A butcher in northeast Germany has come up with what he believes is an innovative solution to the country’s growing raccoon problem: turning them into sausages and other meat products.

Michael Reiss, a hunter who set up a butcher’s shop in Kade, about 90 kilometers west of Berlin, in 2022, told this reporter in October of 2024 that he developed the idea after trying to think of a standout product to take to the Green Week International Food Fair.

He realized that raccoons who are killed as pests are simply thrown in the bin, and decided to ask local officials if they could instead be processed and turned into food.

After receiving the green light, Reiss started making his “raccoon balls”, meatballs made from raccoon meat, which he said turned out to be a hit at the fair and with customers at his butcher shop.

Soon Reiss was selling online, and he now makes a total of seven raccoon meat products, including salami.

“We’re the only place in Europe selling raccoon meat,” Reiss said.

“People come from all over, sometimes driving 150 kilometers to come to my store and combining it with a day trip because they want to try raccoon.”

And it’s not just an unusual novelty.

“It is well received. I’ve never had anyone say it’s disgusting or that you can’t eat it. Honestly, everyone likes it,” said Reiss.

Those tempted to try for themselves might be further encouraged by what Reiss describes as a certain degree of familiarity.

“What does it taste like? Not too dissimilar to other meats you know. It doesn’t have an overly unique taste. It’s slightly softer than other meat,” he said.

“If you eat two sausages, you’d know which one is raccoon. But if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t realize that anything is too different.”

While Reiss’ raccoon products have become a novelty attraction for visitors to Kade, they are also a response to a serious problem, he says.

After being introduced to Germany for use in fur farms in the 1920s, raccoons were first released into the wild in 1934, according to the Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU).

Since then, the mammals, who are highly adaptable and can live in towns and cities as well as forests and grasslands, have bred swiftly.

There are now an estimated 2 million raccoons in Germany. The animals, who are originally from North America, typically weigh around 10 kilograms, but large males can reach 20 kilograms.

They now represent a danger to domestic biodiversity, especially the reptiles and amphibians that they eat, according to Germany’s Senckenberg Nature Research Society.

Such is their impact on endangered species that some have called for raccoon populations to be managed.

NABU, one of the country’s largest and best known conservation societies, says that hunting them is not the solution.

Although they were initially protected, raccoons are now able to be hunted in almost every German state, but how to deal with them remains controversial.

Instead measures should be undertaken to better protect endangered species in general – meaning they’d be less at risk from raccoons, says the group.

               Jack Guy and Benjamin Brown, CNN, 10/31/2024

Holiday gatherings have a way of amplifying everyone’s quirks.

I was looking forward to hosting my parents for a week during Thanksgiving, but in the limited space of a one-bedroom apartment, navigating everyone’s differences was rather challenging.

My mom, who once poured herself into creating elaborate holiday traditions, has recently embraced a more relaxed approach to celebrations compared to the rest of my family members.

My sister, the ever-dedicated kitty parent who lives one floor above me, refused to leave her cat alone, ensuring someone was always on hand to care for her.

Meanwhile, my dad – the lone male in a household full of women – occasionally earned himself gentle scolding for being too loud or inattentive during important conversations.

As for me, my family would probably say I could work on being less sensitive when a new recipe I attempt doesn’t go as planned.

By the end of each day, we were all lovingly craving a little personal space and quiet time. While asking for time apart can feel awkward, I’ve learned that it’s essential for maintaining the strong bonds my family shares.

I’m certainly not alone in this sentiment; many people find themselves needing a balance of social interactions during the holidays. 46% of Americans say they get less alone time during the holidays, according to a new survey commissioned by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine, released on 12/3/2024.

“We have a lot of input, demands and stress in general that is elevated during the holidays, so it is extra important to be attentive to your need for alone time,” said Sophie Lazarus, a clinical psychologist in the department of psychiatry and behavioral health at Ohio State University and one of the survey’s developers and reviewers.

The survey, conducted in early October with 1,004 respondents ages 18 and older, also revealed that 56% of respondents believe time alone is critical to their mental well-being.

Alone time can vary greatly from person to person. For some, it’s simply about being physically away from people, while for others, it’s the ability to disconnect when alone. To figure out whether alone time energizes or depletes you, doctors suggest dedicating a full day or weekend to just yourself and observing how it affects your emotions.

If you feel rejuvenated after taking time to yourself, prioritize carving out more alone time into your schedule. However, if solitude feels draining, it might be a sign to lean into social connections more frequently.

To unwind while alone, Lazarus suggests activities including journaling, meditating, exercising and listening to music to help replenish yourself and be more present when reconnecting with others.

Although time alone is critical for emotional regulation, it can still be challenging to step away when surrounded by loved ones you don’t see frequently. Sometimes people think that they’re being antisocial or unfriendly if they want downtime and they’re worried about hurting people.

But taking time to disconnect at family celebrations can prevent minor frustrations from overshadowing meaningful connections. In fact, 36% of people say they are more irritable because they don’t get enough alone time, the survey found.

For those who want to reconnect with family and friends while also unplugging after what might have been an exhausting year, striking a balance can be difficult, said Dr. Fallon Goodman, assistant professor of psychology at George Washington University in DC.

Everyone has a different social battery, so some loved ones might resist if you ask for time apart. The recommendation for alone time is also not a one-size-fits-all approach. “Instead, it is critical to tailor socializing strategies based on personal preferences and energy needs,” Goodman said.

Older adults are significantly less likely to agree that alone time is important, according to the survey, and researchers emphasize that for those who are already feeling lonely, connecting with others is usually the right choice. The bigger picture is to be attentive to your mental health and emotional experience to decide what amount of alone time would be most helpful.

                                 Julianna Bragg, CNN, 12//3/2024

Sitting at your desk all day may put you at greater risk for heart disease – even if you work out in your spare time, according to new research.

“Our findings really emphasize the importance of avoiding excess sitting, whether or not you’re physically active,” said study author Dr. Ezim Ajufo, a cardiology fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

While there is a general understanding that sitting too much is likely bad for your health, there’s a need for more research to understand the exact risks and the guidelines for what qualifies as too much sitting, said Dr. Keith Diaz, associate professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, who was not involved in the research.

This study was particularly helpful in investigating sitting because of its large sample size and the methodology it employed, Dr. Diaz said.

Researchers looked at data from nearly 90,000 people who wore an accelerometer for a week and compared their sedentary and active time with later diagnoses of conditions like stroke, heart attack and heart failure in later years, according to the study published on November 15, 2024 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Not only was more sedentary time associated with greater risk for cardiovascular disease, but the data was able to show a general guideline for what might count as too much sitting, according to the study.

“We would really recommend that as many people as possible avoid sitting more than 10.6 hours a day,” Dr. Ajufo said. “That’s not a hard and fast threshold, but we think it’s a reasonable first step for guidelines and public health intervention.”

The data was part of the UK Biobank, a large biomedical database and research resource that follows people long-term. The sample was largely White and of European ancestry, which means that it doesn’t totally represent the US population, Ajufo said.

The study is also observational, which means that while it can make associations, it can’t prove that sitting was the cause of heart disease, she added.

It makes sense that sitting too much of the day would take a toll, however, Diaz said.

Muscles are very important for regulating blood sugar and fat levels in the blood, he added. To do their job well, muscles need movement.

“Taking movement breaks is a way to give your muscles the stimulation they need to do their jobs, and it doesn’t take much,” Diaz said.

If you sit in an office all day and commute to and from work, those 10 and a half hours of sitting can add up quickly.

The answer may not be to get a standing desk, Diaz said.

While standing is certainly not sitting, being still in one place like that doesn’t give your muscles the movement they need to efficiently break down sugars and lipids, he said.

A bike or treadmill desk may help, he said. You can also try to see if small meetings can be had over a walk.

The important thing is to add movement into your day in a way that makes sense for you and your schedule, Diaz added. He recommended getting up and walking for just a few minutes every half hour to hour or when you finish one task before moving to the next.

Unfortunately, the data suggested a good workout at the end of the day won’t necessarily undo the problems caused by long bouts of sitting, Ajufo said.

“Sometimes we think we can completely make up for some of the unhealthy behaviors we have by going out and going for a run,” she said. “What we can say from the findings is that moderate to vigorous physical activity – so that’s running, a brisk walk – is not sufficient to neutralize the harmful effects of sitting.”

But don’t be disheartened about activity. Exercise is still always a good idea and benefits people in so many ways, Diaz said.

“You’re still better off than the person who sat all day then didn’t exercise,” he said.

                  Madeline Holcombe, CNN, 11/18/2024

Picture something extremely British. Now double it. Devoured in the nation’s “greasy spoon” cafes and motorway stop-offs – not to mention some of its ritziest hotels and restaurants – this gut-busting symphony of bacon, eggs, sausage and various other cooked ingredients (invariably sluiced down with a steaming cup of tea or coffee) has become shorthand for Britishness.

It is as big as the Beatles, or bigger! The “full English breakfast” is both revered as a thing of godlike genius, and has its sour-faced critics; those who claim it is too chaotic, too self-indulgent for their own good. So where did the full English originate? How did it come to define a nation? And come to think of it, what exactly is it?

Historically, English breakfasts were a modest affair. For Britain’s Roman invaders, it was the least important meal of the day. Large breakfasts do not figure in English life or cookbooks until the nineteenth century, when they appear with dramatic suddenness. It was in the grand houses on country estates that these buffet-style breakfasts made their debut. As well as being an indulgent display of wealth, the English breakfast was a robustly patriotic retort to the hors d’oeuvres-loving French. So breakfast time became the bastion of Englishness, and breakfast emerged as the national meal. 

What exactly is a full English breakfast? It’s easier said than done to spell out what a full English is. A few examples will be along the lines of:

“Set 1: Egg, Bacon, Beans, Sausage, 2 Toast, Tea or Coffee

“Set 2: Egg, Tomato, Sausage, Mushroom, 2 Toast, Tea or Coffee

“Set 3: Egg, Bacon, Tomato, Sausage, Mushroom, Toast, Chips, Tea or Coffee…”

On and on it goes. Even more confusingly, despite being called a fry-up, these days the ingredients are not necessarily fried. At least some aspects of the breakfast are easier to pigeonhole. Sausage, bacon and egg are usually a given, as is some form of bread with which to mop up the residue. Black pudding (aka blood pudding), mushrooms, tomatoes (fresh or tinned) and chips regularly feature, but tend to be the diner’s choice.

Every Brit has their own dream team of ingredients. Eggs might be fried, poached or scrambled. Bacon smoked or unsmoked. Bread could be fried, toasted, or left as is. A dollop of tomato ketchup or brown sauce may or may not adorn the side of the plate. One thing most fry-up lovers can agree on is that the breakfast should be heavy on the stomach, light on the wallet.

Nonetheless, recent research shows younger Britons are eating just two or three fry-ups a year. In an acutely health (and time) conscious society, some are beginning to ask if the full English is dying out.

If that is the case then British society is making a good job of hiding it. On most high streets in the country you’ll find a branch of low-cost pub chain Wetherspoon serving up bacon, sausage and egg for as little as £2.99 a plate.

On the other hand, the upscale Hawksmoor restaurant chain recently reinstated its English breakfast following public outcry when it was briefly paused. “We’ve never been so inundated by requests to bring something back,” explains Huw Gott, one of Hawksmoor’s co-founders.

Every Saturday now, Hawksmoor branches in London, Edinburgh and Liverpool pile up 50-80 plates with sugar-pit bacon chop, Victorian-style sausages, Moira black pudding, hash browns, grilled bone marrow, trotter baked beans, fried eggs, grilled mushrooms, roasted tomatoes, unlimited toast, and HP Sauce gravy. “We have people from all over the world coming along hunting out a perfect British breakfast,” says Gott.

The English breakfast is a meaty calling card for Brits. A delicious tourist attraction. Something for foreigners to gawk at. So long as there’s tourism in Britain, you can be sure the fry-up will follow. 

                          Will Noble, CNN, 10/15/2024

Humanity has thrown the global water cycle off balance “for the first time in human history”, fueling a growing water disaster that will wreak havoc on economies, food production and lives, according to a landmark new report.

Decades of destructive land use and water mismanagement have collided with the human-caused climate crisis to put “unprecedented stress” on the global water cycle, said the report published on 10/16/2024 by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, a group of international leaders and experts.

The water cycle refers to the complex system by which water moves around the Earth. Water evaporates from the ground – including from lakes, rivers and plants – and rises into the atmosphere, forming large rivers of water vapor able to travel long distances, before cooling, condensing and eventually falling back to the ground as rain or snow.

Disruptions to the water cycle are already causing suffering. Nearly 3 billion people face water scarcity. Crops are shriveling and cities are sinking as the groundwater beneath them dries out. The consequences will be even more catastrophic without urgent action. 

“For the first time in human history, we are pushing the global water cycle out of balance,” said Johan Rockström, co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. “Precipitation, the source of all freshwater, can no longer be relied upon.”

The report differentiates between “blue water” – the liquid water in lakes, rivers and aquifers, and “green water” – the moisture stored in soils and plants.

While the supply of green water has long been overlooked, it is just as important to the water cycle, the report says, as it returns to the atmosphere when plants release water vapor, generating about half of all rainfall over land.

Disruptions to the water cycle are “deeply intertwined” with climate change, the report found.

A stable supply of green water is vital for supporting vegetation that can store planet-heating carbon. But the damage humans inflict, including destroying wetlands and tearing down forests, is depleting these carbon sinks and accelerating global warming. In turn, climate change-fueled heat is drying out landscapes, reducing moisture and increasing fire risk.

The crisis is made more urgent by the huge need for water. Richard Allan, a climate science professor at Reading University, England, said the report “paints a grim picture of human-caused disruption to the global water cycle, the most precious natural resource that ultimately sustains our livelihoods.”

Human activities “are altering our land and the air above which is warming the climate, intensifying both wet and dry extremes, and sending wind and rainfall patterns out of kilter,” added Allan, who was not involved in the report.

The crisis can only be addressed through better management of natural resources and massive cuts in planet-heating pollution, he told this reporter.

The report’s authors say world governments must recognize the water cycle as a “common good” and address it collectively. Countries are dependent on each other, not only through lakes and rivers that span borders, but also because of water in the atmosphere, which can travel huge distances – meaning decisions made in one country can disrupt rainfall in another.

The report calls for a “fundamental regearing of where water sits in economies,” including better pricing to discourage wastefulness and the tendency to plant water-thirsty crops and facilities, such as data centers, in water-stressed regions.

“The global water crisis is a tragedy but is also an opportunity to transform the economics of water,” said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization and a co-chair of the commission that published the report. Valuing water properly is essential, she added, “so as to recognize its scarcity and the many benefits it delivers.”

                                  Laura Paddison, CNN, 10/16/2024

Jane Xue sent her dog, a 2-year-old Samoyed named OK, off to her first day of work in mid-September. Her employer? A dog cafe in Fuzhou, in southeastern China. “I feel it’s just like parents sending their kids off to school,” the 27-year-old PhD student told reporter as she dropped OK off for her new part-time job.

Xue wanted her dog to “experience a different life,” as she and her partner are usually out on weekends. “Sending OK to the cafe is a win-win. She gets to play with other dogs and won’t feel so lonely,” she said.

Pet cafes are a big business in China. Visitors get to interact with the animals that roam the shop, allowing the venue owners to charge more for the experience. Customers visiting China’s cat and dog cafés usually pay an entrance fee, ranging from 30-60 yuan per person, or simply need to order something like a cup of coffee.

In addition to being surrounded by playmates, Xue says OK’s job in the cafe allows her and her partner to save money. If they leave her at home, they have to run the air-conditioning all day, which gets pricey. “Summers in Fuzhou can be brutal,” she added.

Xue’s idea might sound unconventional, but sending pets out to earn their snack money is a growing trend in China. These pets are actually working – either part-time or full-time – at cat and dog cafes and then returning home to their families at night, just like humans. China is expected to have more pets than toddlers by this yearend, according to survey.

In recent months, cafe owners and pet owners alike have been posting recruitment ads and CVs. According to the post, which has garnered hundreds of likes, a gray and white cat named Datou  ended up getting five cans of cat food “after taxes.” “We’re looking for healthy, good-tempered cats,” one cafe owner said. “We offer a snack per day, and a 30% discount for pet owner’s friends!

As for Xue, she says she stumbled upon some dog cafe posts on social media and thought it would be fun to send OK to work. She soon found one in Fuzhou and messaged the cafe owner. Next, it was time to groom OK in preparation for her job interview. “The cafe owner watched OK for about an hour to see if she interacted well with customers and got along with the other four dogs,” Xue said.

The screening process clearly went well – the pretty white Samoyed was offered the “job.” “My OK is the star of the cafe!” she said.

Some are not as lucky as OK when it comes to the job hunt.

Xin Xin, a 33-year-old Chinese teacher at an international elementary school in Beijing, has two cats – one black-and-white boy and one orange girl.

She’s been on the lookout for a job for her 2-year-old tuxedo cat, Xin posted her cat’s CV on September 8, hoping to find him employment at a cat cafe, but hasn’t had any luck yet. “He is clingy and good at purring! A cat chosen by God to work at a cat cafe!” Xin wrote on  the resume, noting that they “only expect some cans of cat food or snacks as his salary.”

“I thought cat cafe owners would reach out to me – now it looks like I need to take the initiative and send the cats’ resumes out,” she told the reporter, saying that the other orange cat spends her days sleeping then making a racket and disturbing her and her husband’s sleep at night.

More annoyingly for Xin, the boy cat would always curl up on her laptop when she was working overtime. “He just lounged around, watching me hustle away like a workhorse,” she said, jokingly. “My husband and I want him to be a working cat, to get a taste of the grind and earn his own food.”

Xin said she spends about 500 yuan per month feeding her two cats. “I think they get too bored during the day,” she said. “A job would help them burn off some energy.”

China’s first cat cafe opened in the southern city of Guangzhou in 2011 and the number of similar establishments has grown by 200% per year in the country, according to CBNData, China’s state-linked financial paper.

As of 2023, there were more than 4,000 cat cafe-related companies in the country.

                     Joyce Jiang, CNN staff, 10/14/2024

For the first time, scientists have found evidence that marine mammals could be inhaling microplastics, according to new research that detected the potentially harmful particles in the breath of bottlenose dolphins off the coasts of Louisiana and Florida.

Microplastics are small pieces of plastic defined as less than 5 millimeters long that have been linked to adverse effects on human and animal health in earlier studies.

Previous research has discovered the tiny particles present in marine mammals’ tissues from exposure through consumption and then movement from the digestive tract into other organs. However, the new study, published on 10/16/2024, is the first to explore inhalation as a viable route for cetaceans to be exposed to microplastics.

“We found that dolphins may be breathing in microplastics, even if they live in rural areas away from high levels of human activity. This demonstrates that these particles are everywhere, regardless of urbanization and human development,” said co-lead author Miranda Dziobak, an environmental scientist and instructor of public health at the College of Charleston in South Carolina.

Airborne microplastics have been found all over the globe, even in the Arctic and other remote locations. Dziobak said “We know that plastics have contaminated virtually every part of the globe, so contamination in wildlife seems almost inevitable.”

Scientists studying marine mammals and microplastic consumption have long speculated that inhalation was a way in which cetaceans could acquire microplastics in their bodies, similar to how humans have also been found to breathe in the small particles.

“Now we can say with confidence that it is,” said Greg Merrill, a researcher and doctoral student in ecology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, “It opens a myriad of inquiries into the consequences of such an exposure.”

To test the dolphins’ breath, the researchers took samples from 11 wild bottlenose dolphins – six from Barataria Bay in Louisiana, and five from Sarasota Bay in Florida – during catch-and-release health assessments in May and June 2023. The study team held up petri dishes to the mammals’ blowhole, through which dolphins inhale and exhale. After examining the dishes under a microscope, the scientists found that each dolphin exhaled at least one microplastic particle.

The types of plastics found in the dolphins were similar to those observed in previous human inhalation studies, with the most common being polyester, a plastic commonly used in clothing, Dziobak said.

Merrill pointed to a November 2022 study that estimated large whales can consume up to 10 million microplastics each day. “Confirmation that cetaceans inhale microplastics as well as consume them means that our estimates of total microplastic exposure to these species are underestimated,” he added. Microplastics within the ocean are flung into the atmosphere through wave activity, so it’s possible that other marine mammals that breathe at the surface such as dolphins could be exposed to the particles as well.

Bottlenose dolphins have a long lifespan – at least 40 years in the wild – with some populations staying in the same areas year-round. Resident dolphin pods can be useful in detecting disturbances in their local environment and can also provide more information for humans who swim in the same waters, eat the same species of fish and live along the coast.

“This is an important finding but is rather unsurprising owing to the ubiquity of microplastics in the environment,” Merrill said. He and his coauthors discovered plastic debris in the water has an acoustic signature similar to that of dead squid, the primary prey for certain whale species that use sound waves to hunt for food.

“We share much of our physiology with marine mammals and consume much of the seafood they eat, so this research has considerable implications for human health,” he added.

                                Taylor Nicioli, CNN, 10/17/2024

Mong Shuan was just 16 when she turned to an unconventional source of income: selling betel nuts from a little stall in northern Taiwan. The stimulant, a small, oblong fruit derived from areca palms, is chewed by millions of people across Asia. For the next three years, Mong would work six days a week for the equivalent of around $670 a month. A small bonus was tacked on for dressing provocatively to entice male customers.

Her job was to slice the nuts open and add a pinch of slaked lime, before neatly wrapping each one in a leaf. To meet her sales targets, the betel nut “must be delicious.” she told CNN reporter. But hoping to attract more business, Mong would wear her dyed red hair long, a little makeup and a schoolgirl outfit in the style of Japanese anime character Sailor Moon. “The most important thing is your appearance,” she added.

Vendors like Mong are known locally as “betel nut beauties.” The phenomenon emerged in the 1960s when pretty young females were hired to do the sales. By the turn of the 21st century, tens of thousands of the neon-lit booths, which dot roadsides and industrial neighborhoods across the island, were staffed by young women.

Hoping to document the phenomenon, photographer Constanze Han spent a month in 2022 driving down the highway connecting the island’s capital, Taipei, to the southern city of Kaohsiung, meeting betel nut beauties along the way.  “As a child, I didn’t really understand who they were. My family had been to Amsterdam one time and we’d walked past the red-light district, so I thought it was a similar thing.” She recalled.

While the scenes of women, scantily clad in glass booths, might resemble brothels, selling betel nuts is not widely linked to prostitution in Taiwan. In fact, the women rarely leave their stalls except to approach drivers in their high heels. Nonetheless, the very existence of provocative betel nut beauties seemed strange in “a quiet, conservative culture” like Taiwan’s, said Han, who hoped her project could help dispel some of the stereotypes the women faced. “People with engrained ideas of respectability, without really knowing or having interacted with these girls, might be like, ‘Oh those are girls from the wrong side of the tracks,’” she said. But in reality, Han added, “they all seemed quite level headed and responsible.”

The photographer, who grew up between Hong Kong and New York with stints in Latin America, has always been interested in the jobs women take to survive regardless of the stigma associated with them. “I always end up gravitating towards women,” said Han, who would spend time getting to know her subjects before asking to take their photos. 

Han photographed 12 women, mostly in their late teens or early 20s. They often appear drenched in the neon light of their booths or are shot gazing out of the windows; one woman’s face is distorted by the reflection of the busy streets outside. The photographer would spend hours capturing small, quiet moments that reveal the job’s mundane nature.

Han’s experience as a former fashion editor comes through in the photos, which often look as if they were staged or taken from the pages of a glossy magazine. But it’s important that her images are “as honest as possible,” she said.

The women would usually arrive for work in their normal clothes and get changed into more revealing garments in the booths, Han explained. Sometimes, owners would incentivize them to dress in a sexier way, though some of Han’s subjects said they would have done so anyway, because it helps them sell more products.

One of the women Han photographed, JuJu, is pictured wearing red lingerie as she looks out of her strobe-lit booth in the city of Taoyuan. She began selling betel nuts to help make ends meet as employment opportunities were limited for the young mom, who has no higher education. But JuJu has since grown to value the stability of the job. She has now been promoted to a manager position of two booths, and hopes to buy her own stall one day. Nonetheless, concerns that the women are victims of exploitation persist in Taiwan, and have prompted some regulation over the past two decades. In 2002, for example, the local government in Taoyuan county implemented a strict dress code that requires sellers to cover their breasts, butts and bellies.

Although it is traditionally served by Taiwan’s indigenous communities at important gatherings, use of the addictive stimulant is also declining sharply. The fact that users are 28 times more likely to develop oral cancer than non-users, between 2012 and 2018, men chewing betel nuts has gone down more than 43%.

As such, Han’s photos document an aspect of Taiwanese life that may eventually cease to exist. She hopes viewers “can look at it as an interesting phenomenon without too much judgment. I hope the photo series opens people up to a different idea of – or a curiosity about – Taiwan as a whole.”

                   Emma Russell, CNN， 4/23/2024

What happiness means is different for each individual and may shift over a lifetime: joy, love, purpose, money, health, freedom, gratitude, friendship, romance, fulfilling work? All of the above? Something else entirely? Many have even suggested that while we may think we know what will make us happy, we are often wrong.

One man may have cracked the code for what makes a happier and healthier life – Dr. Robert Waldinger is the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development – possibly the longest-running study on human happiness, which started in 1938. He has these five tips.

Don’t neglect the basics

Optimize your physical health. “On the one hand it sounds obvious, but we find that the people in our study who took care of their health lived longer and had more years when they were free of illness as they got older,” Waldinger said.

“It means exercising regularly. It means eating well. It means not becoming obese. It means not abusing alcohol or drugs. It means getting a reasonable amount of sleep,” he said. 

Level up your social life

Invest in your personal relationships. “Take care of your social fitness,” Waldinger said. “If you feel that you need more connection with people, be active in working on that.” Improving your social fitness can be done in different ways. “If you feel you don’t have enough people in your life to whom you’re connected,” Waldinger said, “you can take active steps to make more relationships, to bring more people into your life.”

Get involved in activities you enjoy alongside others. “It could be volunteering. It could be joining a club.” he said. “If you go to the same group of people again and again, you’re likely to strike up conversations around the thing that you all care about and that you’re there to do.” Doing so is an easy way to introduce new people into your life.

Strengthen existing relationships

“What if I have enough people in my life, but I don’t feel connected enough to them; I have let my friendships go,” Waldinger said. “What we find in our study is that people who take small actions, day-to-day, to stay in touch and to connect with people are the people who keep their relationships strong.”

This effort doesn’t necessarily require heavy lifting. It means taking small but consistent actions. “It means you could just call or text or email somebody, just to stay in touch with a friend,” he said. These small but regular actions will keep the relationships you care about more active and more vibrant, rather than letting them wither away from neglect.

Express yourself

Another tip, Waldinger said, is to consider the values that are most important to you and express them. “It might be that what you value the most is authenticity – and so, think about where do I get to express that in my life and are there ways I can do more of that?” he said.

To home in on self-expression, he said to think about the core values that you couldn’t imagine your life without and then think about where in your life you can express those and how you can do more of that in your life. “Because the people whose activities allow them to express what’s most meaningful to them,” he said, “those are the people who end up being the happiest and feeling the best about their lives.”

Accept and embrace change

People change all the time, and it means relationships are changing, too; you need to learn to accommodate these changes. “The question is, can we notice and accept that change and maybe even celebrate and support that change rather than resisting it,” Waldinger said. 

One way to learn to accept such changes, particularly when someone’s annoying or when you’re having trouble in a relationship, Waldinger said, is to bring as much curiosity as you can to the relationship. “It helps the other person feel that you’re interested,” he said. “It also allows you to learn more about why they are thinking the way they are? And that’s particularly important now where we’re so divided from each other.”

We hope these five tips help put you on a path to what you consider to be a good, happy life. And remember: No life is happy all the time. “Moment to moment happiness changes,” Waldinger said. “We can imagine that ‘I just have to do everything right, and then I’ll be happy all the time’ – and that’s just not true for anybody.”

                                       Andrea Kane, CNN, 8/12/2024

Born almost a decade before the first Miss Universe contest was held in 1952, 80-year-old Choi Soon-hwa could now make history as the pageant’s oldest ever participant.

Early September, 2024, she was unveiled as a finalist in the annual Miss Universe Korea competition. On 9/30, Choi will go head-to-head with 31 other contestants for the tiara – and a chance to represent South Korea at the Miss Universe final in Mexico in November.

“I want to stun the world, as, ‘How is an 80-year-old lady so healthy? How did she maintain that body? What’s your diet?’” she told the reporter ahead of the pageant. “When you get old, you gain weight. So, I want to show that we can live healthily even when we get old.”

For decades, the Miss Universe Organization enforced strict age restrictions limiting participation to women aged 18 to 28. But from 2024, amid growing calls to modernize, the upper age limit has been lifted. National-level Miss Universe pageants, although not all directly administered by the Miss Universe Organization, were obliged to follow suit.

“Now that the age restriction has been lifted, I said, ‘I should give it a try,’” Choi said, adding: “Whether I get through or not, I was determined to try and get this opportunity.”

Organizers of Miss Universe Korea announced this year’s competition by claiming in promotional materials that “age doesn’t matter when it comes to dreaming.” They also removed its swimsuit segment.

On 9/30, the pageant will see Choi take part in a singing contest, with other finalists performing dances or walking in traditional Korean clothing known as “hanbok.” The winner of Miss Universe Korea will be decided through a scoring system that considers online voting and judges’ assessments, which Choi said valued both “outer and inner beauty.”

“Looking beautiful on the outside is important, but I think you need to be at ease in your mind as well, and know how to respect others,” she said, adding: “Also, you need to be a positive thinker. So many people are negative these days.”

Korean pageants have been criticized in recent years for promoting a singular idea of beauty – one that detractors say is reinforced by some participants’ use of cosmetic surgery, which is typically not restricted by organizers, but Choi is unfazed by such. “It’s hard to find people who haven’t done any touch-ups or plastic surgery, and I think it’s time we just embrace it,” she said. “A lot of people do their eyes or raise their nose. Back in the day, it used to be something others spoke ill of, but it’s not like that now. It’s not just Koreans – a lot of women around the world are undergoing plastic surgery.”

While the contest on 9/30 marks Choi’s pageant debut, she has already made a name for herself in the Korean fashion world. After leaving retirement amid financial difficulties to work as a hospital carer in her 50s, Choi began modeling aged 72 to help pay off debts. “One of my patients told me to try modeling,” recalled Choi, adding: “I thought it was nonsense, but at the same time, it awoke my old dream of becoming a model, wearing pretty clothes and doing photo shoots. So, I said, ‘Yes, I used to dream of that before, I should try it.’”

Choi took weekly classes at a modeling academy, practicing her runway walks down the hospital hallways during shifts. She made her Seoul Fashion Week debut, aged 74, the next year. She has since appeared in various Korean editions of fashion magazines.

With a rapidly declining birth rate, South Korea is among the world’s fastest-aging countries. The number of South Koreans aged 65 or above exceeded 10 million for the first time, representing almost 20% of the population. This figure is predicted to rise to 36.7% – higher than any other country – by 2044, according to government forecasts.

In turn, the opportunities for – and attitudes towards – older models are improving, according to Choi. “There are a lot of senior models these days,” she said. “But maybe only a fraction of them get to work and get paid. It is different for sure, compared to 10, 20 years ago though. Becoming a model was like opening a door to a new path for me, I thanked God and kept working hard. It’s so fun and I love it.”

The grandmother of three, who turns 81 in October, told CNN that she is excited by the prospect of representing her country overseas: “I always dreamed of going on stage abroad, so my mindset is prepared. Japan is the only other country I’ve been to, and I believe pageant organizers would teach the winner everything, so I’m ready!”

She has the support, too, of her children and grandchildren. “They say they’re really proud of me like, ‘My granny is amazing!’. My son said he’s proud of me, and to enjoy it regardless of the outcome.”

                               By Oscar Holland and Gawon Bae, CNN, 9/28/2024