Share 'wreck-less' checklist with teenage drivers

                  Summer is in the air, literally, with temperatures approaching 90 some days and high school graduations just around the corner.
                  "For young drivers, the break from school means more time for fun, friends, driving, and unfortunately, driving distractions such as texting, eating and applying makeup," wrote Michael Gratch, the president of the Pennsylvania Orthopaedic Society, as part of a letter campaign to Pennsylvania newspapers.
                  The letter is part of a campaign sponsored by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Alliance of Automobile Manufactures designed to raise awareness among teens about the dangers of distracted driving.
                  Why orthopaedic surgeons?
                  Gratch notes in his letter that they "put bones and limbs back together after road crashes and trauma," and see too often the devastating damage to young people caused when teen drivers drive while distracted.
                  Statistics show crashes involving teens are most likely to occur between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
                  According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 11 percent of drivers ages 15 to 19 who were involved in a fatal crash were reportedly distracted at the time of the crash.  In 2010 there were 13,846 crashes in Pennsylvania where distracted driving played a role.
                 The two organizations are calling their campaign, "Decide to Drive," and includes a "Wreck-Less Checklist" to get teens thinking and taking preventative measures to avoid distractions.
                 The checklist urges before starting a car :

• set phones aside
• put on sunglasses and other accessories
• fasten seatbelts
• move reading material out of reach
• pre-load CDs or mp3 playlists and adjust radio volume level
• enter an address in the navigation system, or review directions

               If a distraction needs attention, pull the car over in a safe area.
               Refrain from eating, drinking, applying makeup and doing hair while driving.
              The campaign is intended to save lives, but key is getting the message to young people.
              Share the "wreck-less checklist" with teen drivers.
              This summer, "decide to drive" and leave distractions at home.
              

Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet (May 31, 2013)

Water Woes
Humanity's improvident use of water threatens to drive most of the 9 billion people on Earth into an acute shortage of the precious commodity within at least one or two generations, scientists warn.  More than 500 of the most esteemed water researchers, meeting in Bonn, Germany, said the shortages would be entirely self-inflicted and avoidable.  They urge governments to start conserving the resource instead of looking at it as an endlessly renewable resource.  Experts warn that climate change is producing more frequent droughts, floods, heat waves and storms.  Massive fertilizer use by industrial agriculture is polluting many bodies of water, leading to "dead zones" in seas and near the mouths of rivers.  And massive pumping of underground aquifers is rapidly depleting supplies that will take at least generations to replenish once they are pumped dry.
MERS Virus Alert
The U.N. health agency warns that a new deadly virus, which causes SARS-like symptoms, has the potential to spread further around the world and has a global death toll now of 27.  A total of 49 patients have been infected by what's being called the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS-CoV for short.  It emerged last September in Saudi Arabia, and most of the cases have occurred on the Arabian Peninsula.  But people have died as far away as Tunisia, France and the U.K. after traveling to the Middle East or being in contact with people who had been there.  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the virus acts like the one that causes the common cold.  But symptoms, which include fever and a cough, are far more severe and can lead to pneumonia and kidney failure.
'Astroplant' Candidates
Plants found beneath a retreating glacier have sprouted new growth after being dormant for 400 years, Canadian scientists say.  A team of biologists from the University of Alberta made the discovery on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.  Lead researcher Catherine La Farge said the plants became entombed beneath the Teardrop Glacier during the Little Ice Age between 1550 and 1850.  The glacier has been shrinking by three to four yards per year due to climate change, exposing mosses and other non-vascular plants that still had traces green in them.  La Farge and her team ground up the samples and sprinkled them onto a petri dish to see what would happen.  They successful regeneration of the hearty plants, known as bryophytes, could mean that they would be good test subjects to send to Mars before humans arrive.
Volcano Evacuations
Residents in a remote stretch of the Andes were evacuated as nearby Copahue volcano showed signs of a potentially exposive eruption.  More than 2,200 people were asked to leave from around the volcano, which straddles the Chile-Argentina border.  But some insisted on staying behind to feed and protect their live stock until the government could evacuate the animals as well, or guarantee they would be fed.  Ash from a massive eruption of nearby Puyehue in 2011 disrupted air travel around the Southern Hemisphere.
Tropical Cyclone
Hurricane  Barbara killed two in southern Mexico as it became the second-earliest such storm to make landfall, and most easterly, on record.
Earthquakes
A massive 8.3 magnitude quake centered off Far East Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on May 24 caused tremors that frightened residents as far away as Moscow, more than 4,000 miles to the west.  There were no reports of damage or injuries due to the world's most powerful temblor so far this year.
*   Earth movements were also felt in Uzbekistan, West Java, Tonga, northeastern New Zealand, Wales and Ireland, the Panama-Costa Rica border area, coastal Southern California and in northeastern California.
Green-Eyed Discovery
Entomologists say they have discovered what is possibly the last undiscovered butterfly species in the U.S. in a green-eyed specimen that had for a century been confused with a more common cousin.  Writing in the journal Zoo Keys, North American Butterfly Association president Jeffery Glassberg and Smithsonian butterfly curator Bob Robbins say the new species can be differentiated from the more common Gray Ministreak by eye color.  The newly named Vicroy's Ministreak has distinctive olive-green eyes, while the Gray has dark brown or black eyes.  Even though specimens of Vicroy's Ministreak were sent to the Smithsonian a century ago, the species was unrecognized as unique because it was confused with its more common cousin.  Both have different but overlapping habitats and are only about the size of a human thumbnail.  While Vicroy's Ministreak may be the last new species in the United States, many hundreds may be waiting to be identified in tropical regions of Latin America.

White suit of KFC founder Colonel Sanders to be sold at auction

 A double-breasted white suit and bow tie worn by KFC founder Colonel Harlan Sanders and a signed portrait of the fast food pioneer will be featured at an Americana sale this month, Heritage Auctions said on Friday.

The trademark suit, portrait and photographs are expected to sell for $10,000 or more at the June 22 auction in Dallas.

"It's impossible to think of Colonel Sanders, or KFC, without thinking of this white suit," Kathleen Guzman, the managing director of Heritage Auctions, said in a statement.

"To this day, 33 years after his death, the Colonel is just as popular and recognizable as ever."

Mike Morris, manager of a hotel near Cincinnati, Ohio, is selling the suit, portrait and photographs of the colonel, who was a friend of his family's. Sanders gave him the suit after Morris, as a teenager, borrowed it to wear to a Halloween party.

A gun belt worn by American outlaw Jesses James, one of two he owned when he died in 1882, is expected to be another top item, along with a violin once owned by gunslinger Jim Younger, a member of the James-Younger gang.

Both items have pre-sale estimates of $10,000.

Saudi prince sues Forbes after it says he's only worth $20 billion: report

 Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has sued Forbes magazine for libel in a British court, alleging its valuation of his wealth at $20 billion was short of the mark by $9.6 billion, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Friday.

The prince, a grandson of Saudi Arabia's founder and nephew of King Abdullah, had attacked the U.S. magazine's ranking of world billionaires as flawed and biased against Middle Eastern businesses after he was ranked number 26 in this year's list.

An official at the High Court in London confirmed that Prince Alwaleed had filed a defamation suit against Forbes, its editor Randall Lane, and two of its journalists on April 30. Details of the claim were not immediately available.

Through his Kingdom Holding Company, Prince Alwaleed owns large stakes in Citigroup, News Corp and Apple Inc, among other companies. He is also owner or part-owner of luxury hotels including the Plaza in New York, the Savoy in London and the George V in Paris.

This year's Forbes World Billionaires list was published on March 4, and the following day Kingdom Holding said the valuation process used "incorrect data" and "seemed designed to disadvantage Middle Eastern investors and institutions".

The public spat attracted a lot of comment, but Forbes stuck by its estimate of Prince Alwaleed's wealth and published an in-depth article in its March 25 issue entitled "Prince Alwaleed and the curious case of Kingdom Holding stock".

The article gave details about how Forbes had arrived at the figure of $20 billion and criticized what it described as a lack of transparency by Kingdom Holding in detailing its assets.

The article also described Prince Alwaleed's marble-filled, 420-room Riyadh palace, his private Boeing 747 equipped with a throne, and his 120-acre resort on the edge of the Saudi capital with five homes, five artificial lakes and a mini-Grand Canyon.

The High Court official in London said the two journalists named in the defamation claim were Kerry Dolan, the author of the article, and Francine McKenna, who was credited with additional reporting.

No date has been set for a court hearing in the case, which is in its very early stages, the official said.

The law firm Kobre & Kim, which the Guardian said was acting for Prince Alwaleed in the suit, declined to comment. New York-based Forbes could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Guardian article quoted the magazine as saying: "We're very surprised at claims that Prince Alwaleed has decided to sue Forbes, particularly if he has done so in the United Kingdom, a jurisdiction that has nothing whatsoever to do with our recent story which raised questions about his claims about his wealth."

Media lawyer Jonathan Coad, of the London firm Lewis Silkin, said London was seen as a more attractive place than New York to bring defamation suits because U.S. libel law made higher requirements of claimants.

"In the U.S., a high-profile claimant has to prove firstly that the article was untrue and secondly that the publisher knew that the article was untrue, which is what we call malice. Those are two hurdles that a UK libel action does not present," said Coad, who is not involved in the Prince Alwaleed case.

Under British libel law, a claimant has only to prove that a publication was defamatory. Then the burden of proof passes to the defendant, who has several possible defenses, including that the publication was true.

Enter The Diplomat - U.N.'s Ban gets black belt

 Representatives at the United Nations may think twice about crossing Ban Ki-moon in future after the secretary-general was awarded an honorary 10th degree black belt in the Korean martial art of taekwondo.

While is unclear whether the 68-year-old Ban can break bricks with his bare hands, World Taekwondo Federation president Choue Chung-won said the awarding of the black belt reflected the common goals and values shared by the UN and federation.

"I am delighted to have presented UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with our prestigious black belt," Choue said in a statement.

"The black belt is a globally-recognized symbol of expertise across the martial arts and awarding it to the secretary-general represents how strongly matched the WTF's values are with the United Nations."

South Korean Ban, who succeeded Kofi Annan in the UN's top job in 2007 and will serve through his second term until the end of 2016, praised the efforts of the federation, founded in 1973, to achieve peace through sport.

"The World Taekwondo Federation have many accomplishments to celebrate as they mark their 40th anniversary," he added in the statement. "They have become a great example of the values and objectives that are shared by the United Nations and the Olympic Movement."

While ninth degree is technically the highest level attainable through the ranking system, some honorary 10th degree black belts have been awarded to individuals for their contributions to taekwondo and society in general.

The WTF presented their first two honorary 10th degree black belts to International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge and his predecessor, Juan Antonio Samaranch. Ban is the third recipient of the third.

Royal prank DJ lauded one of the "best in the land" by employer

 One of the Australian radio presenters who staged a royal prank call that was linked to the suicide of a London nurse has been awarded the title of "Top Jock" by his employer, radio network Southern Cross Austereo.

Michael Christian was the joint winner in one of the categories of an internal competition that recognizes the company's "best in the land". He was awarded a trip to Los Angeles as part of his prize.

Christian and his colleague Mel Greig made a prank call to the London hospital treating Prince William's wife, Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, in December 2012.

Nurse Jacintha Saldanha put the call through to a colleague who, despite the DJs' unconvincing accents, disclosed details of the duchess's medical condition.

Saldanha was found hanged in her apartment days after the call.

"To be seen to be rewarding people so soon after such an event, I think, is just in bad taste," National Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told a Melbourne radio station.

Christian was in his first week at the Sydney station 2DayFM when the prank was staged.

"Regardless of all that's happened in the past few months, I'm still at the top of my game," Christian said in a statement. "It felt good to see my name at the top of the final leader board."

Following a public backlash, Southern Cross promised to donate advertising revenue to a fund for Saldanha's family with a minimum contribution of A$500,000 ($485,500).

($1 = 1.0298 Australian dollars)