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When he heard about the possibility that Michelle Obama and the government nutrition police were putting the screws to Cap'n Crunch, my oldest son asked me to help him make his opinions known. Together, we made this video, in which he discusses the many upsides to the good Cap'n and his sugary manna. Pay attention, Michelle.

Former basketball star John Amaechi is considering legal action against a bar in Manchester's gay village that refused to let him in. The 39-year-old said a doorman at Crunch on Canal Street described him as "big, black and could be trouble". Mr Amaechi, who was out with friends on Friday, has complained to the council and demanded an apology from the bar. Crunch said entry was refused on safety grounds and called the allegations "outrageous and unfounded". Mr Amaechi's office has written to the club to seek an explanation for why he was refused entry. 'Issues of bigotry' "I want...

"...The four patrol cars that were following it crashed against each other and all five cars were destroyed..."

The UK is heading for an "energy crunch" after new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea dropped 57pc in the first half of this year. A report by Oil & Gas UK, the industry group, showed that companies are cutting back on new projects as costs rise and funding is scarce during the recession. Investment in the industry fell to £4.8bn last year, down £1.2bn over the last two years, and it could drop below £3bn next year. The report estimates that £5bn a year is needed to maintain exploration.

POZNAN, Poland (AFP) – After a year in which it nearly lost its compass, the campaign against climate change heads into 2009 needing top-level political commitment, creative thinking and a deep well of money. Next year holds a big dream: by its end, the world will have forged a treaty in Copenhagen to shrink global warming from mankind-threatening juggernaut to manageable problem. Unprecedented in scale and complexity, this accord, due to take effect from 2012, will rein in the greenhouse gases that stoke global warming and throw a lifeline to poor countries exposed to mutated weather patterns. But realising this...

--------SNIP------------- As the Detroit three weather a year that would test any company's worst-case scenario, Ford Motor is by most measures in the least precarious position. Ford borrowed $23.4bn in late 2006, managing to build a cash cushion before the credit crisis hit. While General Motors faces rising financial losses and a pullback of car loans by GMAC, the financing arm it co-owns with buy-out group Cerberus, Ford reported a profit of $159m from financial services in the third quarter. ------SNIP------------------

BELGIUM’s Fortis is this weekend poised to become the first large continental bank to fall victim to the credit crunch, as the global chaos continues with Bradford & Bingley and American savings giant Wachovia both teetering on the brink. The Belgian central bank and the country’s regulator are paving the way for a bailout of the huge banking and insurance group, which has a £540 billion balance sheet and a market value of £12 billion. In Britain, the fate of Bradford & Bingley will be decided today. Fren-etic talks between the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the...

MIDDLEVILLE, Mich. -- It was around midnight one evening in November when Aaron Wissner shot up in bed, jolted awake by a fear: He wasn't fully ready for the day when the world starts running low on oil. Yes, he had tripled the size of the garden in front of the tidy white-clapboard house he shares with his wife and infant son. He had stacked bags of rice in his new pantry, stashed gold valued at $8,000 in his safe-deposit box and doubled the size of the propane tank in his yard. "But I felt panicky, like I needed more...

PARIS (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday announced an overhaul of pensions perks for half a million mainly public sector workers, seen as a key test of his government's reform drive. He promised that the so-called "special regimes" -- which allow state rail and power employees and some other categories of worker to retire early and on higher pensions -- will be reformed in the next "few months". "It is a question of fairness," Sarkozy said in a policy speech before journalists. Two waves of pension reform, in 1993 and 2003, left the system of perks untouched for...

Employers in some unlikely places say they're having trouble filling jobs. Factory managers in Ho Chi Minh City report many of their $62-a-month workers went home for the Tet holiday in February and never came back. In Bulgaria, computer experts are in such demand they can't be bothered to answer the want ads of a Los Angeles movie studio. And in Peoria, Caterpillar Inc. (CAT ) is struggling to train enough service technicians. The problem in each case: not enough people who are both able and willing to do the work for the posted pay. "We've got a global problem...and...

Environment: Whatever happened to the rain forest? The virtuous cause seems to have become an endangered species with the totemic rise of global warming. Maybe that's the lesson. Not too long ago, the news was atwitter with stories of rain forest bio-jewelry, rain forest vegetable leather, rain forest acai juice, rain forest wisdom and Rainforest Cafes with Chicken Monsoon or Amazon mushroom burger repasts amid a lot of parrot noise. Don't forget Ben & Jerry's Rainforest Crunch ice cream. A few years ago, Amazon rain forest stories full of cuddly animal images drew big publicity for environmental groups like the...

Scientists use quantum gravity to describe the universe before the Big Bang.Scientists may finally have an answer to a "big" question: If the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe, what could have caused it to happen? Using a theory called "loop quantum gravity," a group led by Penn State professor Abhay Ashtekar has shown that just before the Big Bang occurred, another universe very similar to ours may have been contracting. According to the group's findings, this previous universe eventually became so dense that a normally negligible repulsive component of the gravitational force overpowered the attractive component, causing...

SOUTH PASADENA - Massage therapist Colleen Ronnberg had just left work in her Ford Mustang to drive home for lunch. She says she turned on her signal, stopped at an intersection, looked both ways and turned onto Pasadena Avenue. But somehow her car collided with an 84-year-old woman who was riding a motorized three-wheeled scooter across Pasadena at Hibiscus Avenue. Although a sheriff's deputy later estimated that Ronnberg was driving 5 mph, the other woman was knocked out of her scooter, hit her head and died Wednesday, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office said. Ronnberg is very sorry, still shaken and...

A raft of new studies suggest that cyclists, particularly men, should be careful which bicycle seats they choose. The studies add to earlier evidence that traditional bicycle saddles, the kind with a narrow rear and pointy nose, play a role in sexual impotence. Some saddle designs are more damaging than others, scientists say. But even so-called ergonomic seats, to protect the sex organs, can be harmful, the research finds. The dozen or so studies, from peer-reviewed journals, are summarized in three articles in September's Journal of Sexual Medicine. In a bluntly worded editorial with the articles, Dr. Steven Schrader, a...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Oil prices surged to a record above $70 a barrel on Monday as one of the biggest storms in the United States churned through the Gulf of Mexico, forcing major oil producers and refiners to shut down operations. U.S. crude oil futures jumped nearly $5 a barrel in opening trade to touch a peak of $70.80 a barrel, surpassing last week's $68 high to the highest frontmonth price since the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) began trading contracts in It later traded up $3.94 a barrel, or 6 percent, to $70.07, more than recouping losses on Friday,...

93-year-old Lithuanian woman floors robber with killer grip Wed Aug 17, 8:33 AM ET VILNIUS (AFP) - Two thieves who tried to rob two elderly women in the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda, thinking they were easy prey, got more than they bargained for when the older of the two victims, aged 93, valiantly defended herself. The two would-be thieves rang the doorbell where Zoja Popova, 93, lives with an 85-year-old woman, and attacked the two elderly women as soon as they opened the door. But Popova showed courage and great presence of mind, and brought one of the robbers to...

Man injured in 'tombstoning' jump A 21-year-old man has been airlifted to hospital after being injured in a 'tombstoning' accident in Cornwall. Coastguards and police warned of the dangers of the daredevil act of jumping from cliffs and rocks into the sea. Rescue teams were alerted to the accident at Rinsey Head, near Mount's Bay, on Monday evening. The man, an Australian bodyboarder, fractured both legs and was taken to the Royal Cornwall Hospital at Treliske by a helicopter from RNAS Culdrose. Coastguards have named the injured man as Harry Dixon from Sydney. Falmouth Coastguard Watch Manager James Instance said:...

Odd clothing reinforces escape theoryINMATES WHO DIED WORE LAYERS WITH GARBAGE BAGS IN BETWEENBy Peter MathewsCENTRAL KENTUCKY BUREAU Two inmates whose bodies were found in a Trimble County landfill Thursday were trying to escape from the Kentucky State Reformatory in La Grange, a state official said yesterday.Avery C. Roland of Stanton and Michael Talbot of Louisville had on multiple layers of clothing, with garbage bags between the layers, said John Rees, commissioner of the Department of Corrections.Rees said investigators reviewed phone calls and correspondence involving the inmates to uncover the plot."They were dead before they left the institution," Rees...

A Glimpse Ahead Timothy Snodgrass The Impossible Will Come Alive In 2005 01/28/05 In January of 2004, as we began to intercede for the New Year the Holy Spirit gave us the prophetic slogan, "The Seas will Roar in 2004". This year we were given a new slogan, "The Impossible will come Alive in 2005". As the veil of darkness begins to come down over nations and regions, along with great shakings will come great breakthroughs; signs, wonders, healings and a spectacular release of miracles in impossible circumstances. This year, although we are ultimately poised to gain much ground, there...

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...

University if [sic] Maryland Student Scorns Death of Rachel Corrie SEATTLE (PalestineChronicle)- In the online edition of the University of Marylands school newspaper, The Diamondback student cartoonist, Daniel J Friedman published a caricature of the late Rachel Corrie, scorning her tragic death. Rachel Corrie, a 23 year old woman from Olympia, Washington was a senior at The Evergreen State College in Washington State. The young woman was a member of the International Solidarity Movement, and was staying in the home of a Palestinian pharmacist in the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. - While trying to protect the...

Olympia Woman Killed In Anti-Israel Demonstration March 16, 2003 By Emily Langlie GAZA CITY - Friends describe Rachel Corrie, from Olympia, as an especially caring and empathetic young woman. They say she was drawn to try to help in the Palestinians in Gaza. She was interviewed there just last week about her efforts to stop Israeli army bulldozers. On March 5th she said "these are homes that don't have any connection necessarily with suicide bombers. These are homes that just happened to be in a place that the Israeli military finds strategically important to them." Rachel was with a group...

<p>The Imperial sale off, a Dec. 31 federal deadline remains.</p> <p>With California's water supply in turmoil, state officials scrambled Tuesday to salvage a mammoth water sale from Imperial Valley farmers that would keep the U.S. government from imposing severe restrictions on the state's supply.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - As Capitol workers prepare for a new crop of lawmakers set to arrive today, the politicians are getting ready for what is expected to be one of the most contentious legislative sessions in years.</p> <p>The biggest headache by far is the still-widening $21 billion gap in the state budget, which is certain to spark an acrimonious debate over who should shoulder the burden -- as well as the blame -- for the fiscal crisis.</p>