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| Arab Mission In Syria |
| Monitors must desist from making statements before completing their job. IN the eyes of some, the hard work of the Arab League mission to monitor the violence in Syria has been cast into doubt by statement from one of its leaders.
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 | Playing Thatcher was a challenge: Meryl Streep SHE'S a double Oscar winner with a knack for accents, but Meryl Streep says playing Margaret Thatcher was a challenge — although her own experience helped her understand the struggles faced by Britain's first female prime minister.
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| | Playgrounds linked to BORED, INACTIVE KIDS | | REMEMBER those tall, shiny, metal, sliding boards? They seemed dauntingly steep, but you took the plunge and whizzed downward. Next, you tackled the monkey bars, climbing higher and higher and hanging by your knees at the pinnacle.
Playgrounds are a lot different for today's preschoolers. Low sliding boards, safer plastic climbers and fence-protected platforms are meant to prevent injury. But a preliminary study suggests an unintended result: unenthused, less active kids.
Platforms lead to nowhere, climbers are short and slides are slow. The equipment is easily mastered and kids soon lose interest, daycare providers told researchers in a series of focus groups. And with increasingly sedentary kids and a worsening childhood obesity epidemic, the study authors said it's time to start balancing safety concerns with the need for vigorous, stimulating play.
Led by Dr Kristen Copeland, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Centre, the study involved 49 local daycare providers, many highly experienced, at 34 child-care centres. These included inner city, suburban, Head Start and Montessori, church-affiliated, YMCA, worksite- or universityaffiliated and corporate/for-profit facilities. Focus groups took place between August 2006 and June 2007.
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| | A recipe for simplifying cooking: ditch all recipes | | WHAT'S the first step toward cooking and eating better ? Perhaps you should start by learning how to boil water. While that may not sound like much of a cooking technique, you will gain a new appreciation for the hidden potential of boiled food after reading the new book An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, by the chef and food writer Tamar Adler. Placing a pot of water on a hot burner allows us to "do more good cooking than we know," she writes.
Adler waits for a rapid boil and adds surprisingly large handfuls of salt, tasting until it's reminiscent of ocean water. (People concerned about sodium can use less.) From that simple starting point, several meals can be created, from pasta adorned with gently cooked vegetables to a chicken, simmered and skimmed, cut up and served with a fresh salsa verde. The chicken leaves behind yet another flavourful dish: richly flavoured broth, to be eaten hot with vegetables or added to other dishes the rest of the week.
To listen to Adler talk about cooking is to be drawn into a rhythmic dance where each step — from washing and chopping vegetables to cooking and seasoning the meal — flows effortlessly into the next, guided by the food itself, as well as by our own basic instincts about what tastes good.
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| | Reese Witherspoon finds Jim a caring partner | | REESE Witherspoon met her current husband Jim Toth when his drunken friend tried to chat her up.
The Water For Elephants actress revealed she was approached by an intoxicated man at a party before Jim intervened to save both Reese and his pal.
She explained in an interview with the US edition of Elle magazine: "It happened out of the blue. This really drunk guy was hitting on me, making such an idiot of himself, yelling at me. He was like, 'You don't know me.' And I was like, 'Yeah, I know. I don't know you!' Jim came over and said, 'Please excuse my friend. He's just broken up with someone.' Jim was a really good friend, pulling him out of that situation. That's just kind of who he is, a really good person." Reese, 35 - who has two children Ava, 11 and Deacon, seven, with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe - also explained she loves Jim's caring side.
She said, "Jim's like, 'I'm going to show you every day what a good partner is, what a good person is. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to do it so much that you're going to get used to it.
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