Miss USA Speaks Out About Ground Zero Mosque

• Miss USA Rima Fakih has decided to weigh in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy: “It shouldn’t be so close to the World Trade Center,” she said on Inside Edition. “We should be more concerned with the tragedy than religion.“

Fakih added that she respects freedom of religion and she “totally agrees with President Obama,” but she maintains that the proposed Islamic cultural center is insensitive and disrespectful.

• Filmmaker Ann Prum has spent the last few years working on a documentary about hummingbirds. In a fascinating and beautiful video, she explains how they used high-speed cameras to capture images of their beating wings. The entire movie is also streaming for free, if you need more nature on your screen.
• The Italian government is pushing to have the UNESCO World Heritage Status applied to the so-called “Mediterranean diet.” Common knowledge says the diet is made up of fresh fruit, vegetables, and fish, but many feel that there is too much variety in the eating habits of Italy (and Greece and France and everyone else tangentially involved) to consider it a defined diet.
• The DEA is looking for up to nine Ebonics experts to work with authorities on deciphering the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts.” They are also looking for linguists to help with Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean.
• Hearing loss among teenagers is on the rise, according to recent reports. Researchers were unable to link the increase in mildly hearing-impaired kids with exposure to loud noise.
• Also on the rise: Sex toy sales. Sam Bard, co-founder of online sex boutique Shag, is claiming that the recession has given his business a boost. “More couples are staying at home to save money, so rather than spending $150 on a one-time dinner, they will spend the same amount for toys that will continue to be used indefinitely.” You can’t argue with that math.
• Three separate teams of scientists have located a protein that is involved in inherited cases of breast and ovarian cancer. The BRCA2 protein has been notoriously difficult to isolate until now and doctors believe that this new discovery will help them understand how these proteins work—and maybe get a better idea of how to prevent inherited cancers.