Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Splashing and slidingmake for fun in the heat
Stacie Wick and her son Logan Scharf, 3, of Porterville, Calif., make their way down a water slide at Time Out Pizza and Fun Center in Tulare, Calif. Monday's high in Tulare was 112 degrees. The start of a new work week amid sweltering temperatures pushed California's electricity supply to the brink Monday. Authorities investigated at least 29 possible heat-related deaths, most in the smoldering Central Valley, where temperatures reached 115 degrees over the weekend. Meanwhile, utilities in the St. Louis area and New York City labored to restore power to hundreds of thousands whose electricity was knocked out by storms and equipment failures.
Differences on farm aidput halt to WTO talks
GENEVA -- WTO members called a halt to more than five years of commerce liberalization talks Monday as differences over farm aid proved unbridgeable. Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization, said a deal billed as a recipe for lifting millions of people worldwide out of poverty would not be reached by the end of the year and there was no new timetable for completing the round. "We are in dire straits," Lamy said after six of the WTO's most powerful members failed to agree on steps toward liberalizing trade in farm and manufactured goods. He said he did not intend to propose any new deadlines or a date for negotiators to resume meeting.
Mom was right: Turn offTV to learn something
WASHINGTON -- Your parents were right: Don't study with the TV on. Multitasking may be a necessity in today's fast-paced world, but new research shows distractions affect the way people learn, making the knowledge they gain harder to use later on. The study, in Monday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also provides a clue as to why it happens. "What's new is that even if you can learn while distracted, it changes how you learn to make it less efficient and useful," said Russell A. Poldrack, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. As Poldrack explains it, the brain learns in two different ways. One, called declarative learning, involves the medial temporal lobe and deals with learning active facts that can be recalled and used with great flexibility. The second, involving the striatum, is called habit learning.
Are behavior policetaking over Chicago?
CHICAGO -- If you're a cell phone-using, goose liver-eating, cigarette-smoking, fast food-loving person, Chicago might not be your kind of town. In this city that once winked at Prohibition, members of the city council are trying to crack down on things they deem unhealthy, immoral or just plain annoying. A proposal that would restrict fast-food chains from cooking with artery-clogging trans fat oils got a public airing last week, and in the past year alone aldermen have banned smoking in nearly all public places and the use of cell phones while driving. In April, Chicago became the first U.S. city to outlaw the sale of foie gras, a goose liver delicacy that is decried by animal-rights activists because it is created by force-feeding birds to fatten up their livers. Critics, including the mayor, wonder if the city council has suddenly deemed itself the behavior police.
Clinton stumps for palSen. Joseph Lieberman
WATERBURY, Conn. -- Bill Clinton, campaigning to save an old friend from defeat, appealed to Connecticut Democrats on Monday to put aside their opposition to the war in Iraq and send embattled Sen. Joseph Lieberman on his way to a new term in office. Democrats "don't agree on everything. We don't agree on Iraq," Clinton said, calling the conflict the "pink elephant in the living room." But "the real issue is, whether you were for it or against it, what are we going to do now. And let me tell you something, no Democrat is responsible for the mistakes that have been made since the fall of Saddam Hussein that have brought us to this point."
Associated Press