British colonisers turned Pacific islanders into some of the fattest people in the world by trying civilise them with fried food, a study by Oxford University has found.

Islanders on Nauru and the Cook Islands in the Pacific have the highest levels of obesity in the world.

Their average weight gain is increasing at four times the global average, 4.4lbs per decade (2kg) compared with global average of 1.1lbs (0.5kg).

Now researchers at Oxford believe they are discovered the source of their obesity. They suggest that social changes, introduced when the islands were under colonial rule, have significantly contributed to unhealthy diets.

Anthropologists Dr Amy McLennan and Professor Stanley Ulijaszek found that islanders lost many of their traditional food cultivation, preparation and preserving skills after settlers insisted that they learn western ways of eating.

They taught the locals to fry fish rather than eat it raw, and forced them to import unhealthy produce after co-opting farmland for mining.

"Under colonial rule, much changed in how food was sourced, grown and prepared and the social change was swift," said lead author Dr McLennan

"What happened to the land also changed as colonial agriculture and mining industries expanded. There was an increase in family size meaning food was increasingly imported."

The Cook Islands were taken as a British protectorate in 1888, and became New Zealand's first South Pacific Island colony in 1901 until political independence in 1965.

Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have confirmed seven new Ebola cases in the northwestern Equateur Province, bringing up to 13 the number of people who had contracted the deadly virus in the province, a U.N.-run radio station said Friday. "There are now 13 cases affected by the virus...in addition to 16 other suspected cases," Health Minister Felix Kabange was quoted as saying by the Kinshasa-based Okapi radio. He asserted that the outbreak is still confined to Boende area in northern Equateur province, noting that Ebola cases reported recently in Kinshasa and Katanga proved negative. On Monday, Joseph Mboyo Limpoko, government medical inspector in Equateur, told Anadolu Agency that a total of four people countrywide had been confirmed dead from Ebola.

Ebola - a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure - has claimed 1,552 lives in West Africa since the outbreak began in January. Most of the deaths were registered in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. Six fatalities have also been confirmed in Nigeria. The tropical fever, which first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the DRC, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals. It also reportedly spreads through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died of the disease.

NTA

An unusual respiratory virus is striking children in the metro in big numbers. Children's Mercy Hospital is hospitalizing 20 to 30 kids a day with the virus. The hospital is as full now as it is at the height of flu season. This is not the same virus we told you about several weeks ago that can cause meningitis. This one can cause severe breathing trouble. Children's Mercy has seen more than 300 cases in recent days in kids of all ages. Preston Sheldon's mom says he seemed fine when she took him to pre-school Tuesday.

But minutes later, the Grain Valley mom got the call. Her three-year-old son was having trouble breathing. "You could see his ribs, and his stomach was pushing out really hard... I thought it was an asthma attack," said Pam Sheldon. But it was a virus that is inundating Children's Mercy with patients. "To be at winter census is quite unusual in August obviously. To see a virus we've not seen before is unusual, too," said Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, an infectious disease specialist.

It is enterovirus 68. The doctor says it's well-known around the world, but cases have not been seen in Kansas City before. "We have about 10 to 15 percent who have severe illness from this virus which actually acts like asthma exacerbations," said Dr. Jackson. She says about two-thirds of the hospitalized cases are in children like Preston who have a history of asthma or wheezing. But others are having trouble breathing, too. She says the virus will produce an ordinary cold in many kids. What should parents watch for? "The difficulty breathing is a very obvious tip-off sign they need to come into the hospital," said Dr. Jackson.

To try to stop the spread, Children's Mercy has posted signs at security entrances saying children 12 or younger should not visit in-patients. Nor should those with symptoms visit. Dr. Jackson says good hand washing, covering your cough and not sending your child to school if he or she appears sick can help control the spread. There's no anti-viral medicine for enterovirus 68 and no vaccine. Supportive care, including oxygen, has helped Preston. His mom is glad they didn't wait to go to the emergency room. "Cause it can hit really fast. And without medical treatment, it could get really bad," she said. - Fox 4 KC

All the people who said we were making it up, inventing charges of fraud at the CDC...well, here it is. CDC Whistleblower William Thompson's own statement, released from his lawyer's office today.

I'll have more to say about Thompson's confession. But for now, read his words, particularly the opening. The 2004 CDC study on the MMR vaccine and autism was cooked. It was fraud.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-AUGUST 27,2014

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. THOMPSON, Ph.D., REGARDING THE 2004 ARTICLE EXAMINING THE POSSIBILITY OF A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MMR VACCINE AND AUTISM

If I had a cure for Ebola, I could never sell it to you. I don't have a cure for Ebola of course, but even if I did I could never promote it. And if you have a cure for Ebola and you start promoting it on the Internet, a SWAT team could soon show up at your door. Unfortunately, I am not kidding. Even if you have made a discovery that could potentially save millions of lives, that will not earn you an ounce of mercy from the FDA. In fact, the FDA has just issued a statement that contains a chilling warning for anyone that is claiming that they know how to prevent or cure Ebola.

FDA bureaucrats are scouring the Internet right now for any sign of an Ebola cure or treatment.When they find one, they are likely to crack down very hard based on their history. So if you do have a cure for Ebola, you might want to be very, very careful. You could end up having men with automatic weapons conducting a military-style raid on your home when you least expect it.

From End of the American Dream:

I wish that things were not this way in America.

I wish that this nation was not being transformed into a Big Brother police state.

I wish that we could feel free to share information with one another without the fear of men with guns coming to our homes.

West African state of Senegal has become the region's fifth country to confirm a case of the deadly Ebola virus that has killed more than 1,500 people with the WHO warning that five more states are at risk for spread of the outbreak.

A university student from neighbouring Guinea first asked for medical treatment in Dakar on Tuesday but gave no sign of Ebola, Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck told reporters. The student was quarantined the next day after scientists in Guinea notified Senegalese authorities that they are unaware of whereabouts of one person who had had contact with sick people, Seck said.

Seck told the press that the student's condition is "satisfactory," after being tested positive with the deadly virus, but it is still unclear when or how the new victim came to Senegal after the country sealed off its border with Guinea last week. The World Health Organisation has been alerted of the new case.

Meanwhile, some 160 people are being monitored in Nigeria's Port Harcourt after a doctor died from the virus on Thursday.

The Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa began last year in Guinea. Since then, the disease has spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria and now Senegal. Five more countries were identified as at risk of contracting the virus, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

"The following countries share land borders or major transportation connections with the affected countries and are therefore at risk for spread of the Ebola outbreak: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, and Senegal," the agency said, adding it will aid the new states with "surveillance, preparedness and response plan."

The three molten cores at Fukushima plant, each weighing a hundred tons, are so radioactive, that no one can approach them, including robots, which melt down immediately, Dr. Helen Caldicott, the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, physician and anti-nuclear advocate, states in an interview to Radio VR:

"And no one ever will, and the contamination will go on for hundreds of years," Ms. Caldicott cites top physicists as saying.

College students from West Africa may be subject to extra health checks when they arrive to study in the United States as administrators try to insulate campuses from the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

With the virus continuing to kill in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, the expected arrival of thousands of students from those countries has U.S. authorities on alert but cautioning against alarm.

"I can see why there would be concern; there's no vaccine for it," said Fatima Nor, an 18-year-old freshman at the University at Buffalo, where about 25 students from Nigeria are enrolled for fall. But she said knowing that the virus is transmitted strictly through direct contact with bodily fluids of sick people, and not by sitting next to someone in class, should be enough to calm nerves.


"As long as everyone keeps their personal space, it should be OK," said Nor, of Buffalo.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued no specific recommendations for colleges, some state health departments, including in South Carolina and North Dakota, have spelled out for administrators what symptoms to look for and how to react.

Elsewhere, universities are drafting their own precautionary plans against the often-fatal hemorrhagic fever, which causes weakness, vomiting, diarrhea, internal bleeding and sometimes bleeding from the nose and ears.

Two Japanese citizens with suspected Ebola symptoms were taken from Chisinau airport to a Moldovan clinic on Friday, Moldovan border guard police said.

The passengers had signs similar to the Ebola virus-caused disease, including a high temperature. They confirmed that they began feeling unwell after returning from southern Africa where they were on a business trip, the border guard press service said.

The Japanese citizens flew from Japan to Moldova via Istanbul.

They were taken to the Moldovan National Public Health Centre.

Peter Piot, the Belgian scientist who co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976, on Tuesday said a "perfect storm" in West Africa had given the disease a chance to spread unchecked.

"We have never seen an (Ebola) epidemic on this scale," Piot was quoted by the French daily Liberation as saying.

"In the last six months, we have been witnessing what can be described as a 'perfect storm' -- everything is there for it to snowball."

The epidemic "is exploding in countries where health services are not functioning, ravaged by decades of civil war," Piot said.

"In addition, the public is deeply suspicious of the authorities. Trust must be restored. Nothing can be done in an epidemic like Ebola if there is no trust."