Obesity is costing Canadians a fortune -- an estimated $1.1 billion annually. While OHIP used to pay some candidates to have bariatric bypass surgery in the United States, in Ontario alone, 9,000 people paid private clinics $18,000 a piece to have an inflatable ring surgically inserted around their stomach to limit their food consumption.
In an article for The Sunday Telegraph for Father's Day, British Prime Minister David Cameron reminisced about his own father's legacy, while reserving strong words for the country's deserter dads. Cameron stressed the need to make Britain "a genuinely hostile" place for AWOL fathers.
"It's high time runaway dads were stigmatised, and the full force of shame was heaped upon them," said Cameron.
74-year-old Betty Fox, mother of the Canadian hero, Terry Fox's, died this past Friday. She had been seriously ill, but sources say she wasn't suffering from cancer.
The women of Saudi Arabia are in the midst of a quiet revolution. On Friday, more than 40 Saudi women took to the roads in protest of the country's driving ban. Some of the women later tweeted accounts of their civil disobedience.
One such woman, 39-year-old Maha Al Qahtani, who works for the ministry of education, said most of her friends didn't participate in the protest. "But we have to make our point that it's our right and they should respect that."
Calgary top 40 radio station, Amp Radio, home to our very own blogger Buzz Bishop, is holding a most unusual online contest.
From now till mid-July, women who submit a photo of themselves, together with an explanation about why they should win, will get a stab at the $10,000 jackpot.
Natalie Portman has given birth to a baby boy whose name has not yet been revealed.
Seven months after announcing her pregnancy, the Oscar-winner is now a mom. Portman is engaged to Black Swan choreographer, Benjamin Millepied.
"I have always kept my private life private," said Portman when announcing her pregnancy, "but I will say that I am indescribably happy and feel very grateful to have this experience."
Treating the man in your house to a special Father's Day meal this weekend? If so, he'd better watch what he orders.
When it comes to your household, who do you think has the most influence over your kid's eating habits? Must be mom, right? After all, she works hard to cook and serve up every colour under the rainbow and cajole said nutritious concoctions into her kid's belly night after night.
The sexualization of young girls has been all over the media like a rash lately. From padded bikinis to makeover salons for tots. But this latest tale takes the cake. Make Me Fabulous, a dance studio in England, is offering pole dancing classes for preschoolers. At $5 an hour, little girls as young as three can learn to work the pole as mini agent provocateurs.
Four-year-old Aelita Andre already has her own exhibit at a Manhattan gallery this month. Her parents are both artists, so it makes you wonder whether Aelita has inherited their gifts or is it merely wishful thinking on their part that their daughter should follow in their footsteps.
"I used to paint and I had prepared a canvas on the floor," her father, Michael Andre, told NBC. "She was nine months old and she crawled onto the canvas and she just took to it. Her hands moved around the canvas."
What started as a pithy Facebook update has turned Adam Mansbach into a book world wonder. Unless you've been hiding under a very large rock, you've probably heard by now of his book, Go the F**k to Sleep. Thirty-four-year-old Mansbach, who is based in San Francisco, wrote the book last summer after umpteen bedtime battles with his busy, then-two-year-old daughter, Vivien.
A recent global survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation ranked the worst countries in which to be a woman. Afghanistan topped the list, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Pakistan, India and Somalia. The real surprise, though, was India -- "a country rapidly developing into an economic super-power" -- which rated high on the level of female infanticide and sex trafficking.
Mice-infested schools, without playgrounds, adequate books, or gyms. You would expect conditions like these in third world countries, not in Canadian schools.
Yet these are just some of the problems in reserve schools across the country, according to letters written by First Nations children to the United Nations.
“(It’s) not fair when children are crowded in a classroom and it’s not fair that mice eat the snacks,” wrote a student named Angelique. “It’s not fun when cold winds are in the school. It’s not fun at all!”
Every kid goes through a gross-out phase at one point or another, right? There's always one who'll experiment by eating sand, worms, even dog food. But what about bugs?
Cicadas are currently invading Tennesee in a freak occurrence that happens once every 13 years or so. A three-year-old boy named Lance had been having fun playing with the insects for days, before deciding to pop one in and out of his mouth.
Researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., are rejecting plans to introduce routine screening for detecting autism in children. "There is not enough sound evidence to support the implementation of a routine population-based screening program for autism," said researchers in an online edition of the Journal of Pediatrics.
Ever feel like you're sleepwalking through your days? Well, maybe you are. According to new research in the journal Nature, just because your eyes are open, doesn't mean you're truly awake or that your brain is functioning properly.
When we’re really sleep deprived, so goes the theory, parts of our brains actually shut down temporarily. We may still be able to go about our daily business of cooking, cleaning, driving the kids to and from school, but behind the scenes some of our neurons are power napping.
As they say, only in America. Instead of a brand new Malibu Barbie or a shiny pair of Twinkle Toes, seven-year-old Poppy, the child of Sarah Burge (aka the Human Barbie) got something, uh, a bit more unconventional for her birthday. A gift certificate for a boob job.
Although 25-year-old Sara Ottoson was born without a uterus and is unable to reproduce, her 56-year-old mother, Eva, plans to donate her own womb in the hopes that Sara will be able to conceive.
So effectively Sara will carry a child in the same womb that carried her! Warped as it may sound, it's not the first time the procedure has been carried out. But if it's successful, the operation will be the first mom-to-daughter womb transplant.
Tanta Pharmaceuticals Inc. has voluntarily recalled its children's acetaminophen products after three reports of problems with the child-resistant caps, according to Health Canada.
“The child safety mechanism on some of the caps may not be locking properly and caps may open even in the locked position,” claimed the health agency in a press release last week. The worry is that children may accidently ingest the pills.
Australian actor Russell Crowe isn't known for his diplomacy. When one of his Twitter followers asked last week whether Crowe would get his newborn son circumcised, he let rip:
“Circumcision is barbaric and stupid. Who are you to correct nature? Is it real that God requires a donation of foreskin? Babies are perfect.”
They may look harmless enough, but don't be fooled. Those bouncy inflatable castles and slides can be lethal. At a recent soccer tournament in Oceanside, New York, high winds sent three inflatable "bounce houses" flying, injuring 13. One woman suffered head and spinal injuries when a slide toppled her.
Mike Perniches, a father who ran to the rescue, said, “I never thought there would be any serious issues, any concerns with safety. But now, I’m like, forget it.”
