TEHRAN, Iran – Iran tested its longest-range missiles Monday, capping two days of war games meant to show the country is ready for any military threat at a time when it is under intense international pressure to fully disclose its nuclear activities.

State television said the powerful Revolutionary Guard, which controls Iran’s missile program, successfully tested upgraded versions of the medium-range Shahab-3 and Sajjil missiles. Both can carry warheads and reach up to 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers), putting Israel, U.S. military bases in the Middle East, and parts of Europe within striking distance.

The missile tests began Sunday, two days after the U.S. and its allies disclosed that Iran had been secretly developing an underground uranium enrichment facility and warned the country it must open the site to international inspection or face harsher international sanctions.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi said the missile tests had nothing to do with the tension over the site, saying it was part of routine, long-planned military exercises.

The newly revealed nuclear site has given greater urgency to a key meeting on Thursday in Geneva between Iran and six major powers trying to stop its suspected nuclear weapons program.

Alex Vatanka, a senior Middle East analyst at IHS Jane’s, said Tehranwas conducting missile tests now “to show some muscle, show some strength, and say the game is not over for Iran yet.” He noted the upcoming meeting in Geneva.

“They felt going into these meetings … that they needed to have something else to bolster their position, and I think that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard showing a bit of military muscle here is part of that,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she doesn’t believe Iran can convince the U.S. and other world powers at the upcoming meeting that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, as Tehran has long claimed. That puts Tehran on a course for tougher economic penalties beyond the current “leaky sanctions,” she said.

The nuclear site is located in the arid mountains near the holy city of Qom and is believed to be inside a heavily guarded, underground facility belonging to the Revolutionary Guard, according to a document sent by President Barack Obama’s administration to lawmakers.

Qashqavi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, identified the site as Fordo, a village located 180 kilometers south of the capital Tehran. The site is 100 kilometers away from Natanz, Iran’s known industrial-scale uranium enrichment plant.

After strong condemnations from the U.S. and its allies, Iran said Saturday it will allow U.N. nuclear inspectors to examine the site.

Israel has trumpeted the latest discoveries as proof of its long-held assertion that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.

By U.S. estimates, Iran is one to five years away from having nuclear weapons capability, although U.S. intelligence also believes that Iranian leaders have not yet made the decision to build a weapon.

Iran also is developing ballistic missiles that could carry a nuclear warhead, but the administration said last week that it believes that effort has been slowed. That assessment paved the way for Obama’s decision to shelve the Bush administration’s plan for a missile shield in Europe, which was aimed at defending against Iranian ballistic missiles.

The Sajjil-2 missile is Iran’s most advanced two-stage surface-to-surface missile and is powered entirely by solid-fuel while the older Shahab-3 uses a combination of solid and liquid fuel in its most advanced form, which is also known as the Qadr-F1.

Solid fuel is seen as a technological breakthrough for any missile program as solid fuel increases the accuracy of missiles in reaching targets.

State media reported tests overnight of the Shahab-1 and Shahab-2 missiles, with ranges of 185 miles (300 kilometers) and 435 miles (700 kilometers) respectively.

That followed tests early Sunday of the short range Fateh, Tondar and Zelzal missiles, which have a range of 120 miles (193 kilometers), 93 miles (150 kilometers) and 130 miles (200 kilometers) respectively.

Iran’s last known missile tests were in May when it fired its longest-range solid-fuel missile, Sajjil-2. Tehran said the two-stage surface-to-surface missile has a range of about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) — capable of striking Israel, U.S. Mideast bases and southeastern Europe.

(CNN) — My taxi driver is telling me about his meal last night. His name is William. He ate whale.
“Delicious,” he says, kissing the tips of his fingers on one hand, making the universal sign for good tasting food.

Photo Gallery Link

William tells me he went out on a boat with some friends a few days ago and shot the whale. I’m not sure how I feel about this.

Welcome to Greenland. On this remote but enormous island subsistence whale hunting is allowed.

This was just the memorable start to an extraordinary journey.

Cameraman Neil Bennett and I had traveled to the small town of Tasiilaq in southeastern Greenland to meet up with the Arctic Sunrise, a ship belonging to the environmental group Greenpeace. Read Neil’s blog on filming in challenging conditions

The 34-year-old icebreaker and its crew are on a three month expedition around Greenland’s coast. They say their mission is to help scientists working in the region and to publicize the environmental changes taking place here.

We join the Arctic Sunrise as it moves slowly up Sermilik Fjord. This is simply the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. It’s an inky blue body of water thick with floating, ancient ice.

Some of the icebergs are mountainous. They all come from the Greenland ice sheet, a vast mass of frozen fresh water, hundreds of miles across and up to two miles thick.
Over the next four days we observe independent scientists working to understand why the ice sheet is melting so rapidly.

We fly over and land on Helheim Glacier, a major outlet for the ice sheet which has sped up dramatically in the last decade.

We accompany oceanographers in inflatable boats as they collect data on the warming water currents in the fjord. All this research, they say, points to sea levels rising beyond current predictions.

There are still those who question humankind’s role in the warming of the Earth’s climate, but these scientists are not among them.

“Things could be very bad,” glaciologist Dr Gordon Hamilton tells me. “If we don’t start to do something about it now we’ll very quickly reach a tipping point from which there’ll be no return. And the consequences for society as a whole would be catastrophic.”

Joining Greenpeace on this expedition was a difficult decision for CNN. Does it compromise our editorial independence on what can still be a highly divisive issue?
n my experience it’s no different to embedding with soldiers on one side of a military conflict. I’ve traveled with American soldiers in Iraq and Russian soldiers in Georgia. It enables journalists to access newsworthy locations and people that we couldn’t get to otherwise, either practically or safely. And the stories told can still be balanced and fair.

Traveling with Greenpeace allowed us to record powerful images of Greenland’s accelerating melt. And we met independent scientists who believe the world must act boldly to slow down change that science is struggling to keep pace with.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

It was just a quiet Labor Day drive in the wilderness that suddenly went terribly wrong in a blur of bark and needles and explosive noise.

“It was like a bomb had went off,” said Michelle Childers, who was sitting in the passenger seat as her husband, Daniel Childers, drove their truck on a narrow, tree-lined road in northern Idaho. “I had no idea what happened. I had to ask.”

Daniel looked over at his wife and could barely comprehend what he saw. A thick branch from a spruce tree, more than an inch in diameter and 18 inches long, was sticking out of the left side of his wife’s neck.

“I just saw that stick going through her neck and I knew I needed to get help quick,” Daniel Childers told TODAY’s Norah O’Donnell Friday in New York. “I told her it was in her neck.”

A near miss
The life-threatening accident happened on Sept. 5. Less than two weeks later, Michelle, 20, wore a white scarf around her neck for her TODAY appearance, but otherwise showed no outward signs of how close she had come to death.

Doctors would discover that the branch somehow just missed her jugular vein and her windpipe, bypassing both as it penetrated all the way to the back of her left shoulder.

Perhaps most amazing was the fact that Michelle never felt any real pain and had to ask to comprehend that the branch was actually in her neck.

“I felt pressure,” she told O’Donnell. “There wasn’t a lot of pain; there was a lot of pressure.”

Her 22-year-old husband felt a different sort of pressure — to get his wife to a hospital as quickly as possible. But that was more easily said than done. The Childers were in remote country on the Lochsa River in northern Idaho near the Montana border. They had been enjoying a beautiful day, driving more than an hour away from anything resembling civilization when they went down a back road that dead-ended in the woods.

They turned the truck around, stopped at a creek for a while, then headed back out the way they had come. They estimate they were bouncing along at about 20 mph when Daniel went around a blind turn.

The Childers are still not exactly sure what happened, but they surmise that a branch was sticking out in the road and that it came through the open passenger window in an explosion of bark and spruce needles, impaling Michelle in the neck.

A terrifying ride
After the freak accident happened, Michelle was in mortal fear that she was going to die. Daniel was also terror-stricken by what had happened and by the lack of immediate help anywhere near.

They were out of cell phone range, and the only thing Daniel could do was drive for an hour or more on bumpy roads to get back to civilization.

“I just went as quickly as I could,” Daniel told O’Donnell. “It was a very bumpy road. I tried to drive slow, but I was trying to go quickly, too.”

They finally made it to the Lochsa Lodge, where Daniel ran in to use the phone. By chance, a nurse practitioner was at the lodge. After checking Michelle and seeing that she wasn’t bleeding and could breathe, talk and swallow, the woman gave Michelle the unexpected news that she was going to be just fine.

“She took my vitals and tried to get help on the way,” Michelle said. “Probably 15 minutes later, an R.N. pulled in and got ground support and air support on the way.”

The registered nurse, whom the Childers know only as Paula, was able to call in a medical helicopter from the hospital where she worked.

After another hour, the helicopter arrived to transport Michelle to St. Patrick Hospital, where surgeons took six hours to remove the tree limb and attempt to clean all the bits of bark, wood and needles from the deep wound that went from the front of the right side of her neck through to the back of her left shoulder.

Michelle is still at risk of infection from any bits of foreign matter still inside her, and her left shoulder is damaged; she has difficulty lifting her arm. But she’s not complaining.

“I don’t know how I’m still alive,” she said, staring at pieces of the branch that she had brought along to the TODAY studio. “I don’t know.”

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The United States is overhauling Bush-era plans for a missile defense shield in Europe, based partly on the latest analysis of Iran’s offensive capabilities, President Obama said Thursday.

The “new missile defense architecture in Europe … will provide capabilities sooner, build on proven systems and offer greater defenses against the threat of missile attack than the… program” that former President George W. Bush proposed, Obama said.

Obama said the change of gears was based on an “updated intelligence assessment” about Iran’s ability to hit Europe with missiles.

The Islamic republic’s “short- and medium-range” missiles pose the most current threat, he said, and “this new ballistic missile defense will best address” that threat.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking from the Pentagon immediately after the president’s announcement, denied the United States was “scrapping” missile defense.

“This new approach provides a better missile defense capability for our forces in Europe, for our European allies and eventually for our homeland than the program I recommended almost three years ago,” said Gates, who was defense chief in the last two years of the Bush administration and stayed on when Obama took office

The Bush-era proposal called for the U.S. to set up a radar site in the Czech Republic and 10 missile interceptors in Poland to counter the threat of Iran launching long-range missiles at America’s allies in Europe

American officials from Obama on down insisted Thursday’s announcement does not reflect any lesser commitment to European defense.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev welcomed Obama’s move with a televised statement of his own from Moscow.

“We appreciate the responsible approach of the U.S. president,” Medvedev said, characterizing the new American position as “putting into practice” an agreement he made with Obama earlier this year.

“I discussed this issue with the U.S. president during our meetings in London and Moscow. At that time, in our joint statement, we agreed to, and set in stone that Russia and the United States will seek to work together to assess the risks of missile proliferation in the world,” he said.

A top expert at the Council on Foreign Relations backed Obama’s decision.

“The system that President George W. Bush proposed … would have deployed interceptor missiles that had yet to be tested under real-world conditions to defend against long-range missiles that Iran had yet to develop,” said the council’s senior vice president, James Lindsay.

“Meanwhile, the interceptors would have been useless against the short- and medium-range missiles that Iran is rapidly developing,” he said in a written statement.

But the change of gears, while making strategic sense, does present Obama with diplomatic problems, Lindsay said.

“Poles and Czechs worry that his decision signals a softening U.S. commitment to their security. Both countries saw the system as a way to tie themselves more closely to the United States and thereby deter an increasingly belligerent Russia,” he said.

“Critics will also insist that the Poles and Czechs are right: He axed the Bush program in a foolish and doomed bid to ‘reset’ relations with Russia,” he said. “Here Moscow isn’t likely to be of much help to the White House. The Kremlin will claim a diplomatic victory and it won’t offer any concessions in return.”

Obama has been seeking a stronger relationship with Russia and better cooperation from the Kremlin to support tough U.N. economic sanctions against Iran if it continues to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

Missile defense has been a sore point in relations between Washington and Moscow, with Russia believing the shield would ultimately erode its strategic nuclear deterrent.

But a senior administration official denied a diplomatic motive to scrapping the missile defense program.

“This has nothing to do with Russia,” he said. “The notion that we’re abandoning missile defense is completely false. It’s evolving into a different system.”

At the briefing with Gates, the Pentagon’s point man on the issue said the new system will have “hundreds” of missile interceptors.

It also will have mobile radars, including some in space, “that can move to wherever the threat actually emanates and wherever we feel we need to defend ourselves,” said Gen. James Cartwright, deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Cartwright contrasted the new sensor technology with the radar systems envisioned in the old plan, which he called “basically left over from the Cold War.”

The new plan includes three types of missiles to shoot down incoming threats — Patriot missiles, which defend a single location; SM-3 interceptors, which he said could protect “a general area like the area from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.”; and large ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California.

The first phase of the system is due to be in place in 2011, with the subsequent phases rolling out around 2015, 2018 and 2020, he said.

“It’s a more advanced system, more cost-effective and efficient,” the senior administration official said before the president and Gates spoke.

“The technology has evolved in a way that allows you to deploy a system that is more effective in countering both short-, medium- and long-range missiles,” said the official, contrasting the types of missiles that Iran, for example, is believed to have with intercontinental ballistic missiles of the kind feared during the Cold War.

The Bush administration had cited the perceived nuclear threat from Iran as one of the key reasons it wanted to install the missile shield in Eastern Europe.

But a 60-day review mandated by Congress and ordered by Obama recommended the new approach that was unveiled Thursday.

A U.S. delegation held high-level meetings Thursday in Poland and the Czech Republic to discuss the missile defense system. Officials in both countries confirmed the system would be scrapped.

In a statement, Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer said that Obama told him in a Wednesday phone call that the United States was shelving its plans. Fischer did not say what reason Obama gave him for reconsidering.

A spokeswoman at the Polish Ministry of Defense also said the program had been suspended.

“This is catastrophic for Poland,” said the spokeswoman, who declined to be named in line with ministry policy.

Poland and the Czech Republic had based much of their future security policy on getting the missile defenses from the United States. The countries share deep concerns of a future military threat from the east — namely, Russia — and may look for other defense assurances from their NATO allies

Ever since Cher’s daughter Chastity Bono — now Chaz Bono — announced she was beginning the process of becoming a man – many have wondered what exactly a sex change involves.

In order to get that answer, FOXNews.com talked to Dr. Marci Bowers, an internationally renowned surgeon who performs more than 200 gender-related surgeries a year at her clinic in Trinidad, Colo.

“There’s no one way to transition,” Bowers told FOXNews.com. “But generally a patient receives some type of psychological counseling in the beginning. Once they have therapy, they will then undergo a combination of hormone treatments — usually in conjunction with living in their desired gender role full-time for a year.”

Bono, 40, reportedly began taking hormones and living as a man shortly after his birthday in March, which means he still has a long road filled with many decisions ahead of him.

The fact is – female-to-male transition is not cut and dry. There are many options out there, according to Bowers.

“The one procedure that female-to-males usually do is the chest procedure or mastectomy,” she said. “It’s a surgery where their breasts are removed or modified in a way that gives them a male contour.”

Bowers estimates that the vast majority — around 90 percent — of female-to-male patients opt to get the chest surgery.

“And then some of the other surgeries they may choose may be a hysterectomy, and that might be more along the lines of like 50-to-50,” Bowers said. “And then even less commonly, genital surgery of some form is done.”

One procedure is phalloplasty, which involves the creation of a “sizable but largely non-functional” phallus, Bowers said.

“Some people also choose to have testicles implanted. Some choose to remove a part of the vagina, called a vaginectomy and then close the opening. But we’re seeing some people retain those parts and even use them for sexual gratification.”

The bottom-line, Bowers said, is that it’s all about personal choice.

“Like anything, there’s diversity in choices and in how people choose to express their gender,” she said. “So again, this is a choice. Some people want the vagina gone… they want testicles and they want a penis.”

In addition to phalloplasty, there’s an alternative procedure called a metoidioplasty.

“That’s where the clitoris is released and it grows in response to testosterone,” she said. “In essence, it becomes a small penis.”

Pluses and Minuses of Surgery

“I think the difficulty is in some of the surgical aspects,” Bowers said. “Each surgery has its drawbacks – but the surgery from female to male just isn’t perfect.”

On the other hand, Bowers said, female-to-male candidates are more socially acceptable at an early stage because they blend into society at a much quicker pace.

“Testosterone is enormously powerful,” she said. “Patients get chest hair, they get facial hair, they get male pattern hair recession and even balding in some cases. So socially they fit in immediately as men. Their voice drops… sometimes their feet grow… and they’re very much men in a short amount of time – a shockingly short amount of time.”

One message Bowers wants to get out is that the sex-change process goes far beyond surgery.

“Sometimes what people get hung up on is that it’s all about the surgery. And the fact is it’s really all about their gender role and how society perceives them. In fact, it’s estimated that 80 percent of transgender persons never undergo surgery.”

At her practice in Colorado, Bowers said she only sees the “crème de la crème” of people who can actually afford to go under the knife.

“It’s very expensive surgery that is not generally covered by insurance,” she said. “Some surgeries are very simple and can cost as little as $4,000. But I’ve heard of people spending anywhere from $80,000 to $100,000 for all sorts of surgical procedures. It’s highly variable.”

Bowers said she doesn’t think there is such a thing as a perfect candidate for surgery.

“Who are we to judge who is a perfect candidate?” she said. “I think if you feel it in your heart and soul and you feel it’s something you have to do…. then you have to do it.”

The Story of Dr. Marci Bowers

Bowers is not only a leading expert in the field of genital reassignment surgery — or gender-confirming surgery, as she likes to call it — but she was also a patient at one time.

“I had a very typical story,” she said. “I felt differently from a very early age and I largely hid things from my parents. I grew up in a small southern Wisconsin town in a very, very traditional family. My parents weren’t really aware until I was literally on the doorstep of transitioning.”

That was in 1996, when Dr. Mark Bowers was an accomplished obstetrician-gynecologist with a career spanning 20 years. He had been married for 11 years — a union that produced three children.

“Well, it was a bumpy road working through those details because it’s just a very awkward, inherently embarrassing disclosure to make,” she said. “It certainly took a lot of — I guess I’d call it careful negotiation.”

To this day, Bowers is still legally married and spends as much time as possible with her two daughters and son, who live in Seattle, Wash.

“We just have an interesting family and its sort of what I’d call it a 21st century family because it certainly is non-traditional,” she said. “But I think the lesson for any family is if you respect each other, find a way to love each other, you can really transcend things like this.”

Her Life in “The Sex Change Capital of the World”

After an extensive career in Washington, Bowers moved to Trinidad, Colo. — known as the sex change capital of the world — in 2003 to work side-by-side with renowned sexual reassignment surgeon Dr. Stanley Biber. Over a 30-year career, Biber, who died in 2006, performed more than 5,000 sex-change operations.

“I had actually been down there to visit him in 2000 because there were some people in Seattle who had worked for him,” Bowers said. “And they just said they had this amazing practice and I got the chance to meet with him and he said “we’re really looking for a surgeon and we’re hoping to recruit someone or have someone come,” and his idea was that I’d do obstetrics and then gradually take over the surgery division.”

Six months after she started working with Biber, Bowers did her first solo surgery, and she hasn’t looked back since. During her time in Trinidad, Bowers has performed more than 550 male-to-female surgeries and does an average of 220 gender-related surgeries every year.

“It just keeps unfolding and it’s been interesting the entire way,” she said. “I certainly don’t have any complaints. I’ve had an interesting life and it keeps getting more interesting, it seems.”

Although Bowers’ main focus is on gender reassignment surgeries, she is also working on several other projects to improve the health of people from all corners of the globe.

“We are the first center in North America actually that’s going be doing female genital mutilation reversal. We’ve now done two sets of patients from Africa — so that’s kind of the latest and greatest thing we’re up to,” she said.

Source : MSNBC

Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into viewers’ hearts with “Dirty Dancing” and then broke them with “Ghost,” died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

“Patrick Swayze passedaway peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months,” said a statement released Monday evening by his publicist, Annett Wolf. No other details were given.

Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer.

He had kept working despite the diagnosis, putting together a memoir with his wife and shooting “The Beast,” an A&E drama series for which he had already made the pilot. It drew a respectable 1.3 million viewers when the 13 episodes ran in 2009, but A&E said it had reluctantly decided not to renew it for a second season.

Swayze said he opted not to use painkilling drugs while making “The Beast” because they would have taken the edge off his performance. He acknowledged that time might be running out given the grim nature of the disease.

When he first went public with the illness, some reports gave him only weeks to live, but his doctor said his situation was “considerably more optimistic” than that.

“I’d say five years is pretty wishful thinking,” Swayze told ABC’s Barbara Walters in early 2009. “Two years seems likely if you’re going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I’d better get a fire under it.”

‘Fearless’
Jennifer Grey, who co-starred with Swayze in “Dirty Dancing”, described the actor as “a real cowboy with a tender heart.”

“He was fearless,” she told Access Hollywood. “The war he waged on his cancer was so courageous and dignified.

“When I think of him, I think of being in his arms when we were kids, dancing, practicing the lift in the freezing lake, having a blast doing this tiny little movie we thought no one would ever see.”

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he admired Swayze “as a fan and as an actor”.

“His celebrated performances made the hard work of acting look effortless — which I know from experience is not easy,” he said. “I know that he will be dearly missed.”

Three-time Golden Globe nominee
C. Thomas Howell, who co-starred with Swayze in “The Outsiders,” “Grandview U.S.A.” and “Red Dawn”, said: “I have always had a special place in my heart for Patrick. While I was fortunate enough to work with him in three films, it was our passion for horses that forged a friendship between us that I treasure to this day. Not only did we lose a fine actor today, I lost my older ‘Outsiders’ brother.”

A three-time Golden Globe nominee, Swayze became a star with his performance as the misunderstood bad-boy Johnny Castle in “Dirty Dancing.” As the son of a choreographer who began his career in musical theater, he seemed a natural to play the role.

A coming-of-age romance starring Grey as an idealistic young woman on vacation with her family and Swayze as the Catskills resort’s sexy (and much older) dance instructor, the film made great use of both his grace on his feet and his muscular physique.

It became an international phenomenon in the summer of 1987, spawning albums, an Oscar-winning hit song in “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life,” stage productions and a sequel, 2004’s “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights,” in which he made a cameo.

Swayze performed and co-wrote a song on the soundtrack, the ballad “She’s Like the Wind,” inspired by his wife, Lisa Niemi. The film also gave him the chance to utter the now-classic line, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

And it allowed him to poke fun at himself on a “Saturday Night Live” episode, in which he played a wannabe Chippendales dancer alongside the corpulent — and frighteningly shirtless — Chris Farley.

A major crowd-pleaser, the film drew only mixed reviews from critics, though Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times, “Given the limitations of his role, that of a poor but handsome sex-object abused by the rich women at Kellerman’s Mountain House, Mr. Swayze is also good. … He’s at his best — as is the movie — when he’s dancing.”

Swayze followed that up with the 1989 action flick “Road House,” in which he played a bouncer at a rowdy bar. But it was his performance in 1990’s “Ghost” that showed his vulnerable, sensitive side. He starred as a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee (Demi Moore) — with great frustration and longing — through a psychic played by Whoopi Goldberg.

Swayze said at the time that he fought for the role of Sam Wheat (director Jerry Zucker wanted Kevin Kline) but once he went in for an audition and read six scenes, he got it.

Why did he want the part so badly? “It made me cry four or five times,” he said of Bruce Joel Rubin’s Oscar-winning script in an AP interview.

“Ghost” provided yet another indelible musical moment: Swayze and Moore sensually molding pottery together to the strains of the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody.” It also earned a best-picture nomination and a supporting-actress Oscar for Goldberg, who said she wouldn’t have won if it weren’t for Swayze.

“When I won my Academy Award, the only person I really thanked was Patrick,” Goldberg said in March 2008 on the ABC daytime talk show “The View.”

Swayze himself earned three Golden Globe nominations, for “Dirty Dancing,” “Ghost” and 1995’s “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar,” which further allowed him to toy with his masculine image. The role called for him to play a drag queen on a cross-country road trip alongside Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo.

His heartthrob status almost kept him from being considered for the role of Vida Boheme.

“I couldn’t get seen on it because everyone viewed me as terminally heterosexually masculine-macho,” he told the AP then. But he transformed himself so completely that when his screen test was sent to Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin pictures produced “To Wong Foo,” Spielberg didn’t recognize him.

Among his earlier films, Swayze was part of the star-studded lineup of up-and-comers in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s novel “The Outsiders,” alongside Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane. Swayze played Darrel “Dary” Curtis, the oldest of three wayward brothers — and essentially the father figure — in a poor family in small-town Oklahoma.

Other ’80s films included “Red Dawn,” “Grandview U.S.A.” (for which he also provided choreography) and “Youngblood,” once more with Lowe, as Canadian hockey teammates.

In the ’90s, he made such eclectic films as “Point Break” (1991), in which he played the leader of a band of bank-robbing surfers, and the family Western “Tall Tale” (1995), in which he starred as Pecos Bill. He appeared on the cover of People magazine as its “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1991, but his career tapered off toward the end of the 1990s, when he also had stay in rehab for alcohol abuse. In 2001, he appeared in the cult favorite “Donnie Darko,” and in 2003 he returned to the New York stage with “Chicago”; 2006 found him in the musical “Guys and Dolls” in London.

Married since 1975 to childhood sweetheart
Swayze was born in 1952 in Houston, the son of Jesse Swayze and choreographer Patsy Swayze, whose films include “Urban Cowboy.”

He played football but also was drawn to dance and theater, performing with the Feld, Joffrey and Harkness Ballets and appearing on Broadway as Danny Zuko in “Grease.” But he turned to acting in 1978 after a series of injuries.

Within a couple years of moving to Los Angeles, he made his debut in the roller-disco movie “Skatetown, U.S.A.” The eclectic cast included Scott Baio, Flip Wilson, Maureen McCormack and Billy Barty.

Swayze had a couple of movies in the works when his diagnosis was announced, including the drama “Powder Blue,” starring Jessica Biel, Forest Whitaker and his younger brother, Don, which was scheduled for release this year.

Off-screen, he was an avid conservationist who was moved by his time in Africa to shine a light on “man’s greed and absolute unwillingness to operate according to Mother Nature’s laws,” he told the AP in 2004.

Swayze was married since 1975 to Niemi, a fellow dancer who took lessons with his mother; they met when he was 19 and she was 15. A licensed pilot, Niemi would fly her husband from Los Angeles to Northern California for treatment at Stanford University Medical Center, People magazine reported in a cover story.

]]> http://americanews.info/patrick-swayze-dies-of-pancreatic-cancer/feed/ http://americanews.info/pressure-to-get-skinny-still-the-fashion-norm-even-in-the-plus-sized-model-world/ http://americanews.info/pressure-to-get-skinny-still-the-fashion-norm-even-in-the-plus-sized-model-world/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:05:55 +0000 andreifan http://americanews.info/?p=78 Source : Fox News

Kate Dillon, a fashion model, received quite a compliment when a top editor at fashion bible Vogue told her she was looking her best ever. The only problem was the praise came after Dillon had been vomiting for 10 days.

“I could have died,” Dillon, 35, says now, looking back at her seven years as an anorexic model. “Had I not gotten help, at the very least, I would have faced severe health problems.”

Like so many other professional models, Dillon’s self-image demons were exacerbated by the constant scrutiny of the industry she was working in. Critics have lambasted the fashion world for its obsession with unnaturally thin physiques, but industry leaders have yet to take any real action to change the dangerous aesthetic.

Fashion legend Karl Lagerfeld recently dubbed Victoria’s Secret Model Heidi Klum too fat to be a runway model because of her “too big” bust. A New York Times style writer slammed retailer JCPenney for carrying “obese” mannequins in size 12 and up. Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour slammed the whole state of Minnesota for having women that look like “little houses.”

Dillon remembers well the constant drumbeat to get thinner. “I was obsessed with starvation,” she told FOXNews.com. “I would eat an apple as my only meal for a day, make midnight gym runs. I would try to sleep as late as I possibly could to avoid eating. The skinnier I got, the better they said I looked. But nothing was ever good enough.”

Dillon finally decided to get out of an industry she said was “promoting an illusion.”

“I remember thinking, ‘Wow, if this is what it takes to be told I look great, I don’t want to do this anymore,’” she said.

After a two-year hiatus, she returned to fashion at a healthy size 12 and became one of the industry’s most famous “plus” models.

Dillon escaped her issues, but there are scores of girls walking the runways this week at the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in New York with issues similar to the ones she faced.

“People who are attracted to modeling are often doing so because they are looking for outside reinforcement,” says FOXNews.com mental health expert Dr. Keith Ablow. “The need to maintain a level of positive feedback about their looks to keep their self-esteem up results in a built-in occupational hazard in the industry.”

According to Ablow, people who suffer from eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia put every system in their bodies at risk.

“It can potentially affect every aspect of your physiology and can certainly lead to death,” he said.

And while some strides have been made to feature more realistic women in mainstream fashion, such as Glamour magazine’s recent pledge to feature more plus-size models, even the plus industry often promotes difficult standards.

“I had an agent tell me to get plastic surgery or to lose an inch off my arms or 3 off my hips,” plus model Christina Mendez, who is a size 12, told FOXNews.com. “They’ve told me they won’t send me out until I make these changes. I can lose weight, but I can’t pick and choose from where,” she said.

Even the term “plus size” can be misleading, with models who wear sizes 8 through 12 being dubbed “full-figured,” while the average American woman wears a size 14.

Moreover, the fashion industry is experiencing what Sommer Johnson, the editor of online plus-sized magazine Gemini, calls a “plus size recession.” “I don’t know of any plus-friendly lines that are being shown at New York Fashion Week,” Johnson said. “Milan has pulled its plus designers from the fashion week runways. Even stores like Old Navy are gearing up to sell bigger sizes exclusively online.”

“I think it’s a real missed opportunity not to appeal to the mainstream woman,” Dillon says.

But if women want to have more fashion choices for normal body types, plus-size singer Queen Latifah, who promotes healthy living through her work with weight-loss company Jennie Craig, says they have to work to change things themselves.

“We have to depend on ourselves to break ground and move forward on our own,” she told FOXNews.com. “Seeing women in magazines never made me want to be a size 2, I just wanted to be me and be healthy.

“If you’re not seeing someone who looks like you at Fashion Week, it’s because you’re trying to be something you’re not. Be yourself and eventually there will be room for all of us.”

Scientists find drug-resistant MRSA in sand, water along Washington coast

SAN FRANCISCO - Dangerous staph bacteria have been found in sand and water for the first time at five public beaches along the coast of Washington, and scientists think the state is not the only one with this problem.

The germ is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — a hard-to-treat bug once rarely seen outside of hospitals but that increasingly is spreading in ordinary community settings such as schools, locker rooms and gyms.

The germ causes nasty skin infections as well as pneumonia and other life-threatening problems. It spreads mostly through human contact. Little is known about environmental sources that also may harbor the germ.

Finding it at the beach suggests one place that people may be picking it up, said Marilyn Roberts, a microbiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“We don’t know the risk” for any individual going to a beach, she said. “But the fact that we found these organisms suggests that the level is much higher than we had thought.”

She presented results Saturday at an American Society for Microbiology conference in California. Last year, her team reported finding a different type of bacteria, enterococci, at five West Coast beaches. And earlier this year, University of Miami researchers reported finding staph bacteria in four out of 10 ocean water samples collected by hundreds of bathers at a South Florida beach.

Many communities also commonly restrict bathing at beaches because of contamination with fecal bacteria.

‘Get all the sand off’
In the new study, researchers tested 10 beaches in Washington along the West Coast and in Puget Sound from February to September 2008. Staph bacteria were found at nine of them, including five with MRSA. The strains resembled the highly resistant ones usually seen in hospitals, rather than the milder strains acquired in community settings, Roberts said.

No staph was found in samples from two beaches in southern California.

People should not avoid beaches or be afraid to enjoy them, scientists say.

“It’s probably prudent to shower when you come out” to lower the risk of bacteria staying on the skin, said Dr. Lance Peterson, a microbiologist at NorthShore University Health System in Illinois.

“Make sure you get all the sand off,” and cover any open cuts or scrapes before playing in the sand, Roberts added. Digging in the sand or being buried in it seems to raise the risk of infection, she said.

Just one dose of H1N1 vaccine will be enough to offer protection to adults, new research released Friday said.

Preliminary results from a National Institutes of Health study using a proposed H1N1 influenza vaccine made by a unit of Sanofi-Aventis SA caused a “robust” immune response in most adults eight to 10 days after receiving one dose of the vaccine.

That data, combined with study results involving a vaccine made by CSL Ltd., released Thursday, suggest just one dose of H1N1 vaccine will be enough to offer protection to adults. Researchers are studying whether one or two doses would be needed in adults and children to protect against the novel H1N1 influenza strain. Results on children won’t be known for about two weeks because studies in that group started after adult studies.

“It’s very encouraging news about H1N1 production,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, adding that it’s likely that just one dose will be needed to protect adults against the H1N1 influenza virus.

NIH is sponsoring six clinical trials using H1N1 influenza vaccines produced by Sanofi Pasteur and CSL that involve more than 2,800 people.

Health officials expected that two doses might be needed for H1N1 vaccines as is the case for young children who receive a seasonal influenza shot for the first time. The first dose “primes” a person’s immune system to recognize a new type of virus, while the second dose helps the immune system produce enough antibodies to fight the virus.

The U.S. has spent more than $1 billion to purchase a total of 195 million H1N1 vaccine doses being made by CSL, Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Novartis AG and AstraZenecaPLC’s MedImmune unit.

U.S. government officials have said that about 40 to 50 million vaccine doses will be available starting in mid-October and be distributed to each state’s health department.

The trials are testing two different dosages — 15 micrograms and 30 micrograms — and looking at the immune response to one and two doses of the vaccines.

Anthony Fauci, director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said preliminary data from adults vaccinated with a 15-microgram dose of Sanofi’s H1N1 vaccine show the majority of them had a “robust” immune response when measured eight to 10 days after receiving a shot.

The response rate was 96% among adults age 18 to 64 and 56% in adults age 65 and older. Dr. Fauci said that the 56% response rate in older adults is similar to response rates seen with seasonal influenza vaccines.

Water is the most abundant resource on the planet, yet less than one percent of the Earth’s freshwater supply is readily available to drink, according to the World Health Organization. Lack of accessible or clean drinking water, exacerbated by drought, is crippling communities in many developing countries.

“In your lifetime, my lifetime, we will see water be a really scarce, valuable commodity,” Kamen says.

Those are scary words from the man whose creations include the Segway personal motorized scooter and the Luke (as in Skywalker) prosthetic arm. But the forward-thinking inventor and his team at DEKA Research in Manchester, New Hampshire, aren’t sitting around waiting for the world’s wells to dry up.

They’ve been working on an invention they say can tap into 97 percent of the world’s undrinkable water.

It’s called the Slingshot, and it’s a portable, low energy machine that is designed to purify water in remote villages where there’s not a Wal-Mart in sight. The device takes its name from a well-known story.

“We believe the world needs a slingshot to take care of its Goliath of a problem in water,” Kamen says. “So we decided to build a small machine and give it to the little Davids.”

Perhaps you’ve heard about the Slingshot, which Kamen has been working on for more than 10 years. Over that time it has turned dirty river water, ocean water and even raw sewage into pure drinking water. Kamen says it can turn anything that looks wet, or has water in it, into the “stuff of life.”

The magic behind the Slingshot is a “vapor compression distiller” that stands between what looks like two empty fish tanks connected by a couple of hoses. One tank contains the contaminated liquid, the other is for the newly clean water

The Slingshot boils, distills and vaporizes the polluted source, in turn delivering nothing but clean water to the other side. And it does it all on less electricity than it takes to run a hair dryer.

In summer 2006, Kamen delivered two Slingshots to the small community of Lerida in Honduras. They were used for a month and Kamen says everything ran as planned.

“The machine worked very well down there, taking virtually any water that the people from that village brought to us,” he says. “All the water that we got from the machine was absolutely pure water.”

But there’s a problem. Kamen says each Slingshot costs his company several hundred thousand dollars to build. He’s looking to partner with companies and organizations to distribute Slingshots around the world, but says a little more engineering work needs to be done in order to lower the production costs.

Kamen says the company would like to get the price down to about $2,000 per machine.

“The biggest challenge right now between this being a dream and a reality is getting committed people that really care about the state of the world’s health to get involved,” Kamen says.

The world’s population is quickly approaching 7 billion, making access to clean water that much more important. According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, more than 3.5 million people die every year from water-related diseases and almost 900 million don’t have access to a safe water supply.

Kamen says people in developing regions of the world need the Slingshot as soon as possible. He also thinks the problem with polluted water will spread beyond small villages.