Everything you know about dieting is wrong, say US scientists who have devised a new formula for calculating calories and weight loss that they hope will revolutionize the way people tackle obesity.

Obesity rates have doubled worldwide in the past 30 years, coinciding with a growing food surplus, and the ensuing epidemic has sparked a multibillion dollar weight loss industry that has largely failed to curb the problem.

Current standards in the United States, where two thirds of people are overweight or obese, advise people that cutting calories by a certain amount will result in a slow and steady weight loss over time.

But that advice fails to account for how the body changes as it slims down, burning less energy and acquiring a slower metabolism, researchers told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Vancouver.

The result is a plateau effect that ends up discouraging dieters and sending them back into harmful patterns of overeating.

~snip~

Quote:I don't need a feel-good month set aside for me. I am happy about being black all year long.

(Reuters) - Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's struggles in Michigan are fueling speculation that Republicans might have to resort to a doomsday scenario and launch a frantic search for a 2012 savior at their nominating convention in late August.

Rare in the modern age of U.S. politics, a "brokered convention" could result in Republicans ditching their current crop of candidates and turning to someone else who they feel would have a better chance of defeating Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 6 election.

How did Republicans get to this point? Romney's failure to get conservatives fully behind him and put down yet another challenger in the party - this time it's Rick Santorum - is causing angst in the party.

Many senior Republicans do not think Santorum, a social conservative caught up in the U.S. culture wars over issues like abortion and contraception, has a chance to beat Obama if he wins the party's presidential nomination.

When he ran for re-election as a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania in 2006, Santorum lost by 18 percentage points. But, nevertheless, he is exposing Romney's weaknesses in Michigan, where Santorum leads polls ahead of the big Midwestern state's February 28 primary.

A Romney loss to Santorum in Michigan, the state where he was born and where his father was governor, would only intensify the talk about a weak Republican field and feed demands for someone else as the party's candidate to challenge Obama.

"It's hard for me to see how Romney rights the ship if he loses Michigan," said Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak. "There is no level of spin that can overcome that disaster."

Michigan will set the table for "Super Tuesday," the March 6 jackpot when 10 states hold Republican nominating contests. A loss for Romney in Michigan would raise serious doubts over whether he can rally enough support to have a big day on Super Tuesday and make a big move toward clinching the nomination.

The candidates are engaging in a state-by-state battle to become the Republican nominee. The party will officially pick a nominee at its August convention in Tampa, Florida.

~snip~

WASHINGTON – The nation's top intelligence adviser told Congress on Thursday that Al Qaeda "is extending its reach into Syria" -- possibly with Iran's help.

In a rare public admission, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Al Qaeda and the Iranian regime have a "shotgun marriage, or marriage of convenience." More significantly, given the series of attacks this week linked to Iran, Clapper said Tehran appears to see Al Qaeda as an insurance policy -- a "surrogate or proxy" -- against future Western aggression.

~snip~

(FOX19) - Reality Check was the first news organization to call out the GOP in Maine after Governor Mitt Romney was declared the winner of the Maine caucus, with only 84 percent of the precincts counted.

Since then there have been reports of missing numbers and votes not counted.

Ben is now the first in the nation to tell you what some of those recounted numbers look like and why after Saturday, there may be a different winner of the Maine caucus.

It's a Reality Check you won't see anywhere else.

Correction: The corrected numbers for Gov. Romney in Waldo County is 50 (not 24 as stated in the video).

AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Republican Party has reversed course and will recommend that delayed caucus results from Washington County be included in its final presidential poll tally. The party also is reconfirming results from local caucuses in the wake of the recent controversy over how its presidential caucuses were handled.

“The results of the Washington County caucus will be reviewed at the March 10 Republican State Committee meeting,” Maine GOP Chairman Charlie Webster said in a prepared statement approved by the state party’s executive committee.

“The executive committee voted unanimously to recommend to the state committee that they include the results in the final tally for the presidential preference poll as their caucus had been scheduled to occur by the February 11 deadline, however it was postponed due to inclement weather. “

The party has been under fire this week for reporting on Saturday that Mitt Romney won Maine by taking 39 percent of votes in a presidential preference poll conducted during the state’s caucuses.

Ron Paul came in second with 36 percent of votes, but the results did not include Washington County, which postponed its caucuses because of weather, or nearly all of Waldo County, whose towns were omitted in what the party has called a clerical error.

The margin of victory for Romney was less than 200 votes.

~snip~

Of America’s two political parties, Republicans are viewed as the better friend of the market-place. But these capitalist credentials have taken a beaten in the race to choose a candidate to challenge the Democrats for the White House. Two recent events on the campaign trail epitomise GOP troubles.

The first sign of danger came in January when former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s business career came under scrutiny, with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (and Texas governor Rick Perry) calling into question Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, a private equity and venture capital firm — which Perry characterised as ‘vulture capitalism’. An independent Gingrich Super PAC exacerbated the issue with an incendiary video from which even the candidate distanced himself.

Facing outrage from the business community, Gingrich soon abandoned this avenue of attack to focus on Romney’s personal tax records in a South Carolina exchange. A few days later in Tampa, Florida, Romney complicated matters with a populist appeal against Gingrich’s own zero capital gains tax policy, quipping that ‘under that plan, I’d have paid no taxes in the last two years.’

Romney mounted a belated counter-offensive in a CNBC interview with Lawrence Kudlow, but his on-the-stump sop on taxes deserves reproof: For whereas the supply-demand, profit-loss principles of capitalism are easy to grasp, the obfuscation that underpins disingenuous ‘the rich should pay their fair share’ class warfare arguments need vigorous refutation.

~snip~

“You can observe a lot just by watching,” said Yogi Berra. A national group has been watching Virginia’s colleges and universities, and much that it has observed is not flattering. Grumpy old skinflints and youthful Occupy protesters alike should take note.

A new report by ACTA, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, notes research indicating nearly half of all college students make no learning gains in their first two years, and 36 percent show no significant intellectual growth even after four years. Yet GPAs have been trending upward. Colleges, says ACTA, are giving “more credit for less learning.”

And they are charging more for it, especially here. “The cost of higher education has gone up all over the country,” ACTA says, “but it has exploded at colleges and universities in Virginia.” At Christopher Newport in Hampton Roads, tuition and fees have risen more than 50 percent since the 2004-2005 academic year. William and Mary is almost as bad. Virginia Tech, VCU, and Radford have hiked student costs by more than 40 percent, and most other state schools are only a few percentage points behind.

University leaders will tell you they had to do this, because the General Assembly has cut their funding. True, but they overstate their case. First, steep tuition hikes extend far beyond the recent recession. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that college costs have risen more than 700 percent since 1981 – five times faster than all other consumer goods.

~snip~

The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) has made it official: After its latest two day meeting, it announced its goal to devalue the dollar by 33 percent over the next 20 years. The debauch of the dollar will be even greater if the Fed exceeds its goal of a 2 percent per year increase in the price level.

An increase in the price level of 2 percent in any one year is barely noticeable. Under a gold standard, such an increase was uncommon, but not unknown. The difference is that when the dollar was as good as gold, the years of modest inflation would be followed, in time, by declining prices. As a consequence, over longer periods of time, the price level was unchanged. A dollar 20 years hence was still worth a dollar.

But, an increase of 2 percent a year over a period of 20 years will lead to a 50 percent increase in the price level. It will take 150 (2032) dollars to purchase the same basket of goods 100 (2012) dollars can buy today. What will be called the “dollar” in 2032 will be worth one-third less (100/150) than what we call a dollar today.

The Fed’s zero interest rate policy accentuates the negative consequences of this steady erosion in the dollar’s buying power by imposing a negative return on short-term bonds and bank deposits. In effect, the Fed has announced a course of action that will steal — there is no better word for it — nearly 10 percent of the value of Americans’ hard earned savings over the next 4 years.

~snip~

What is it with GOP presidential caucuses and the counting of those results?

The Bangor Daily News in Maine reports "pressure is on" the state Republican Party to "reconsider its weekend declaration that Mitt Romney won" the Maine caucuses. Romney edged out Ron Paul by 194 votes.

Several Maine towns were not included in the vote totals released Saturday, Feb. 11, because they did not hold their caucuses by that date. The newspaper's town-by-town review found that some communities voting before Feb. 11 -- such as Waterville and those in Waldo County -- weren't included in vote totals.

There were issues with the vote count in Iowa and Nevada, which each held caucuses instead of primaries.

~snip~