. Endurance exercise is undoubtedly good for the brain, with studies
in lab animals showing that moderate aerobic exercise, the equivalent of
jogging, doubles or even triples the number of new neurons in the brain’s
memory center, compared with the brains of sedentary animals. So keep up the
cardio training.
But other recent science
suggests that resistance training also has brain benefits that may be unique,
meaning that if you don’t lift weights, you could be missing out.
In a particularly relevant 2012 study, rats with
weights tied to their tails climbed ladders to simulate resistance training,
while others ran on little treadmills or didn’t exercise. After eight weeks,
both exercise groups performed much better than the sedentary animals on a
memory test, but the brains of the weight-lifting and treadmill-running rats
were subtly different. The weight trainers showed higher levels of one
particular brain protein than the runners or the sedentary animals, and the
runners’ brains now displayed higher levels of another protein.
Both substances are
thought to spark the creation of new connections in the brain and improve the
health of existing ones. So having more of either protein is desirable for
brain health, but it appears that the surest way to have more of both is to
practice both endurance and weight training.
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