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FT. WORTH, TX—While his wife was in bed with a stomach virus all day, local father Todd Fennick had high praise for his ability to care for their four kids without her. “She needs to stay in bed today, and that’s fine, because I think I’m doing a great job, frankly,” said Fennick as he served his children a lunch consisting of paper plates holding a handful of shredded cheese, a Slim Jim, a dollop of cookie butter, and some packets of crackers that he found in the junk drawer. Four-year-old Padme Fennick, who appeared to be wearing paper towels...

Anjana Rajamani was 12 years old the first time she tried to shave her face. "This guy I had a crush on said my mustache was thicker than his in front of all my class," she said. After crying in the bathroom of her Southern California middle school, she went home and shaved it off. "I gave myself razor burn," said Rajamani, 22. "I had pink marks in my mustache area for two weeks." For Desi women who grew up in mostly white schools, that story might be uncomfortably familiar. Young South Asians say their elementary and middle school years...

You cannot be "too clean", millennials are being told, as public health experts attempt to debunk myths around hygiene. The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) said incorrect theories which became popular in the 1990s were fuelling confusion and unhygienic habits among subsequent generations. And they called for lessons on cleanliness to be included in the national curriculum The warning comes after organisers of Glastonbury urged festival goers to opt for “strip washes” with a flannel and soap, instead of a shower, in order to help the environment. The “hygiene hypothesis” which became widely publicised in the 1990s argued that...

Woman almost loses leg after infection, disease blamed on pedicure NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — The infection that a North Carolina woman contracted at a 'grade A salon' urged her to issue a warning to other pedicure lovers. According to a Facebook post, on June 22 Tracy Lynn Martinez went to get a pedicure at her local salon in Winston, North Carolina. The next day, she said that she had body chills, nausea, and dizziness. She tried to sleep it off but when she woke up her leg had swollen to three times its size. Martinez called an ambulance and shortly...

Paris (AFP) - Flamboyant fashion designer Vivienne Westwood revealed the secret of her eternal youth Saturday -- only taking a bath once a week. The 76-year-old queen of punk fashion let it slip after watching her husband Andreas Kronthaler's spectacularly idiosyncratic show at Paris Fashion Week. Asked by reporters how she managed to look so young, Westwood smiled and said, "Don't wash too much." "She only takes a bath every week. That's why she looks so radiant," said Kronthaler, who Westwood has described as "the world's greatest designer". "I only wash once a month," joked the Austrian-born creator, who is...

YORK — A York man was reportedly beaten with an aluminum baseball bat by his girlfriend's son after he told the woman he hadn't washed his hands after going to the bathroom. The 48-year-old man told police he came home to Pinckney Street around 5:15 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, and found his girlfriend's 32-year-old son, who also lives at the address, urinating on the side of the house. The older man said nothing until the younger man entered the house and put his unwashed hands into a bowl of turkey salad. At that point, the victim said he became angry...

The researchers surmise that political orientation (identifying as more conservative or more liberal) may be shaped, at least in part, by the strength of a person’s motivation to avoid physical contamination. People who try to avoid such contamination are more likely to be vigilant in seeking out threats to purity, which ultimately reinforces a politically conservative worldview. Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-cleanliness-conservatism.html#jCp

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Voters battled rainstorms and tornado warnings as they streamed to the polls here today, capping a tumultuous and at times politically dizzying week of events that, by tonight, could potentially reshape the Republican presidential nomination process once more. Extending a more aggressive phase of his campaign, Mitt Romney today renewed attacks on Newt Gingrich, calling on the former House speaker to release records related to his role consulting Freddie Mac, the quasi-public lending agency that many blame for accelerating the housing crisis. “I’d like to see what he actually told Freddie Mac,” Romney told reporters after visiting...

A simple spritz of a fresh-smelling window cleaner made people more fair and generous in a new study. The researchers figure cleanliness fosters morality. They conducted fairness tests, with subjects completing tasks in a room that was either unscented or one that was sprayed with a common citrus-scented window cleaner. One test involved a game. Study participants were given $12 of real money, which they were told came from an anonymous partner in another room. They had to decide how much of it to either keep or return to their partners who, they were told, had trusted them to divide...

To modern Westerners life without showers is unimaginable, but mankind somehow survived before the advent of soap and deodorants. For the modern, middle-class North American, “clean” means that you shower and apply deodorant each and every day without fail. For the aristocratic 17th-century Frenchman, it meant that he changed his linen shirt daily and dabbled his hands in water, but never touched the rest of his body with water or soap. For the Roman in the first century, it involved two or more hours of splashing, soaking and steaming the body in water of various temperatures, raking off sweat and...

More than one-third of American women are infected with human papillomavirus (HPV), which in rare cases can lead to cervical cancer, by the time they are 24 years old, according to a study being published today. The new estimates suggest that there are 7.5 million girls and women 14 to 24 years old infected with the microbe -- about two-thirds more than an earlier but less comprehensive study had found. Overall, about one-quarter of women under age 60 are infected at any given time, making HPV by far the most common sexually transmitted disease in the country. News of the...

With all the crises that need to be addressed in Chicago's public schools, add this one to the list: germy little hands. The Illinois House is expected to vote next week on a proposal that would require all Chicago schoolchildren to wash their hands "with antiseptic soap" before eating, and for the district to upgrade their hand-washing facilities to "nationally accepted standards." Rep. Mary Flowers, a Chicago Democrat who first sponsored the bill in 2005 and brought it back this session, said she believes the law could save lives, or at least reduce absenteeism in city schools. Flowers said she...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- For most little boys, circumcision is a decision for the parents to make. But the Missouri Supreme Court may make that decision for one local boy because his parents don't agree. Two-and-a-half-year-old Ethan Azar's mother does not want to have him circumcised. "There's no medical society in the world that recommends it, including the American Academy of Pediatrics," said Camille Azar. But Ethan's father was recently granted sole custody. He wants his son circumcised. While the boy's father and his attorney would not appear on camera, they did cite personal, social and health reasons for wanting...

Suspect hoped to make clean getaway, caught wet-handed By Susan Abram Staff Writer BURBANK, CA -- A man who police say slipped through a doggie door into a Burbank home this week took just one thing: a bubble bath. The suspected intruder appeared intoxicated -- but clean -- when a resident discovered him lounging in the bubble-filled bathtub of her home about 2 a.m. Tuesday. Police arrested Rubin Olvera, 22, of Glendale on suspicion of burglary. "He said he was hot and wanted to cool off," said Burbank Police Sgt. William Berry. "Court decisions have ruled that the smallest things...