Mom allegedly uses daughter’s ID to be cheerleader

A 33-year-old woman stole her daughter’s identity to attend high school and join the cheerleading squad, according to a criminal complaint filed against the woman.

Wendy Brown, of Green Bay, faces a felony identity theft charge after enrolling in Ashwaubenon High School as her 15-year-old daughter, who lives in Nevada with Brown’s mother.

According to the complaint, Brown wanted to get her high school degree and become a cheerleader because she didn’t have a childhood and wanted to regain a part of her life that she’d missed.

Brown allegedly attended cheerleading practices before school started, received a cheerleader’s locker and went to a pool party at the cheerleading coach’s house.

… A high school employee, Kim Demeny, told authorities that the woman, posing as the teen, seemed very timid. Demeny said she told her she was not good at math and even cried when she talked about moving from Pahrump Valley High School in Nevada. Demeny said she looked older than a student but had the demeanor of a high school girl.

A school liaison officer started investigating after Brown only attended the first day of classes last week, the complaint said. … Brown made her first court appearance Friday by video conference. The judge set bond at $8,000. If convicted, she could face up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. … – ap

Basil Holds The Key To Anti-Aging

Basil can protect against the harmful effects of ageing, according to research presented at the British Pharmaceutical Conference (BPC) in Manchester.

Holy basil, (Latin name Ocimum sanctum), is a close relative of the herb commonly used in Western cooking. Native to India, its extract has long been used in the ancient system of Ayurvedic medicine practiced in India and other parts of Asia as a rejuvenation drug, to promote a youthful state of physical and mental health.

In the first formal study of the herb, pharmacy researchers found that holy basil extract was effective at actively searching for and eliminating harmful molecules and protecting against damage caused by some free radicals in key organs such as the heart, liver and brain.

The researchers, led by Dr Vaibhav Shinde from Poona College of Pharmacy, Maharashtra, India, studied the herb for anti-oxidant and anti-aging properties.

Dr Shinde said: “The study validates the traditional use of herb as a youth-promoting substance in the Ayurvedic system of medicine. It also helps describe how the herb acts at a cellular level.” – mednews

Giant honeybees use ‘the wave’ to repel wasps

The phenomenon of “shimmering” in giant honeybees, in which hundreds—or even thousands—of individual honeybees flip their abdomens upwards within a split-second to produce a Mexican Wave-like pattern across the bee nest, has received much interest but both its precise mode of action and its purpose have long remained a mystery.

In a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE this week, researchers at the University of Graz, Austria, and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK, report the finding that shimmering—a remarkable capacity of rapid communication in giant honeybees—acts as a defensive mechanism, which repels predatory hornets, forcing them to hunt free-flying bees, further afield, rather than foraging bees directly from the honeybee nest.  …

In their paper, Kastberger and colleagues show that shimmering is invoked as a means of anti-predatory defense. They analysed around 500 episodes of interactions between bees and hornets, frame by frame, and found that shimmering is triggered by giant honeybee colonies in response to approaching hornets, the strength and rate of the phenomenon being linked to the hornets’ flight speed and proximity.

The researchers also found that hornets respond to shimmering, showing an avoidance response, which is strongly tied to the time course of shimmering. Predatory hornets are deterred by the visual cue of large-scale shimmering (in particular, when they are closer than 50 cm to the giant honeybee nest), whereas small-scale shimmering has the capacity to confuse hornets, which are extremely close to the honeybee nest. As a result, shimmering forces the hornets to alter their hunting strategy, travelling at least 50 cm away from the honeybee nest to forage for free-flying bees. – sd

Pope urges crackdown on reported visions of Mary

The Pope has instructed Vatican officials to adopt stricter criteria for the approval of visions of Mary.

As Pope Benedict XVI began his first visit as pontiff to France, being greeted at Paris airport by President Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni, it emerged that he had asked a Spanish Jesuit to draw up new guidelines for bishops around the world on the recognition of reported apparitions.

The Vatican said it had asked Monsignor Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer to launch his investigation because the Pope wanted to avoid “excesses and abuses” of such visions. The pontiff believes bishops should resist being swayed by the emotional reaction of believers and be guided instead by strictly applied “scientific, psychological and theological criteria”.

Ignazio Ingrao, Vatican correspondent of the weekly news magazine Panorama, said the inquiry had been prompted because of the readiness of a bishop of Civitavecchia, the port north of Rome, to approve reports that a statue of the Madonna owned by a local family had wept tears of blood. The bishop even claimed to have seen the tears himself while holding the statue in his arms. The bishop was later replaced.

The Vatican is also sceptical about reported Marian apparitions since 1981 at Medjugorge in Bosnia-Herzegovina, despite the fact that the site is visited by two million pilgrims a year. – timesonline

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The idea has potential…

Yes, Fincher is a bad ass who won’t take crap from anyone – including the studio who has supposedly spent over $150 million on a film aiming for award consideration. I’ve been told that this is his best and worst quality as a filmmaker.

But what if Paramount is right? I loved Fincher’s Zodiac, but I think the theatrical cut could have benefited by losing 20-30 minutes on the back end. (Hey, there will always be a director’s cut on DVD) It seems to me that Paramount might believe they are in the same situation with Button … – slashfilm