Both are being investigated for misconduct, and, as the Daily News notes, both of the "good-looking" language teachers were very popular with their students. • General Mills has announced plans to reduce the amount of sugar in cereals marketed to children. This means that munchie-favorites like Lucky Charms and Count Chocula could drop at least 25% of their sugar, until there are less than 10 grams per serving. Wonder if that will effect the taste. •  According to an Italian newspaper, Amanda Knox still has hope that she will be freed. She reportedly told Italian lawmaker Walter Verini that she "has faith in the Italian justice system," including her pending appeal. • New York State's oldest registered sex offender could be released from a halfway house soon. Prosecutor Frank Sedita has warned against the dangers of releasing the 100-year-old convicted child molester, who he calls the "personification of evil." •  A 10-year-old British girl has made the news after she wrote an angry letter to the man who broke into her house. Her letter, which describes her feelings of fear and sadness, will be sent out to known burglars with the hopes that it will deter them from robbing again. •  In the past few weeks, three top female newspaper editors have announced that they are leaving their jobs, and do not intend to continue careers in journalism. The timing of their resignations has lead some to worry about diversity in the newsroom. However, Sandra Mims Rowe, editor of the Oregonian says it is not always gender-specific issues that force editors to seek new opportunities, and that times are tough across the board. •  The New York Times helpfully reminds us of the number one rule of any affair: don't put anything in writing. Oddly, many otherwise intelligent-seeming people (Tiger Woods, Senator John Ensign) seem to think that this does not apply to text messaging, which has led the NYT to deem texts the "new lipstick on the collar." Professor Shirley Turkle rather poetically describes our cellphone-blindness: "Like Peter Pan, we do not see our electronic shadow until it is pointed out to us. We assume it is not there." • Kumari Fulbright, the former beauty queen and University of Arizona law student accused kidnapping of her ex-boyfriend, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and aggravated assault today. She'll spend the next two years in prison. • A Pennsylvania woman who drank herself unconscious at her 20th birthday party is suing a hospital for medical malpractice because she passed out while sitting on the floor in the emergency room and was left in that position for 12 hours. This cut off circulation to her legs, and they were later amputated at the knees • The International Olympic Committee has reallocated two of the three gold medals Marion Jones was stripped of in 2007 when she admitted to using steroids. But for the first time the IOC is leaving a gold medal spot vacant because 100-meter silver medalist Katerina Thanou of Greece is still facing charges for staging a motorcycle accident to avoid doping tests. "She disgraced herself and the Olympic movement by avoiding three doping tests. We are not legally bound to give medals," said an IOC spokesman. • Police arrested a Florida woman for allegedly throwing a raw steak at her disabled live-in boyfriend when he asked for a roll instead of sliced bread with his dinner. Authorities say she beat the man, who has terminal cancer and an injured left leg, in the face with the meat and threw a bag of clothing at his bad leg. She repeatedly told a deputy that she only slapped him "so that he can learn." •

Special K is the Cosmopolitan of cereals, a product that has survived for years by making women feel about themselves and offering incredibly stupid tips on how to lessen that self-hate. If Special K was a woman, she'd be that bitch who says things like, "You could be so pretty if you just lost a few pounds." She'd probably also hang out with MeMe Roth and try to make you feel bad about ordering dessert after dinner. Special K is a total buzzkill, and her reign of terror has lasted long enough.

The product thrives by being marketed as a diet product: the "Special K Challenge" has been deceiving women for years, pushing a crash diet as a realistic nutritional plan and making promises about how many inches one will lose over a few weeks, simply by dropping actual meals in favor of low-calorie cereals and supplements. Meal 1: a bowl of cereal. Meal 2: A Meal Replacement bar. Meal 3: a "normal" dinner (the site shows lean meat and greens), and snacks: more bars! That's a healthy attitude, no? For nothing says, "this isn't a complete set-up for failure" quite like dropping whole grains, healthy fats, and balanced meals in favor of a bowl of cardboard-esque flakes swimming in watery skim milk. Mmm...healthy!

The major problem with Special K is that it pushes weight loss for all the wrong reasons: there is always an emphasis on a bathing suit, or a bikini, or, in terms of their New Year's advertising, a need to make up for the "bad" behavior of the holiday season, when you allowed yourself to—gasp—eat food and enjoy it. It's typical crash diet fare: restrict, restrict, restrict in order to hit a goal. There's no emphasis on changing the way you eat in a realistic, healthy, life-long way. It's all about the damn bikini. The Special K website is currently running a banner that reads "Get Two-Piece Ready!" Awesome! All I have to do is starve myself to look sexy. Thanks, stupid cereal!

I say we finally give Special K the ol' heave-ho. Please stop buying into this unhealthy bullshit, ladies. The only true way to be "two-piece ready" is to have the confidence to rock a two-piece no matter what you weigh. Confidence is the beautiful thing- and you're not going to find it at the bottom of a cereal box, no matter how "special" that cereal claims to be.

• A new survey suggests that fathers are better at giving driving lessons than mothers, who tend to panic, while dads just swear. • Brazilian researchers have found that among teenage girls, there are alarmingly high rates of STDs that often go undetected. • The BBC has an amazing video of a monkey teaching its young to floss with human hair. • More monkey news: zoologists have found that monkey tantrums should never go ignored. • From the Institute of No Shit Studies: men in their 60s drive the most powerful cars. • A Miami evangelist claiming to be the anti-Christ has gone into hiding following a court ruling to pay his ex-wife $2.2 million. Wonder if Satan will help him out of this one. • Some asshole put his wife up for sale, describing her as "Nagging Wife. No Tax, Not MOT. Very high maintenance - some rust." He says he was shocked that he received several offers. • The Hijabi Monologues, a little known play about Muslim women who wear the headscarf, is currently showing in LA. • A little over a year ago, Wajeha al-Huwaider made a pledged to get the Saudi ban on women driving lifted by Women's Day 2009. Sadly, the ban is still in place. • The man who threw his shoe at our esteemed former President has been sentenced to three years in prison by an Iraqi court. • This is not exactly news to any American college student, but the American Dietetic Association has found that 58% of "kid cereals" are actually being consumed by adults. • Sad: a survey of Boston teens found that nearly half of them believe Rihanna was responsible for Chris Brown's assault on her. •  Could Coulter's reign of terror be coming to a close? Ann Coulter's new book Guilty isn't selling nearly as well as her others did. • 

Breakfast cereal was originally promoted by Christian fundamentalists as a wholesome alternative to the typical meat-and-whiskey diet of the average 19th Century sinner.

To rid America of these vices, religious zealots spearheaded the country’s first vegetarian movement. In 1863, one member of this group, Dr. James Jackson, invented Granula, America’s first ready-to-eat, grain-based breakfast product. Better known as cereal, Jackson’s rock-hard breakfast bricks offered consumers a sin-free meat alternative that aimed to clear both conscience and bowels.

Health advocate John Kellogg seized on the idea and turned it into the more palatable cornflake.

Cereal took its first turn towards the nakedly commercial when salesman Charles Post started knocking off the product, promoting them with an advertising blitz that quickly became the growing industry's SOP. Packaging got loud, claims got wild, and the mascot was born.

But the real winner was a cereal called Force. Its mascot, Sunny Jim, was a strutting, top-hatted gentleman who became so popular in newspapers and magazines that other cereal makers rushed to create their own mascots. For a cereal called Elijah’s Manna, Charles Post even tried putting a picture of the prophet on the label. Although the product was eventually pulled, one industry ground rule had been established: Every box needs a character. Before long, cereal makers had an insatiable appetite for finding the right mascot, regardless of the cost.

The next gimmick, marketing to kids, would have had cereal's high-minded creators rolling in their graves, as it became increasingly apparent that the trick to shilling to the young was upping the sugar content to cavity-inducing levels, which Mad Men pitched as "energy-boosting." In congress with the advent of kid's TV, this meant a stratospheric jump in sales, but the flagrant manipulation of children provoked a backlash, culminating in 1990's law that "banning TV characters from pitching directly to children in the middle of a show."

When you think about it, cereal still occupies a unique echelon in our social consciousness: even the junkiest choco-honey-loop carries about it an aura of health. But as natural foods have taken off, what's funny to see is the stark divide that's developed on supermarket shelves: virtuous brown health cereals, in their squat, dull boxes, quarantined from the gay circus of brightly-hued child-bait a few feet away. There's fun cereal, and then there's healthy cereal. And then there are the crummy health versions of fun cereals, which are obviously not nearly as delicious and are probably not fooling any 4-year-old with a brain and a TV. If the product's quintessentially American evolution, burdened equally with high-minded idealism and crass commercialism, is a neat analogy for the push-pull of the national ethos, you can make the same reach with the contemporary cereal aisle: the battle for the country's health and priorities. Because, as my bland health food store fake Honey Nut Cheerios can attest to, you seriously can't have it both ways.

How Cereal Transformed American Culture [MentalFloss]

According to Consumer Reports, the answer is, well, maybe. Kix, Life, and two varieties of that preschool standby, Cheerios, in its original form and in Honey Nut flavor, made the "Very Good" cereal list. The other 23 cereals got a Consumer Reports smackdown: Kellogg's Honey Smacks were singled out for having "as least as much sugar" as a "glazed doughnut from Dunkin Donuts." What's up with that, Dig 'Em? How are you gonna lead our children astray like this? Shenanigans!

Of course, we can't blame shady marketing practices all together for children's desire to eat sugary cereals. In 2007, Kellogg's announced that it would stop using its beloved cartoon spokespeople to push products to children unless the products in question fit specific nutritional guidelines. This, I believe, is why we no longer see commercials like the ones I loved growing up, the ones that had really stupid rock songs with lyrics that pretty much sounded like this: “Hey kids! Check it out! This is a bowl of sugar! This is a bowl of sugar! Sugar sugar sugar! OH YEAH! Tell your mom and dad to buy it! Or you will be a loser! SUGAR YEAH!”

I know we are living in a country where childhood obesity has become a serious problem, so I completely understand the crackdown on advertising sugary sweets to kids. It’s fair enough. But sometimes I miss those stupid commercials, and I especially miss Rocky Road cereal, which essentially was a giant bowl of sugar with some extra sugar on the side and a touch of choco-sugar mixed in. Tremendous.

So what's a parent to do? One option would to take the Consumer Reports recommendations to heart and switch over to the healthier alternatives. But another option, and perhaps a better one, would be to introduce the concept of moderation to children. The more we label foods as "good" and "bad", the more we set kids up to struggle with food issues and understanding how to recognize their nutritional needs. Is a cup a day of Cocoa Pebbles going to ruin someone's life? Probably not. But there has to be a balance somewhere. Maybe the best way to reinforce healthy eating habits with children is to encourage them to eat a variety of foods all along the spectrum, and to work that sugar high off through good old-fashioned exercise. For no kid should miss out on a nice spoonful of Frosted Flakes with cold, cold milk. For there are some things in life that are truly grrrrrreat, and cereal is one of them.

Better Cereal Choices For Kids? [Consumer Reports]