kimblr.com

By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. life expectancy hit a record high of 78.1 years in 2006 while Alzheimer’s disease crept up a notch to No. 6 on the list of leading causes of death, U.S. health officials said on Wednesday.
Rates for 14 of the top 15 causes of death fell in 2006, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report. Influenza and pneumonia deaths had the steepest drop, at 13 percent, compared to the previous year.
The life expectancy at birth of 78.1 years was up from a then-record of 77.8 years in 2005, continuing a rise going back decades, the CDC said.
Life expectancy for women (80.7 years) continued to exceed that for men (75.4 years). Racial disparities persisted as well, with white women’s life expectancy at 81 years compared to 76.9 for black women and white men’s life expectancy at 76 years compared to 70 for black men.
Infant mortality fell in 2006 to 6.7 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, down from 6.9 per 1,000 in 2005, according to the CDC. It still remains higher than many rich nations.
Heart disease, which killed 629,191 people, and cancer, which killed 560,102 people, remained the two top causes of death, followed by stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases such as emphysema and accidents.
STEADY RISE EXPECTED
Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia in the elderly, leapfrogged diabetes to become the sixth-leading cause of death, killing 72,914 Americans in 2006. Continued…

reuters.com

Walls and billows of fire made it “hot” because he was promoting Lamar Institute of Technology future fire fighters training to douse industrial incidents. He spent the night behind a camera, but as a working couple, we make the most of rare time together.
The prison camp date was more relaxing. I actually look forward to being his guest at the annual volunteer appreciation banquet, where I know I’ll get a hefty meal and some darned good inmate entertainment. My husband volunteers with men of St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church to support and guide inmates. He’s not alone. The night draws dozens of volunteers from all faiths who get to hear the “men in green” share how they’ve been changing.
I enjoyed generous servings of fried fish and chicken and everyone’s favorite starches: corn, macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes. Then I saw the dirty rice. My plate was heavy. There were grapes as big as I’ve ever seen. The men cooked and served the food, but there were several mentions — to taxpayers — that this is not how they eat every day.
A jammin’ choir and band provided soulful music with lyrics such as “God’s got a blessing with your name on it.”
As secure as I felt in the camp, there were ever-present reminders of where we were. I’ve seen servers wear hair nets, but these inmate waiters filling coffee also wore mini surgical mask coverings on their beards and mustaches. The sugar packets read IPS: Institutional Product Supply. A door is marked “bano de prisonero” and signs warn people not to stand in the corners of the room. I think that’s so cameras can catch them better.
Karios, Bridges to Life and other groups operate within prison walls. Free world people spend gas money and time away from their families to go to a world others don’t understand. They hear comments about wasting their time on criminals, but volunteers don’t know the crimes that these inmates have committed. They are working under the Biblical directive to visit prisoners and on the very real fact that these inmates will soon be walking our streets again, so wouldn’t it be great if they were more accountable to their faith and their families?

tradingmarkets.com

Ten years ago the Gallaghers were an ordinary suburban couple: two kids and a four-bedroom home on a cul-de-sac in Auburn, Wash.
Steve was a music teacher. Eva was a stay-at-home mom to their daughter Janet, then 3, and son Paul, who was 1.
But Eva felt something was missing. The family lived in a development where the homes were built so close together “we could hear our neighbors’ alarm clocks in the morning,” Eva remembers.
“But we didn’t know our neighbors. People didn’t come out of their houses.”
So the Gallaghers searched for a different life.
They found it in a place called Fair Meadows Farm. After Steve heads off to school each morning, Eva and the two kids, who are homeschooled, head out to care for a herd of alpacas.
Eva smiles as she nuzzles a fuzzy brown alpaca face that greets her at the pasture gate.
Oversize eyes stare out from beneath a mop top of woolly fleece. It’s easy to see how someone could fall in love with these South American natives.
The Fair Meadows Farm alpacas are curious but cautious. They are also well-trained: A word or two and some simple hand-waves, and they know it’s time to pass through the gate from one pasture to the next.
The kids help wheel hay to the herd, transporting it in two baby strollers — one left over from their toddler days, the other purchased at a Goodwill store. They clean the animals’ water dispensers.
“I wanted to be able to give my kids an education that was customized for their natural gifts,” Eva says, explaining her choice to home school.
Fleece to yarn
While their appearance charms, alpacas are most prized for their fleece, which is silky and lightweight, more like soft hair than scratchy wool.
And because alpaca fiber contains no lanolin, it’s lighter and less likely to provoke an allergic reaction than wool, according to alpaca farmers.

kansascity.com

Amazing things happen in football. No one believed that Walter Smith would ever manage Rangers again. Few thought that Paul Le Guen, “the great moonbeam”, would be anything other than a success in Glasgow. And this time last year, if anyone had suggested that Kirk Broadfoot, then of St Mirren, would be settling into a role for Rangers and gunning for the last eight of the Uefa Cup, a strait-jacket would have been called for.
Broadfoot touched down in Bremen yesterday and rubbed his eyes once more to find that, yes, it really was all true. The 23-year-old has now played nine successive games for Rangers and, while no one has any illusions about him being a world-beater, he has established himself in Smith’s mind as a durable attacking full-back.
Depending on how Rangers set up tonight, it may be between Broadfoot and Sasa Papac for one of the remaining full-back roles against Werder Bremen, with the Scot likely to continue from the start. If so, it will seem a further justification of the words of the St Mirren manager, Gus MacPherson, to Broadfoot when the first half of this 2007-08 season had gone without him making much progress at Ibrox, and going out on loan was mooted.

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