Jimmy Kimmel Pokes Fun at LA News Outlets Reporting ‘Arctic’ Conditions in the City (+video)

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Screen shot 2013-12-15 at 2.30.40 AMA high of 50 degrees is just too low for local NBC, Fox and CBS affiliates

Jimmy Kimmel spent a good portion of his childhood in New York, so he knows cold. On [a recent broadcast], however, the late-night comedian reminded his audiences that many local Los Angeles news reporters do not.

In the wake of the cold front moving through Southern California this week, labeled “arctic” by some outlets, Kimmel compiled a cut of the reporters racing to cover the weather.

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Deaf Interpreter at Mandela Event a Phony

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

As one world leader after another paid homage to Nelson Mandela at a memorial service, the man standing at arm’s length from them appeared to interpret their words in sign language. But advocates for the deaf say he was a faker.

The incident, which outraged deaf people and sign-language interpreters watching the service broadcast around the globe, raised questions of how the unidentified man managed to crash a supposedly secure event attended by scores of heads of state, including President Barack Obama.

It also was another example of the problems plaguing Tuesday’s memorial, including public transportation breakdowns that hindered mourners going to the soccer stadium and a faulty audio system that made the speeches inaudible for many. Police also failed to search the first wave of crowds who rushed into the stadium after the gates were opened just after dawn.

The man, who stood about a yard (one meter) from Obama and other leaders, “was moving his hands around, but there was no meaning in what he used his hands for,” Bruno Druchen, national director of the Deaf Federation of South Africa, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

When South African Deputy President Cyril Rampaphosa told the crowd that former South African President F.W. de Klerk was among the guests, the man at his side used a strange pushing motion unknown in sign language that did not identify de Klerk or say anything about his presence, said Ingrid Parkin, principal of the St. Vincent School for the Deaf in Johannesburg.

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Barack Obama Takes Selfie at Nelson Mandela Memorial, Cruz Walks Out on Castro

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Photo Credit: smh.com

Photo Credit: smh.com

By smh.com.au with AFP.

US President Barack Obama may have moved the masses attending Nelson Mandela’s memorial service with his stirring eulogy, but it was his grinning “selfie” with the Danish and British premiers that set social networks abuzz.

In a candid moment captured by a photographer, Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt can be seen holding up her smartphone, with Obama lending a helping hand, as they pose for a picture with David Cameron, all three of them smiling broadly in their seats at Soweto’s World Cup stadium.

First Lady Michelle Obama, sitting to the left of her husband, does not join in with the lighthearted moment, keeping her eyes firmly trained on the podium where world leaders were paying tribute to South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero.

The event was a memorial service and not a funeral for Mandela, who died last week aged 95, and the mood was one of joy and hope as mourners sang, danced and chanted their way into the stadium.

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Cruz Walks Out on Castro Speech at Memorial Service for Mandela

By Jim Geraghty.

Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) walked out of the memorial service for Nelson Mandela when Cuban “president” Raúl Castro began speaking.

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Ben Affleck: Raising Money for Democrats Made Me ‘Feel Gross’

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Landov

Photo Credit: Reuters/Landov

Hollywood star Ben Affleck, who has played an active role in Democratic politics, says fundraising for politicians began to “feel gross.”

Speaking to Playboy magazine about helping to campaign for presidential candidates Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama, Affleck recalled, “Over time I became disillusioned, mostly with the pernicious effect of money in politics. I realized it was about raising $56,000 through a couple of dinners, and those bundlers who bring in $1 million or $2 million.”

He continued, “Those people are dedicated, and they believe in what they’re doing. I believe in why many of them are doing it. What I don’t believe in is that we now have the need to do it. And for me personally, it started to feel gross.”

Asked what part in particular made him feel that way, Affleck responded, “Being used as a prop to schmooze people and try to milk the teat of the donor for money. We’d do it sparingly. Matt and I did a thing for Elizabeth Warren, whom we like and who won. We did a fundraiser for Cory Booker, whom we also like. People now know me as a Democrat, and that will always be the case to some extent.”

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Research: Exercise Most Effective Lifestyle Choice for Preventing Dementia

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Photo Credit: Vince Alongi/flickr

Photo Credit: Vince Alongi/flickr

Taking regular exercise is the most effective single lifestyle choice people can make to reduce their risk of dementia, according to one of the most extensive studies yet into people’s long-term health outcomes.

The 35-year investigation, carried out by researchers at Cardiff University, found that consistently following just four out of five key behaviours could reduce dementia risk by 60 per cent, while also cutting the chance of heart disease and stroke by 70 per cent.

Of the five behaviours – exercise, not smoking, having a low bodyweight, a healthy diet and low alcohol intake – exercise was found to be the most effective at improving long-term physical and mental health.

Although the five factors will be familiar to almost everyone, researchers said they were “really amazed” by quite how beneficial they had proved to be.

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Planet Has Been Discovered That Should Not Be There

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Photo Credit: GuardianLVA planet has been discovered that should not be there. Astronomers have discovered a planet so strange that they say it should not even be in existence. It orbits its personal star at such an astonishing distance; it is causing some theories of planetary formation to be destroyed, stated researchers. It is unlike anything that is in our solar system.

The planet has a mass almost 12 times the size of Jupiter and an orbit over 650 times larger than the distance between the Earth and Sun. This newly discovered globe, with the “exciting” name HD 106906 b, is throwing quite a blow against existing planet formation concepts.

Research leader Vanessa Bailey stated that the planet is especially fascinating because no prior model of such a planet exists which can start to explain what it is that they are seeing. But she admitted that astronomers are extremely puzzled by the planet’s presence.

Bailey explained that scientists have always believed that planets which orbit too closely to stars have been created from dust, gas and debris from asteroids that enclose a fledgling star. They also thought this process was much too sluggish for tremendously large planets to be able to form so far away from a star in space.

The researcher and her associates’ have done much examination on the orb HD 106906 b, and all of it has been accepted to be printed in The Astrophysical Journal.

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2013: The Most Volcanic Eruptions Recorded in Modern History

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Photo Credit: APThis year will go down on record, as seeing the most volcanic eruptions recorded in modern history. The previous number was set in 2010, at 82 volcanic eruptions for the year.

The number of volcanoes erupting across the planet has been steadily rising from a meager number of just 55 recorded in 1990. While most scientists may readily dismiss any significance to the latest figures and may be quick to say the planet is just experiencing normal geological activity, it does raise other concerns about just what may be transpiring within the interior of our planet.

The average number of volcanic eruptions per year should be about 50 to 60; as of December 5, 2013, we already at 83. Volcanic eruptions are one way the planet dissipates a dangerous build-up of heat, magma, and pressurized gases.

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Phobias May Be Memories Passed Down in Genes from Ancestors

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Photo Credit: ALAMYMemories can be passed down to later generations through genetic switches that allow offspring to inherit the experience of their ancestors, according to new research that may explain how phobias can develop.

Scientists have long assumed that memories and learned experiences built up during a lifetime must be passed on by teaching later generations or through personal experience.

However, new research has shown that it is possible for some information to be inherited biologically through chemical changes that occur in DNA.

Researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, found that mice can pass on learned information about traumatic or stressful experiences – in this case a fear of the smell of cherry blossom – to subsequent generations.

The results may help to explain why people suffer from seemingly irrational phobias – it may be based on the inherited experiences of their ancestors.

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Two Thousand Mice Parachute Dropped on Guam — to Kill Snakes

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Photo Credit: Eric Talmadge / AP fileThey floated down from the sky Sunday — 2,000 mice, wafting on tiny cardboard parachutes over Andersen Air Force Base in the U.S. territory of Guam.

But the rodent commandos didn’t know they were on a mission: to help eradicate the brown tree snake, an invasive species that has caused millions of dollars in wildlife and commercial losses since it arrived a few decades ago.

That’s because they were dead. And pumped full of painkillers.

The unlikely invasion was the fourth and biggest rodent air assault so far, part of an $8 million U.S. program approved in February to eradicate the snakes and save the exotic native birds that are their snack food.

“Every time there is a technique that is tested and shows promise, we jump on that bandwagon and promote it and help out and facilitate its implementation,” Tino Aguon, acting chief of the U.S. Agriculture Department’s wildlife resources office for Guam, told NBC station KUAM of Hagatna.

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Cannibal Cop Allegations Rock Germany

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Photo Credit: MARTIN OESER/AFP/GettyOver a decade after a similar case shocked the world, a German daily reported that a German police officer may have seduced and murdered a man he met on a cannibalism fetish website. The suspect has been arrested.

Police on Wednesday found body parts on a property in the Ore Mountains, in the eastern German state of Saxony, that, according to German tabloid Bild, came from a murder carried out as part of a cannibal fetish act. The body parts are believed to belong to a 59-year-old man from Hanover, while the main suspect, who, according to Bild, owns the property on which the remains were found, is a 55-year-old police officer.

The spokesperson for the head prosecutor, Lorenz Haase, confirmed to German news agency DPA that “the men knew each other.” According to Bild, the two men met on a website for cannibal fetishists. The suspect then allegedly invited the man to his property in Reichenau, a small town in the mountains.

According to Bild, the victim had been cut into many small pieces some time in early November and many parts of the victim have yet to be found, leading to suspicions part of his body may have been eaten.

The suspect, who, according to the newspaper, works as a handwriting analyst in the forensic science institute of the Dresden office of the State Criminal Police Office, was arrested shortly after the remains were discovered. Bild reported the man had split up with his wife several years earlier and had since been living with another man.

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