Poor care for vice more than kids
In the Congolese village of Mont-Belo, we met a bright fourth grader, Jovali Obamza, who is about to be expelled from school because his family is three months behind in paying fees. Jovali's dad, Georges Obamza, weaves straw stools that he sells for $1 each. He said that the family is eight months behind on its $6-a-month rent and is in danger of being evicted, with nowhere to go."It's hard to get the money to send the kids to school," Mr Obamza explained, a bit embarrassed. But Mr Obamza and his wife, Valerie, have cellphones and spend a combined $10 a month on call time. In addition, Mr Obamza goes drinking at a village bar, spending about $1 an evening on moonshine. That adds up to about $12 a month -- almost as much as the family rent and school fees combined.
Wine does not make you fat
Women who drink wine are actually less likely to gain weight than those who are teetotal, according to a new report. Researchers found that regular moderate female drinkers were less likely to become obese after a 13-year study of more than 19,000 women. The more women drank the less weight they gained. Those who drank red wine gained the least weight. The report, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, said there was no clear connection between alcohol consumption and weight gain. The finding seems to contradict assumptions that alcohol consumption leads to weight gain. It is thought that alcohol is broken down by the liver using a different metabolic pathway to create heat, rather than fat. The benefits of red wine have been documented.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7391232/Wine-doesnt-make-women-fat-report-claims.html
The United States Federal Poisoning Program
Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people. One of the program's most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, chief medical examiner of New York City in the 1920s, said it was "our national experiment in extermination." During Prohibition, however, an official sense of higher purpose kept the program in place. As the Chicago Tribune editorialized in 1927: "Normally, no American government would engage in such business. It is only in the curious fanaticism of Prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified."
