Well, I felt compelled to make a comment about this #KylieJennerChallenge. I think this new viral Instagram trend is absolutely ridiculous. Young poeple, male and female alike, seem to be sitting around and waiting for the next 'big thing' or trend to roll around so they can post pictures of themselves and others doing it. Not attempting to utilize the creativity in their mind to produce something that's actually worth promoting.
They use suction techniques to temporarily enlarge their lips with the aim of looking like Kylie Jenner. Some ending up with bruised lips as well as egos.
There are reasons why women of color like myself do not support this, for discriminatory reasons. Big lips have always been a sense of ridicule for African people and things like these just add to the plate. But this is not what I'm here to discuss.
The best think that could come out of this post is having someone love who they and what they have to offer. What society is projecting as normal and beautiful sometimes isn't. Love who you are and what you can bring to the table. #LoveMeChallenge
With wind speeds of more than 300 mph (483 km/h), tornadoes are one of the most destructive natural forces on Earth.
Though scientists don't entirely understand how tornadoes form, they do have a good idea about the conditions that cause tornadoes to develop.
Twisters have touched down on all continents except Antarctica, but certain locations on the planet are more likely to experience tornadoes than others. Most tornadoes occur in the so-called Tornado Alley— the tornado-prone region of the United States, from Texas north into Kansas and the surrounding states of the Great Plains region.
This area often has the three ingredients necessary for tornadoes to form: a lot of warm, moist air close to the ground; atmospheric instability, a condition that promotes the vertical movement of air; and clashing air fronts that act to propel moist air upward.
In Tornado Alley, warm, moist, low-elevation wind from the Gulf of Mexico collides with cool, dry, higher-elevation wind coming over the Rocky Mountains. This unstable interaction causes lots of warm air to quickly rise and cool air to fall, which leads to the formation of a supercell, a type of thunderstorm with a long-lived, swirling updraft of air.
But not all supercells result in tornadoes.
Scientists believe that if the two opposing winds move at different speeds, the air in between them will rotate around a horizontal axis. If one end of the horizontal air column gets caught in the supercell's updraft, it will tilt vertically, forming a funnel cloud.
The continuous upward energy of the supercell elongates the funnel cloud, and causes its spin to tighten and speed up — similar to the way ice skaters spin faster when their arms are pulled close to their bodies.
Rain and hail from the thunderstorm push down on the tail end of the funnel cloud. When the bottom of the funnel cloud finally touches the ground, it becomes a tornado.
Washington (AFP) - Tornadoes that sliced through US Midwest killed two people, injured 11 others and damaged numerous buildings.
A massive tornado in the state of Illinois did the most damage, killing two people Thursday, The Weather Channel reported.
The supercell tornado that struck the town of Fairdale brought gale force winds that ripped houses from their foundations, overturned cars and obliterated a large part of the town.
Bad weather across the Midwest prompted a slew of tornado warnings that the National Weather Service called a "severe threat."
Iowa and Ohio also had tornado sightings, and numerous other states were hammered by heavy winds.
The countdown is on for yet another Prom and for the girls this mean shopping!. Sometimes its really difficult to find a date for but it's even more difficult to decide what style of dress to wear, which color, what to do with your hair and so on. I have made it a little easy for you ladies and I compiled some promising looks for prom 2015. I have always been a fan of davidsbridal.com but the choice is still ultimately yours. Hope this is helpful!
Bruce Jenner is becoming a woman according to
the latest issue of Star, Bruce now wants to be called Belinda. Speculation has been swirling regarding his
more feminine appearance. Following his separation from wife Kris back in 2013,
Jenner was seen wearing long polished nails, flowing locks and yes even shaved
legs.
He underwent a laryngeal shave to flatten out the Adam's
Apple, which is commonly the first step taken when someone decides to start the
process of gender reassignment.
His breasts appeared larger during recent public
appearances, and he's been seen wearing jewelry as well.
There had been rumors in the past that Bruce would change
his name to Bridget, but Star says this source is solid, and Belinda it is.
Of course, it's rather expected that Bruce would choose a
name similar to his own, and one that starts with a "B." But what's
sort of strange about the name is that Linda is the name of his ex-wife, Linda
Thompson (mother of Brody and Brandon). But what ever caused Bruce to 'transition' after all these years may never be revealed to us but I know that Kris Jenner hasn't said her final words yet so, we will watch and see how it unfolds.
KINGSTON, Jamaica -- The Caribbean region collectively cheered when President Obama was first elected president in 2008. Calypso and reggae songs were written in his honor, the French Caribbean island of Martinique named a road after him, and Antigua's highest mountain officially became "Mount Obama" as the small country saluted him as a symbol of black achievement.
The first president to visit Jamaica in three decades, Mr. Obama arrived in Kingston Wednesday evening trying to rekindle an enthusiasm that has waned amid a perceived lack of attention from the American president.
Mr. Obama was greeted by Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller, U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica Luis Moreno and a dozen other dignitaries. He promptly embraced the local color and one of the island's icons, making a late evening visit to the Bob Marley Museum.
Mr. Obama's trip is more than just an effort in rebuilding popularity, though. His meetings Thursday with Simpson Miller and with other leaders in the 15-member Caribbean Community are weighted with self-interest.
China has steadily expanded its economic alliances in the Caribbean, and the region is seeking to reduce its dependence on subsidized oil from an economically struggling Venezuela. China is providing much of the financing for new roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects.
"China is running away with the gold in the view of many region watchers. Its footprint is visible and obvious through its 'checkbook' diplomacy in the Caribbean," said Anthony Bryan, an international relations professor at Trinidad's campus of the University of the West Indies, a public university system serving 18 English-speaking countries and territories.
"We, in looking at the region, saw that a number of the (Caribbean) countries had significant energy needs," said Benjamin Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser. "At the same time, the United States has significant resources,not just in terms of our own energy production, but also in our energy infrastructure, in our ability to work with countries that have formed cooperative solutions to promote energy security."
President Obama gets a tour of the Bob Marley Museum from a staff member Natasha Clark in Kingston, Jamaica April 8, 2015.
REUTERS
There are growing signs that the U.S. is stepping up its focus on the Caribbean to help fill a potential void left by Venezuela's scaled-back oil diplomacy. Earlier this year, Vice President Joe Biden hosted prime ministers and other top officials from all Caribbean countries except Cuba at the first Caribbean Energy Security Summit in Washington. The focus was on exploring ways to help Caribbean nations obtain financing from international financial institutions to convert diesel-powered energy plants to natural gas and increase alternative energy sources.
"As the economic crisis in Venezuela escalates, countries reliant on Petrocaribe, the dubious Venezuela-led oil alliance, will need alternative energy sources sooner rather than later. Look for Caribbean leaders to articulate that urgency," said Jason Marczak, deputy director of the Latin America Center at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, a non-partisan foreign policy think tank.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz traveled with President Obama on Air Force One.
Mr. Obama's visit to Jamaica is the first one by a U.S. president since President Ronald Reagan Reagan in 1982. He was last in the Caribbean region in 2009 when he attended the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. This time, Mr. Obama's stop in Kingston comes ahead of his attendance at this year's summit of the Western Hemisphere's heads of government Friday and Saturday in Panama.
While Obama T-shirts and bumper stickers can still be seen on Caribbean islands where many people share a similar racially mixed family tree as the U.S. president, the fact that the American leader is partly of African heritage is no longer heralded as marking an era of tolerance and possibility.
"I think some people around here hoped Obama could make the world's problems go away but this world has a whole heap of problems that are never going away. But Caribbean people will always like Obama because we can see ourselves in Obama," Jamaican furniture upholsterer Llewellyn Clarke said as he waited for a bus near the U.S. Embassy in the island's capital of Kingston.
The U.S., long the dominant influence in much of the Caribbean, remains the top trading partner of many countries in the region and their largest market for tourism. Yet for years there has been a chorus of complaints that, other than anti-drug efforts, Washington no longer pays much attention to the region once described by Reagan as America's "fourth border."
"Any interest that the American government shows in the Caribbean is an improvement because we have been ignored completely throughout the two terms of the Bush presidency and most of the two terms of this one," said Damien King, a prominent economist in Jamaica who is co-executive director of regional think tank Caribbean Policy Research Institute.
Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser at the White House, did not dispute the perception that the United States "has not engaged these countries as significantly as we should." But he said creating partnerships and investing in the region will help address those doubts.
(Reuters Health) – - Although rural living has been tied to higher risk of depression, a new U.S. study finds that country life may have differing effects on women of different races and ethnicities.
African American women living in rural areas were at lower risk of depression and other mood disorders, compared to African-American women in urban areas, researchers report. Non-Hispanic white women were at an increased risk for the same mental health problems when they lived in the country, compared to white women in cities.
“I actually thought we might see higher rates of depression among women of both races,” said Addie Weaver at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the study's lead author.
Economic and other hardships are sometimes amplified for people living in rural communities, Weaver said. However, the mental health of people living in rural areas is understudied in general, she told Reuters Health. There’s even less data for certain groups of people.
“It was a concern of mine that we know so little about African Americans living in rural areas and people living in rural areas in general,” she said. The new research, published online April 8 in JAMA Psychiatry, is intended to help guide future research, she added.
The researchers used survey data collected between 2001 and 2003 from about 1,800 women in the southern U.S., about 81% of whom were African American.
They found that non-Hispanic white women were about twice as likely to ever have had depression or mood disorder, compared to African American women. White women were also more likely to have had depression within the past year.
About 4% of African American women in rural areas reported a lifetime history of depression, compared to about 14% of those in cities. Rural African American women were also less likely to have had mood disorder than their urban counterparts.
By contrast, about 10% of rural non-Hispanic white women had been depressed in the last year, compared to about 4% of those in urban areas. And non-Hispanic white women in rural areas were more likely to have had mood disorder compared to urban non-Hispanic white women.
“What was particularly interesting to us is that rural residence seems to emerge as a protective factor for rural African American women,” Weaver said.
She cautioned that more research is needed, and that the data is only from women living in the U.S. South, so the results may be less applicable to women living elsewhere.
Culture could be one reason why rural living is tied to less depression and mood disorder among African American women, Weaver said.
She said African American women may benefit from greater family and religious support, compared to non-Hispanic white women.
“Of course there is a need of further research exploring this,” Weaver said. “We’re just speculating on some ideas at this point.”
Until more research is done, Weaver said doctors should know that where a person lives may influence their health, including their mental health.
“It’s important for clinicians to pay more attention to the rural context,” she said.
If you haven't seen any of the videos with Vin Diesel singing you must be living under a rock or something. I think he actually did a good job, what you do think check it out and tell me what you think!
Washington (AFP) - Tornadoes that sliced through US Midwest killed two people, injured 11 others and damaged numerous buildings.
