Mountain climber’s scary fall caught on video

A British mountain climber with a helmet-mounted camera took a terrifying fall after being hit by a hurtling chunk of ice while attempting to scale one of the U.K.'s highest peaks.
Mark Roberts, 47, a lifelong mountain climber, was climbing Snowdon in north Wales last month when the falling ice caused him to tumble more than 100 feet down a gully before coming to a stop on a ledge. Roberts, who suffered a broken ankle and bruises, somehow escaped without serious injury—and without screaming.
"There was no feeling of panic, more a concerted effort to protect my head and neck, and be aware of what was below me, where I was heading and what I could do to slow and stop myself before I got to the more serious rocky outcrops," he said, according to the British Mountaineering Council's website.
A mountain rescue team airlifted Roberts to a local hospital, where he was treated.
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Highway patrol: 'High rate' of speed in Ohio crash

Investigators were focused on speed as a key factor in the crash of a sport utility vehicle carrying eight teenagers that smashed into a guardrail and flipped over into a swampy pond, killing five boys and the young woman driving.
While citing an unspecified "high rate" of speed, investigators wouldn't speculate on whether alcohol or drugs were involved in the crash about 7 a.m. Sunday on a two-lane road snugged between guardrails just south of this industrial Ohio community.
No one in the vehicle had permission to take it, but there were no theft reports, State Highway Patrol Lt. Brian Holt said. The vehicle was licensed to a resident of Youngstown, about 20 miles away.
"I can't believe you're gone," Mariah Bryant, 12, wrote in a message taped to a stuffed bear at the scene in memory of her half-brother, Daylan Ray, 15, who was killed.
"I love and miss you so much," said the message, which drew a steady stream of onlookers. The bear was part of a growing memorial of stuffed animals at the roadside.
Deanna Behner said her 15-year-old son and the other teenagers were close friends who lived in the same neighborhood on the east side of Warren, Youngstown TV stations WKBN and WYTV reported. Behner told the stations that authorities unsuccessfully tried for hours to save her son, Kirklan Behner.
The Honda Passport veered off the left side of a road and overturned about 60 miles east of Cleveland, State Highway Patrol Lt. Anne Ralston said. Investigators say it came to rest upside down in the swamp and sank with five of the victims trapped inside. A sixth, who was thrown from the SUV during the crash, was found under it when the vehicle was taken out of the water.
The two boys who survived escaped from the submerged vehicle and ran a quarter-mile to a home to call 911, the highway patrol said.
Holt said at an evening news conference that speed was a factor, although investigators were still trying to determine the speed at the time of the accident.
"We will not be speculating on alcohol and-or drug usage pending toxicology reports," Holt said.
After the news conference, the gates of an impound lot were opened to show the wreck, with windows smashed and extensive damage to the front end, hood and roof.
Ralston didn't know where the teens were headed when the crash happened and Holt said later it wasn't clear how long they had been out.
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Zombie fads peak when society unhappy

In the popular TV series "The Walking Dead," humans struggle to escape from a pack of zombies hungry for flesh. Prank alerts have warned of a zombie apocalypse on radio stations in a handful of states. And across the country, zombie wannabes in tattered clothes occasionally fill local parks, gurgling moans of the undead. Are these just unhealthy obsessions with death and decay? To Clemson University professor Sarah Lauro, the phenomenon isn't harmful or a random fad, but part of a historical trend that mirrors a level of cultural dissatisfaction and economic upheaval.
Lauro, who teaches English at Clemson, studied zombies while working on her doctoral degree at the University of California at Davis. Lauro said she keeps track of zombie movies, TV shows and video games, but her research focuses primarily on the concept of the "zombie walk," a mass gathering of people who, dressed in the clothes and makeup of the undead, stagger about and dance.
It's a fascination that, for Lauro, a self-described "chicken," seems unnatural. Disinterested in violent movies or games, Lauro said she finds herself now taking part in both in an attempt to further understand what makes zombie-lovers tick.
"I hate violence," she said. "I can't stand gore. So it's a labor, but I do it."
The zombie mob originated in 2003 in Toronto, Lauro said, and popularity escalated dramatically in the United States in 2005, alongside a rise in dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq.
"It was a way that the population was getting to exercise the fact that they felt like they hadn't been listened to by the Bush administration," Lauro said. "Nobody really wanted that war, and yet we were going to war anyway."
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SKorea, US begin drills as NKorea threatens war

Enraged over the South's joint military drills with the United States and recent U.N. sanctions, Pyongyang has piled threat on top of threat, including vows to launch a nuclear strike on the U.S. Seoul has responded with tough talk of its own and has placed its troops on high alert.
The North Korean government made no formal announcement Monday on its repeated threats to scrap the armistice, but the country's main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, reported that the armistice was nullified Monday as Pyongyang had earlier announced it would. The North's official Korean Central News Agency also carried the Rodong report.
The North followed through on another promise Monday, shutting down a Red Cross hotline that the North and South used for general communication and to discuss aid shipments and separated families' reunions.
The 11-day military drills that started Monday involve 10,000 South Korean and about 3,000 American troops. Those coincide with two months of separate U.S.-South Korean field exercises that began March 1.
The drills are held annually, and this year, according to South Korean media, the "Key Resolve" drill rehearses different scenarios for a possible conflict on the Korean peninsula using computer-simulated exercises. The U.S. and South Korean troops will be used to test the scenarios.
Also continuing are large-scale North Korean drills that Seoul says involve the army, navy and air force. The South Korean defense ministry said there have been no military activities it considers suspicious.
The North has threatened to nullify the armistice several times in times of tension with the outside world, and in 1996 the country sent hundreds of armed troops into a border village. The troops later withdrew.
In Washington, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the U.S. was concerned about North Korea's rhetoric, and repeated U.S. calls for Pyongyang to comply with its international obligations.
"The DPRK will achieve nothing by threats or provocation, which will only further isolate North Korea and undermine international efforts to ensure peace and stability in northeast Asia," Carney said at a briefing.
Despite the heightened tension, there were signs of business as usual Monday.
The two Koreas continue to have at least two working channels of communication between their militaries and aviation authorities.
One of those hotlines was used Monday to give hundreds of South Koreans approval to enter North Korea to go to work. Their jobs are at the only remaining operational symbol of joint inter-Korean cooperation, the Kaesong industrial complex. It is operated in North Korea with South Korean money and knowhow and a mostly North Korean work force.
The North Korean rhetoric escalated as the U.N. Security Council last week approved a new round of sanctions over Pyongyang's latest nuclear weapons test Feb. 12.
Analysts said that much of the bellicosity is meant to shore up loyalty among citizens and the military for North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un.
"This is part of their brinksmanship," said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based expert on North Korea with the International Crisis Group think tank. "It's an effort to signal their resolve, to show they are willing to take greater risks, with the expectation that everyone else caves in and gives them what they want."
Part of what North Korea wants is a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War, instead of the armistice that leaves the peninsula still technically in a state of war. It also wants security guarantees and other concessions, direct talks with Washington, recognition as a nuclear weapons state and the removal of 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.
Pinkston said there is little chance of fighting breaking out while war games are being conducted, but he added that he expects North Korea to follow through with a somewhat mysterious promise to respond at a time and place of its own choosing.
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Judge throws out NYC’s ban on large sugary drinks

A New York state judge on Monday threw out a ban on large sugary drinks set to go into effect in New York City on Tuesday, calling the new regulation “arbitrary and capricious.”
The new regulation—which would have limited the sale of sugary beverages including nondiet sodas, fruit drinks, sweetened teas and other high-calorie drinks to just 16 ounces—was championed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said Tuesday that the city would immediately appeal the verdict. Bloomberg saw the ban as a way to fight the city's growing obesity epidemic.
But the American Beverage Association and other business groups representing bars, restaurants and bodegas had sued to stop the new law, arguing, in part, that it would create an uneven playing field for businesses. The law would have been enforced only on establishments regulated by the city's Health Department, while stores like 7-Eleven, which is regulated as a market by the state of New York, would have been exempt.
In his ruling, New York Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling agreed with that argument, calling the new regulation "fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences. "The simple reading of the rule leads to the earlier acknowledged uneven enforcement even within a particular city block, much less the city as a whole," Tingling continued. "The loopholes in this rule effectively defeat the stated purpose of the rule."
At a news conference, Bloomberg called the judge's ruling "clearly in error." He likened the city's fight against obesity by curbing "empty calories to past regulatory hurdles, including the effort to ban lead paint and the fight to save Grand Central station from demolition in the 1970s.
"We have a responsibility as human beings to do something, to save each other, to save the lives of ourselves, our families, our friends, and all of the rest of the people that live on God’s planet. And so while other people will wring their hands over the problem of sugary drinks, in New York City, we’re doing something about it," Bloomberg declared. "We believe it is reasonable and responsible to draw a line... As a matter of fact, it would be irresponsible not to try to do everything we can to save lives."
In his ruling, Tingling also criticized Bloomberg's decision to implement the ban without a vote of the New York City Council. The regulation was passed into law by a decree issued last September by the city's Health Department. Bloomberg's office had defended the regulation and its passage by arguing that the mayor has a broad mandate to protect and improve the health of New York City residents.
But Tingling was skeptical of that defense, writing that "interpretation" of the law would give the mayor and the city's Health Department the "authority to define, create, mandate and enforce (laws) limited only by its imagination." The regulation, the justice wrote, "would create an administrative Leviathan and violate the separation of powers doctrine. ... It would eviscerate it."
Tingling added: "Such an evisceration has the potential to be more troubling than sugar-sweetened beverages."
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Richard Nixon Wished for Total Handgun Ban

Few presidents in modern times have been as interested in gun control as Richard Nixon, of all people. He proposed ridding the market of Saturday night specials, contemplated banning handguns altogether and refused to pander to gun owners by feigning interest in their weapons.
Several previously unreported Oval Office recordings and White House memos from the Nixon years show a conservative president who at times appeared willing to take on the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun lobby then as now, even as his aides worried about the political ramifications.
"I don't know why any individual should have a right to have a revolver in his house," Nixon said in a taped conversation with aides. "The kids usually kill themselves with it and so forth." He asked why "can't we go after handguns, period?"
Nixon went on: "I know the rifle association will be against it, the gun makers will be against it." But "people should not have handguns." He laced his comments with obscenities, as was typical.
Nixon made his remarks in the Oval Office on May 16, 1972, the day after a would-be assassin shot and paralyzed segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace. As president, Nixon never publicly called for a ban on all handguns. Instead, he urged Congress to pass more modest legislation banning Saturday night specials, which were cheaply made, easily concealed and often used by criminals.
Not all of the president's men appeared to share his passion on the issue. The recordings and memos show that Nixon administration officials saw gun control as a political loser.
Nixon, a Republican, did say publicly that if Congress passed a ban on Saturday night specials, he would sign it. But in a sign of how potent the NRA was even 40 years ago, this narrow piece of legislation never made it to his desk, and there is no sign that he ever sent a draft bill to Capitol Hill.
Today, President Barack Obama faces similar hurdles in trying to ban assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines. Gun control advocates say no one needs such powerful weapons to kill an intruder or take down an animal. In Nixon's time, the argument of such advocates was that Saturday night specials were too poorly made to be relied on for self-defense or hunting.
"Let me ask you," Nixon said to Attorney General John Mitchell in June 1971, "there is only one thing you are checking on, that's the manufacture of those $20 guns? We should probably stop that." Saturday night specials sold for $10 to $30 at the time. Mitchell responded that banning those guns would be "pretty difficult, actually," because of the gun lobby.
"No hunters are going to use $20 guns," Nixon countered.
"No, but the gun lobby's against any incursion into the elimination of firearms," said Mitchell.
The term Saturday night special originated in Detroit, where police observed the frequency with which the guns were used to commit weekend mayhem. Lynyrd Skynyrd memorialized the weapon in its 1975 song, "Saturday Night Special," in which the Southern rock band sang: "Ain't good for nothin'/But put a man six feet in a hole."
Nixon's private comments were not always supportive of gun control, particularly measures that would go beyond handguns. For example, in a taped conversation just a few days after saying that people shouldn't have handguns, the president asked rhetorically, "What do they want to do, just disarm the populace? Disarm the good folks and leave the arms in the hands of criminals?"
But most of his comments on the tapes, available at the websites of the National Archives and of the University of Virginia's Miller Center, were in favor of stronger gun control.
At a June 29, 1972, news conference, about six weeks after Wallace's shooting, Nixon said he'd sign legislation banning Saturday night specials. Later that year, the Senate did pass such a bill, but the House never acted on the legislation.
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Women's Health

6 Sex Mistakes Women Make

 Ladies, be honest: when your sex life becomes a little humdrum, out comes the mental catalogue of all the ways your partner isn’t quite measuring up.  Guys tend to get a bad rap when it comes to understanding women’s bodies and what turns us on, making them easy targets in the blame game when sexual satisfaction starts to wane.  And sure, they make their fair share of bedroom errors. But as the saying goes, it takes two to tango. As it turns out, top sex and relationship experts say that women make plenty of sex mistakes of their own.  Here’s what they have to say about the six most common mistakes women make in the bedroom and what you can do to get the satisfaction you so rightly deserve.

Sex Mistake #1: Not Initiating Sex With Your Partner

Many of us worry about ladylike behavior.  We don’t want to appear pushy or come on too strong for fear of being labeled aggressive. According to Les Parrot, professor of psychology at Seattle Pacific University and author of a new book called Crazy Good Sex, failing to initiate sex is one of the biggest mistakes women make.
“Most guys feel like they are always the initiator and that sets up disequilibrium on the passion scale in the relationship,” he says.  Generally, men want to be pursued by their partners just as much as women do.
Holding onto outdated ideas about sex roles also inhibits satisfaction with our sexual relationship says "Dr. Ruth," aka Ruth Westheimer, PhD, a psychosexual therapist, professor at New York University, and lecturer at Yale and Princeton universities.  “They used to think that women are less interested in sexual activity and I don’t want to say that anymore. I think there are women who are as interested in sex [as men].”  Show your interest by taking the first step from time to time.  Your partner will likely appreciate it, and you may find a new level of satisfaction in taking responsibility for your sexual experience, something Westheimer feels strongly women must do.

Sex Mistake #2: Worrying About What You Look Like

Thinking about how you look during sex stops you from enjoying yourself and ruins your chances of achieving an orgasm.
“Don’t think about the fat on your belly or the makeup on your face,” advises Westheimer.  “Concentrate on the pleasure of the act.  You must give yourself permission to have an orgasm.”
“Men want their wives to abandon themselves in sex play, and that’s not likely if she is anxious about her physical concerns,” Parrott says.
Helen Fisher, PhD, a cultural anthropologist at Rutgers University and author of a new book called Why Him, Why Her, says men don’t notice half the things women obsess about anyway.

Sex Mistake #2: Worrying About What You Look Like continued...

“It’s amazing what men don’t notice if you’re enthusiastic, energetic, interested in them, and flexible minded.”
According to Fisher, there is an evolutionary explanation for the selective blindness men show to our physical flaws. For Darwinian reasons, says Fisher, men are (unconsciously, of course) looking for women who are able to bear healthy babies.  Starting millions of years ago, men who attracted fertile women and had a lot of children lived on. Those who couldn’t died out.  Although maybe not as necessary today, Fisher says that primal survival mechanism lives on.
“Men are much more attracted to women who show signs of health and youth and fertility.

Rather than worry about the shape of your waist and hips, worry about your energy level and enthusiasm and interest in him,” Fisher advises.

Sex Mistake #3: Assuming Sex Is Casual for a Man

Westheimer believes we should all let go of old-fashioned notions, such as women are not sexual or that sex is just sex to men.  “For some men, sex is a very important act.  Don’t minimize it.”
The research, says Parrott, supports the idea that both men and women find sexual intimacy in the context of a committed relationship to be more satisfying.
“Numerous research studies make it very clear that the people who have the best quality and most frequent sex are married couples. That says a lot about the inadequacies of ‘casual sex,” Parrot says.
In a study being conducted by Fisher and her colleagues of university students engaging in one-night stands, the numbers show that men are just as serious about sex and relationships as women.  In fact, more than 50% of women and 52% of men who went into a one-night stand, according to Fisher, reported that they did so hoping to create a longer relationship.  One-third of them actually did so.  What’s the lesson?
“Never assume that a man is not romantic,” Fisher says. “Two huge mistakes in this culture are that women are not sexual and that men are not as romantic [as women].”

Sex Mistake #4: Believing He’s Always Up for Sex

Sure, most teenage boys are ready and willing just about any time you ask, but not true for men.  The pressures of everyday life -- family, work, bills -- can zap a man’s libido.  This comes as a big surprise to many women, and often his lack of interest in sex is something we take personally.
“It comes as such a shock [to women] that they just don’t believe it,” Fisher says about the reaction many women have when their partner says they aren’t in the mood for sex. “They know themselves that they are not always interested in sex but they still love the man.  But when they discover he doesn’t want to have sex, they think, ‘he doesn’t love me.’  Not true.  He just doesn’t want to have sex.”

Sex Mistake #5: Not Giving Him Guidance

Talking very directly about sex, what we like and don’t like can make us feel uncomfortable, even with a partner we’ve been with for a long time and otherwise feel close to, says Parrott. But it’s the only way to achieve a satisfying sexual relationship.
“A woman must take responsibility for her sexual encounter,” says Westheimer.  “No man can bring a woman to orgasm if she doesn’t take responsibility for her sexual experience.  Even the best lover can’t know what she needs without her letting him know.”
The good news, according to Fisher, is that men very much want to please women.
“If you can tell them in a way that doesn’t kill their ego, they will appreciate it,” says Fisher.  She advises women to sandwich what they don’t like in between five things they do, because he’s listening.  “You won’t find out until the next time you’re in bed with him.  But men do listen, particularly if you’re quite clear about it.”

Sex Mistake #6: Getting Upset When He Suggests Something New

After a couple has been together for a while, it’s natural to want to spice things up with a little variety.  Just because your man wants to try something new doesn’t mean he’s unhappy with you or your sex life.  In short: Don’t take it personally.
Still, it’s important that you tune into your comfort zone says Parrott.
“Nobody should ever feel obligated to do something they don’t want to do in the personal and intimate area of sexuality,” Parrott says.  “If your man asks you about trying something that’s outside of your morals, make it clear that it’s off limits for you and explain why.  Of course, do this in a loving way as best you can.  If it is something that is not really a moral issue for you but you still don’t want to, again explain why.  If it is a simply a startling request and you’re initially uneasy about it, try not to overreact.  Instead, let him know you need some time to think about it.”