Sweet...

In a study of about 1,000 adults over the course of six years, people who drank soda or other sugar-sweetened beverages gained an extra 1.8 pounds of visceral fat—the fat that sits inside your gut, damaging your internal organs and pushing your belly out into a King of the Hill–style slouch.

(Talk about a punch to the gut!) But instead of carrying a bundle of joy, you’re carrying a bundle of toxic fat; visceral fat has been shown to increase your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes, among other ills.

Why is soda so good at making us look bad? It’s the sugar.

And if it’s not sugar, then it’s artificial sweetener, which is 180 times sweeter than sugar and just as damaging to your waistline.

Here, we’ve ranked the 70 most popular sodas: Category 1 has 34 regular (non-diet) sodas, and Category 2 has 36 diet sodas.

Just a thought.

Smugglers...

A Spanish aid boat carrying over 300 migrants rescued at sea arrived in Spain, ending a weeklong journey across the western Mediterranean. The boat, operated by the nonprofit group Proactiva Open Arms, docked at the Spanish port of Algeciras.

The boat rescued 313 migrants in waters near Libya last week, but had to travel to Spain after Malta denied it permission to dock and Italy and other countries refused to help. Three of the migrants were later evacuated for health reasons.

Oscar Camps, head of Proactiva Open Arms, said that the group of migrants included "19 different nationalities."

In June, Spain opened its ports to another aid ship belonging to SOS Mediterranee Sea and Doctors Without Borders carrying over 600 rescued migrants after Italy and Malta refused to let it dock.

According to the U.N. refugee agency, over 2,200 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean this year in unseaworthy smugglers' boats.

Support...

A Mexican man accused of gunning down a Northern California police officer was taken into custody following a massive manhunt that ended with a surrender after authorities surrounded a home in Bakersfield, California, 200 miles south of where the crime took place, officials said.

The suspect, Gustavo Perez Arriaga, fled after shooting Newman police Cpl. Ronil Singh, 33, at a traffic stop just before 1 a.m., according to the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department.

An undocumented immigrant with known gang affiliations, the 32-year-old Arriaga tried to flee to Mexico after his alleged crime, authorities said Friday. Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson said that Arriaga crossed into Arizona from Mexico illegally a couple of years ago and it is believed that he had been working on farms in California's Central Valley. 

A total of seven people had been arrested for either misleading authorities about Arriaga’s whereabouts or aiding him in evading authorities – including a woman described as Arriaga’s girlfriend and two of his brothers, according to police officials and ABC-owned station KFSN. 

Decision...

Syria's military announced that it entered the flashpoint Kurdish-held town of Manbij, where Turkey has threatened an offensive, and raised the national flag there.

The U.S. decision would leave areas in east Syria, around 30 percent of the country's territory, up for grabs.

Ilham Ahmed, a senior Kurdish official, said the U.S. troops said an agreement is being worked out between the Russians and the Syrian government in which the latter takes over once the withdrawal is complete.  

On 23 April 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 400,000 that had died in the war. The UN estimate 400 Billion Dollars loss.

Comment: Let us leave the Country of Syria to its people, instead of all these foreign forces occupying and in the process mass killing of others.

Skipping...

Many people consider breakfast to be the most important meal of the day.  

After looking at a total of six studies involving over 96,000 people — 5,000 of whom had already been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, German researchers found that skipping breakfast for just one day of the week was associated with a 6 percent higher risk of developing diabetes. However, the risk went up with each additional day.

Breakfast is meant to “break the fast” after a night of sleep, registered dietitian Dalina Soto told ABC News. When you eat breakfast, it jump-starts the body's metabolism and changes the way it uses sugar. Rather than storing sugar in fat cells, the body begins using it for energy. As this sugar passes through the blood, the pancreas begins secreting the hormone insulin, which regulates blood sugar. In daily life, these processes make it easier for you to manage your appetite and hunger levels throughout the day. 

Skipping breakfast has been linked to increased levels of cholesterol and inflammation in the blood, which can make the body more resistant to insulin and derail the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar, according to research. 

Broke Up...

The number one cause of divorce is obvious. It's not about money, or about kids, or infidelity, or any other domestic issue. The number one cause of divorce is marriage, as more than half of all marriages end in divorce. 

Finally, more people are deciding to stay single or are waiting longer before plunging into the wacky world of matrimony.

Was it necessity that forced people to get married at age 14 in the early 1900s?

Was it brainwashing by parents and society that made marriage seem like the thing to do? 

Family and societal expectations? 

Or just a really bad habit? Marriage seems to be a habit that people can't seem to break, as many take the plunge more than once--multiple times, even?

At least now kids are waiting longer before they tie the knot. Is it culture that has taught us that we are supposed to get married after high school or college and blissfully settle down with our "soul mates" to have 2.5 children and a white picket fence--only for more than half of those matches made in Heaven to dissolve in bitter divorces years later.

Uncle...

The Media realized how bad the situation in Yemen is. The death, the starvation, the destruction and the dehumanization of a country. The only issue here is this realization came Four years later.

The Media also realized that War is not a way to change people's Minds and Hearts. Just look at other countries we participated in helping, assisting or bombing... Nothing changed but massive destruction and killings.

Ratio...

 

The main drag on markets is not the rolling narrative of politics, it is the money flow of central banks and in particular the Federal Reserve.

The stock market has been going up since the credit crunch of 2007/2008 because liquidity has been pumped into the system and made the value of assets go up as the cheap credit has driven participants to seek out assets that will appreciate faster than the interest they have to pay. This is how QE (quantitative easing) saved the global economy and a lot of people’s homes and jobs.

Now that rescue cycle is deemed over, the Federal Reserve has decided to (and has been encouraged to) reverse the QE, to get its assets and liabilities downsized. From a QE high of $4.5 trillion they have shrunk the balance sheet down to $4.1 trillion.  

On the otherside, October 2018 was a rough ride for U.S. stocks,  remained on pace for one of the worst months since the financial crisis.

U.S. markets lost more than $2.5 trillion in October coming into the month's final day of trading, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices analyst Howard Silverblatt. 

Notice the relation between the reverse to the loses. It is 5 folds loses. Just a thought.

Suckers...

President Trump struck overtly political chords as he addressed service members during a speech at the al-Asad airbase in Iraq, his first visit
to an overseas military installation. 

The president said his military strategy puts an end to the United States being "suckers" and hammered Democrats for resisting his demands for border wall funding.  

In past visits abroad the president has frequently admonished allies to be more committed to fights taking place in their own backyards. During the speech at al-Asad, Trump revisited that theme, saying that countries must sometimes pay a "monetary price" for the United States’ military involvement, "so we’re not the suckers of the world." 

The president noted that "stopping terrorists from entering America’s shores" is part of a broader strategy of homeland security.  Trump said his political rivals are only blocking a more robust border wall out of blind opposition to everything he proposes. 

Iraq Death: Nearly half a million people have died from war-related causes in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003, according to an academic study published in the United States on.Oct 15, 2013.

Side...

Turkish-backed Syrian fighters are preparing to deploy in eastern Syria alongside Turkish troops once American forces withdraw.

A Syrian Kurdish official said her group is reaching out for help to protect the Kurdish- occupied areas against a possible Turkish offensive.

A Kurdish-led force captured much of northern and eastern Syria from the Islamic State group with the help of the U.S.-led coalition. Turkey views the Kurdish fighters as terrorists because of their links to a Kurdish insurgent group inside Turkey.

Manbij was at the center of an agreement the U.S. and Turkey reached under which Kurdish forces were to withdraw. Turkey had vowed to launch a new offensive against the Kurds.

The Kurdish-led forces still ( occupied)
 30 percent of Syria, mostly in the east, including some of the richest oil fields. The Kurdish militia has expressed shock at the U.S. decision to withdraw, and now faces a triple threat from Turkey, the Syrian government and IS.

Syria is being occupied by many powers that shouldn't be there. These forces are causing Misery and Death to innocent people. So when we talk about dectatodicta, who are we referring to!?