Corn was the biggest offender — people who ate it regularly gained an average of two pounds over four years. (Photo: Getty Images)
You’ve heard it many times before: To maintain a healthy weight, exercise regularly and eat more fruits and vegetables. But new research has found that when it comes to weight loss, not all fruits and vegetables are created equal.
A Harvard study of more than 133,000 people published in the journal PLOS Medicine found that some starchy fruits and vegetables can actually make people gain weight over time.
For the study, researchers analyzed the changes that men and women in the U.S. made in their fruit and vegetable intake over 24 years, as reported in previously conducted dietary questionnaires and self-reported changes in weight. Scientists specifically analyzed several four-year periods for their findings.
Planes are more tightly packed than ever. Are our human rights being violated? (Illustration: iStock)
It’s the newest civil rights movement — or, more accurately, civil aviation rights movement.
As airlines look to boost passenger capacity, and profits, by reducing the legroom passengers enjoy on flights, some passenger rights groups are getting fed up. They say the increasingly cramped conditions airline passengers (especially those flying in economy class) face are no longer a consumer issue; they’re calling it a human rights issue.
“We have the right to a certain amount of space when we’re traveling,” Christopher Elliott tells Yahoo Travel. Elliott is a travel journalist and co-founder of the airline advocacy group Travelers United. He recently wrote an eyebrow-raising Washington Post op-ed about the new push for human rights on airplanes.
“After the Washington Post story, I heard from so many people who said, ‘I was on a flight and didn’t have any room,’” Elliott tells Yahoo Travel. “People are saying it’s about time someone said this because we don’t feel we’re being treated like people.”
More than 4 million Syrians have been displaced by civil war — but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad isn’t one of them. These five facts explain why Syria’s embattled president will remain in power.
1. Good Friends
Assad currently controls 25 percent of Syrian territory, and he’ll hold on to it as if his life depends on it — because it probably does. The territory he still commands is confined to large population centers on the coast, but that’s enough as long as he continues to receive support from abroad.
Russia hopes to secure a military foothold and protect its access to a deep-water port in the Mediterranean Sea, the only Russian port outside the former Soviet Union, by sending Assad half a dozen T-90 tanks, 15 howitzers, 35 armored personnel carriers, and 200 marines in recent weeks.
That may be just the beginning of Russia’s growing presence. In addition, Iran is worried that Syria will fall to Syrian rebels backed by Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s enduring rival in the region, and so has extended a $1 billion credit line to Assad’s regime to help it import critical goods and commodities.
The Islamic State militant group has recently released a barrage of propaganda videos targeting refugees and telling them to come join the "caliphate" instead of fleeing to "xenophobic" Europe.
The videos seek to reinforce the image of the caliphate — the territory ISIS controls in Iraq and Syria — as an Islamic utopia and capitalize on the dangers refugees face as they flee to European countries.
And these videos aren’t the first propaganda messages ISIS has released about the refugee crisis — earlier this month, in its English-language magazine Dabiq, the extremist group published an article warning against leaving the caliphate for Western countries.
The articles said leaving for Western nations was "a dangerous major sin" that was "a gate towards one’s children and grandchildren abandoning Islam for Christianity, atheism, or liberalism."
This propaganda effort could be a sign of panic in the ranks of ISIS leadership as Iraqis and Syrians flee their home countries in large numbers. "They claim to create this Islamic utopia, and Muslims are fleeing in droves," Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider.
TEHRAN, Sep. 22 (MNA) – Lebanese authorities are reported to have arrested a Takfiri terrorist involved in the bomb attack on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut in 2013.
According to a statement released by Lebanon’s Department of Public Safety on Tuesday, the arrested terrorist with a Syrian citizenship was the head of an armed terrorist group involved in making missiles by using explosives and bombing cars with Lebanese license plates operating in a workshop in the Syrian city of Yabrud.
The statement adds that the Syrian terrorist and his accomplices with the help from another Syrian national transferred to Lebanon a bombed car used in the blast at the site of Iran’s embassy in Beirut and gave financial support to this terrorist attack.
With a ceasefire now in effect after a months-long battle for the last Syrian rebel stronghold on the Lebanese border, Hezbollah has said it will stop fighting in Syria, a diplomatic source has told Lebanon’s Daily Star.
The unnamed source said the group informed Syrian authorities that once the fighting for Zabadani was over, it would end its combat in Syria where analysts say it has significantly strengthened pro-government forces since 2013.
In July, pro-government forces launched an offensive to try to recapture Zabadani, about 40km outside Damascus, which prompted a rebel alliance to besiege Fuaa and Kafraya, the only remaining government-held villages in Idlib province whose residents are Shia.
On Sunday, a ceasefire went into effect between pro-government forces and rebels in Zabadani in exchange for ceasefires in Fuaa and Kafraya.
A Lebanese anti-government protester sleeps outside a tent set up for a sit-in against the ongoing garbage crisis and the government corruption, in front of the government house in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Sept. 21, 2015
The Lebanese business community can’t have it both ways. Let me explain. Last Thursday, the Beirut Traders Association waded into the two-month dispute between the government and civil society activists, which began with the state’s inability to process Beirut’s rubbish, and then moved on to the wider issue of corruption, the absence of a president and the urgent need for parliamentary elections.
And what did the traders want? Well, basically they wanted the protesters to go home and rethink their strategy because, despite conceding that they did indeed have legitimate grievances, they were, as Nicolas Chammas, the association head, couched it, “voicing social demands at the expense of the economy”.
A full-page advertisement by the Hungarian government that was published in Lebanese newspapers, warning migrants not to enter the country illegally saying it is a crime punishable by imprisonment, in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Sept. 21, 2015. Hungary, which closed its border with Serbia on Sept. 15, erected another steel barrier at the Beremend border crossing from Croatia to try to slow the flow of migrants. But they kept coming. Lebanon has nearly 1.2 million Syrian refugees some of whom have expressed interest in migrating to Europe because of poor conditions they live in here.HUSSEIN MALLA — AP Photo
Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2015/09/21/6426201/hungary-posts-ads-in-lebanese.html#storylink=cpy
BEIRUT – The Hungarian government posted ads in Lebanese newspapers on Monday warning migrants not to enter illegally, saying it is a crime punishable by imprisonment.
In a full-page advertisement in several newspapers, including Lebanon’s leading An-Nahar daily, the government said "the strongest possible action is taken" against people who attempt to enter Hungary illegally.
"Do not listen to the people smugglers. Hungary will not allow illegal immigrants to cross its territory," the advertisement reads in English and Arabic.
Lebanon has nearly 1.2 million Syrian refugees, some of whom have expressed interest in migrating to Europe because of dwindling aid and work opportunities.
Hungary, which closed its border with Serbia on Sept. 15, erected another steel barrier at the Beremend border crossing from Croatia to try to slow the flow of migrants. But they kept coming.
Beirut is commonly seen as a place to visit to take the political temperature of the Middle East. Credit: ITV On Assignment
One of the books I read on Lebanon when I was first posted to the Middle East was called "A House of Many Mansions". I remember thinking what an intriguing and enigmatic title it was for a book about a country where the embers of a decades long civil war were still very much alive.
Written by the celebrated Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi, it is to this day, a title for the country which encapsulates the contradictions of Lebanon.
A Syrian boy with his face covered in dust stands in a street following an air strike by government forces on the rebel held Bustan al-Qasr district in the east of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on September 20, 2015
Damascus (AFP) – Syria predicted Sunday that Russia’s growing military role will prove a game changer in the fight against jihadists, as 75 rebels trained under a beleaguered US programme entered the fray.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, in contrast, said Moscow’s support for the regime in Damascus only risked sending more extremists to war-torn Syria and could further hamper peace efforts.
"More important than the supply of arms to Syria is Russia’s participation in the fight against Daesh and Al-Nusra Front," Al-Qaeda’s franchise in the country, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.
Muallem, quoted by Syrian media in an interview with Russia Today television, said Moscow’s increased role would "show up America’s lack of a clear strategy" against the jihadists.
