Heavier people accused of higher carbon emissions

Carbon emissions fuelled by high rates of obesity

High rates of obesity are adding to climate crisis, says a new study

Guardian | Apr 20, 2009

by Alok Jha

High rates of obesity in richer countries cause up to 1bn extra tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year, compared with countries with leaner populations, according to a study that assesses the additional food and fuel requirements of the overweight. The finding is particularly worrying, scientists say, because obesity is on the rise in many rich nations.

“Population fatness has an environmental impact,” said Phil Edwards, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “We’re all being told to stay fit and keep our weight down because it’s good for our health. The important thing is that staying slim is good for your health and for the health of the planet.”

The study, carried out by Edwards and Ian Roberts, is published today in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

In their model, the researchers compared a population of 1 billion lean people, with weight distributions equivalent to a country such as Vietnam, with 1 billion people from richer countries, such as the US, where about 40% of the population is classified obese.

The fatter population needed 19% more food energy for its energy requirements, they found. They also factored in greater car use by the overweight. “The heavier our bodies become the harder it is to move about in them and the more dependent we become on cars,” they wrote.

The greenhouse gas emissions from food production and car travel for the fatter billion people were estimated at between 0.4bn and 1bn extra tonnes a year. That is a significant amount in comparison with the world’s total emissions of 27bn tonnes in 2004.

Last September the world’s leading authority on climate change suggested the people should eat less meat, because meat production causes 20% of global emissions. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said consumers should begin with one meat-free day a week.

13-year-old’s school strip-search case heads to Supreme Court

Administrators strip-searched honor student, 13, looking for ibuprofen

CNN | Apr 19, 2009

(CNN) — The case of a 13-year-old Arizona girl strip-searched by school officials looking for ibuprofen pain-reliever will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this week.

The justices in January accepted the Safford school district case for review, and will decide whether a campus setting gives school administrators greater discretion to control students suspected of illegal activity than police are allowed in cases involving adults in general public spaces.

The case is centered around Savana Redding, now 19, who in 2003 was an eighth-grade honors student at Safford Middle School, about 127 miles from Tucson, Arizona. Redding was strip-searched by school officials after a fellow student accused her of providing prescription-strength ibuprofen pills.

The school has a zero-tolerance policy for all prescription and over-the-counter medication, including the ibuprofen, without prior written permission.

“In this case, the United States Supreme Court will decide how easy it is for school officials to strip search your child,” Adam Wolf, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing Redding, told CNN Radio on Sunday.

Wolf told CNN Radio his client was traumatized by the search.

“School officials undoubtedly have difficult jobs, but sometimes they overreact — and this was just a clear overreaction,” he said.

Redding was pulled from class by a male vice principal, escorted to an office, where she denied the accusations.

A search of Redding’s backpack found nothing. Then, although she never had prior disciplinary problems, a strip search was conducted with the help of a school nurse and Wilson’s assistant, both females. According to court records, she was ordered to strip to her underwear and her bra was pulled out. Again, no drugs were found.

In an affidavit, Redding said, “The strip search was the most humiliating experience I have ever had. I held my head down so that they could not see that I was about to cry.”

At issue is whether school administrators are constitutionally barred from conducting searches of students investigated for possessing or dealing drugs that are banned on campus.

A federal appeals court found the search “traumatizing” and illegal.

Some parents say older children deserve the same constitutional rights as adults, but educators counter a school setting has always been treated differently by courts, and a ruling against them could jeopardize campus safety.

While a federal magistrate and a three-panel appeals court found the search was reasonable, the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Redding last year.

“Common sense informs us,” wrote the court, “that directing a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes, partially revealing her breasts and pelvic area, for allegedly possessing ibuprofen … was excessively intrusive.”

The court said the school went too far in its effort to create a drug- and crime-free classroom. “The overzealousness of school administrators in efforts to protect students has the tragic impact of traumatizing those they claim to serve. And all this to find prescription-strength ibuprofen.”

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the school district said restrictions on conducting student searches would cast a “roadblock to the kind of swift and effective response that is too often needed to protect the very safety of students, particularly from the threats posed by drugs and weapons.”

School officials said the court was “wholly uninformed about a disturbing new trend” — the abuse of over-the-counter medication by teenagers.

The high court has a mixed record over the years on students’ rights.

In a famous 1969 ruling, the justices said students do not “shed their constitutional rights … at the schoolhouse gate.” But decisions in the 1980s gave administrators greater discretion, including one case that said officials need not be required to have a warrant to search a student’s locker. Such a search was permitted if there were “reasonable” grounds for believing it would turn up evidence and when the search was not “excessively intrusive.”

Opinions in 1995 and 2001 allowed schools to conduct random drug testing of high school athletes, and those participating in other extracurricular activities.

And in a well-publicized 2007 ruling from Alaska, the Supreme Court upheld the suspension of a student who displayed a large “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner at an off-campus, but school-sponsored, event. The decision did not endorse a broader argument that students in general have limited free-speech rights when they interfere with a school’s vaguely defined “educational mission.”

The court could now be asked to clarify the extent of student rights involving searches, and the discretion of officials regarding those they have responsibility over.

The case is Safford United School District No. 1 v. Redding (08-479).

Study: Inbreeding ruined the Hapsburg dynasty

Dynasty that dominated Europe for more than 500 years was undone by incest, study finds

Independent | Apr 20, 2009

By Steve Connor

The Hapsburg dynasty was one of the most important and influential royal families in Europe dating back more than 500 years and producing rulers in Austria, Hungary, Belgium, the Netherlands and the German empire. Then, in 1700, it suffered a sudden demise of its Spanish branch. Now scientists believe they have come up with a definitive explanation.

A study of the extended family tree of the House of Hapsburg has found that the last Spanish Hapsburg king, Charles II, was the offspring of a marriage that was almost as genetically inbred as an incestuous relationship between a brother and sister or parent and child.

Scientists have found that the Hapsburg fashion of marrying their relatives to keep their dynastic heritage intact had dire consequences for subsequent generations, which culminated in the last heir to the Spanish throne being sickly and impotent.

Charles II of Spain was nicknamed El Hechizado – The Hexed – because people at the time thought that his physical and mental disabilities were the result of sorcery. Now a study into the genetics of his immediate ancestors has found that he was so inbred that he probably suffered from at least two inherited disorders.

Despite his deformities and severe health problems, Charles had married twice in the hope of continuing the rule of the Hapsburgs, but he was incapable of fathering an heir and died childless at the age of 39. He was the last of a long line of Hapsburgs and it spelled the end for the Spanish branch of the dynasty.

Scientists believe they can show just how inbred Charles was following a study of more than 3,000 relatives of the Hapsburg family extending over 16 generations. The researchers found that his “inbreeding coefficient” – a measure of the proportion of inbred genes he had inherited from his parents – was on a par with that of the offspring of an incestuous marriage.

Professor Gonzalo Alvarez, of the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, found that the Hapsburgs suffered a far higher child mortality than the general population, even though the family was immensely wealthy and did not experience the poverty related health problems faced by many people at the time.

They also suffered a higher incidence of physical deformities, which were best exemplified by the famous “Hapsburg lip”, a disfiguringly prominent lower jaw caused by an inherited medical condition called mandibular prognathism, when the lower jaw grows faster than the upper jaw.

Charles II not only suffered an extreme version of the Hapsburg lip, his tongue was said to be so big for his mouth that he had difficulty speaking and drooled. He also suffered from an oversized head, intestinal upsets, convulsions and, according to his first wife, premature ejaculation.

“He was unable to speak until the age of four, and could not walk until the age of eight. He was short, weak and quite lean and thin. He was described as a person showing very little interest in his surroundings,” Professor Alvarez said. “He looked like an old person when he was 30 years old, suffering edemas [swellings] on his feet, legs, abdomen and face. During the last years of his life he could barely stand up and suffered from hallucinations and convulsive episodes,” he said.

The medical problems of Charles II of Spain were not the random consequences of life, but the direct result of many generations of interbreeding between close relatives within the extended Hapsburg dynasty, according to the study published in the online journal Plos One.

The motto of the Hapsburg dynasty – “Let others wage wars, but you, happy Austria, shall marry” – extolled the tendency of family members to marry within their ranks. Charles’ father, Philip IV, was the uncle of his mother, Mariana of Austria; his great-grandfather, Philip II, was also the uncle of his great-grandmother, Anna of Austria; and his grandmother, Maria Anna of Austria, was simultaneously his aunt.

There were many marriages between first and third cousins within the Hapsburg family, as well as between uncles and nieces and more remote family members.

This meant that down the generations, with no let up on the amount of intermarriage, the degree of genetic inbreeding gradually built up. The founder of the Spanish dynasty, Philip I, is calculated to have an inbreeding coefficient of 0.025, which meant that just 2.5 per cent of his genes were likely to be identical by common descent. But 200 years and seven generations later, the coefficient had leapt ten-fold to 0.25 in the genome of Charles II, meaning up to one in four of his genes might have been identical.

The medical dangers of such a high level of inbreeding is that dangerously defective genes, which are usually recessive, can come together in one individual and so manifest themselves as an ailment. This is why the offspring of first-cousin marriages are at higher risk of inherited disorders.

Professor Alvarez and his colleagues believe that Charles II suffered the consequences of a high level of marriage between biological relatives. Nine of the 11 marriages over 200 years that preceded his birth were consanguineous, including two uncle-niece marriages and two first-cousin marriages.

Professor Alvarez suggested that Charles II had inherited genes that caused two genetic disorders. One was a hormone imbalance called pituitary hormone deficiency, which would have affected his growth and development, and the other was a kidney problem that led to a metabolic disorder which caused impotence and infertility. “His muscular weakness at a young age, rickets, haematuria [blood in the urine] and big head relative to his body size could be attributed to this genetic disorder,” he said. “In this way, we may speculate that most of the symptoms showed by Charles II could be explained by two genetic disorders.”

Ron Paul: “It’s very American to talk about secession”

Ron Paul talks about the possibility of  secession as a return to self-determination and economic independence.