"Cellulite Exorcist" Makes Heads Spin • Giant Foods Around The Globe

• Sad news: Lorene Rogers, former president of the University of Texas and possibly the first woman to lead a public university in America, died January 11th, at the age of 94. • Plastic surgery is on the rise in Britain, with boob jobs, abdominoplasy and “designer vaginas” leading the way. Ugh. • And this is not as gender specific as one would think: the number of “moob” jobs (reducing the amount of a man’s breast tissue) has increased by 44% in the past year. • New research shows that the color red makes men feel “more amorous.” • Bromance among chimps? New study shows that male bonding is an important part of the adult chimpanzee life. • The rate of infant deaths due to suffocation or strangulation has quadrupled in the past twenty years in the US. Doctors recommend that parents avoid this tragedy by not bed-sharing and keeping cribs free of clutter. • India is struggling with a horrifically high maternal death rate, with as many as 450 deaths per 100,000 live births. Women in lower castes are the worst sufferers, since they are frequently denied access to even basic health care. • America’s largest retirement community, The Villages in Florida, is reportedly a “widower’s paradise,” with female-to-male ratio at 10 to 1. Workers say there is a big black market for Viagra. • New data shows that the number of repeat abortions among British teens has risen 70% since 1991. Experts speculate that the rise in binge drinking could be partially to blame. • A research group in the UK is investigating whether consuming caffeine during pregnancy could lead to rise in the baby’s risk for developing leukemia in childhood. • Although Americans are no happier than we were in the 1970’s, the happiness gap (the gap between those who report being happiest and those who are the least) has significantly narrowed. • There are two weird stories today about giant baked goods: 1. A team of 55 Mexican cooks baked the world’s largest cheesecake. 2. A sticky rice roll weighing more than a ton has been made in Vietnam to raise money for the poor. • And in other strange food news, the “delicacies of the Antarctic” (seal brain, penguins eggs), are off the menu at Antarctic bases, replaced by dried onion and split pea soup. • “Ladettes” (young women emulating their male peers) are responsible for an upswing in female crime, experts say. • The Martha Graham Dance Company is launching an internet-based global dance competition this year. The winning footage will be shown at the company’s New York season in May. • Villagers in a small town in India recently married a young girl to a stray dog in a religious ritual. Fortunately, there do not seem to be any lasting effects of the ritual, and the girl is free to marry later in life if she so chooses. • Amphetamines have been found in illegal diet pills from South America. • A mother from Texas who allegedly abused her three daughters will not be prosecuted. The mother, suffering from Munchhausen’s syndrome, brought her children to many different doctors, which apparently makes it difficult to prosecute the case. • A 41-year-old British woman will become the first to give birth after using a new IVF technique that screens eggs for abnormal chromosomes. •