Category: News

Filed under: Fitness, Ask a Fitness Expert

If you’re looking for a fun last-minute gift for someone who enjoys fitness, remember that balls are for grown-ups, too! Available in a wide range of sizes and colours, a fitness ball is a great gift that can be enjoyed for years to come. Here are … Read more

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Filed under: Morning Scoop

Each morning, we dish out a few links we love.

Be careful this boxing day — studies show that this day in particular is hazardous to the heart.

This Christmas, prevent a hangover with these handy tips.

Thinking of health-ifying your house … Read more

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I’ve been hit with a question for my readers. I’m just about all done shopping for Christmas, a few last minute things but that’s it. I was so proud that I’d got items on Christmas lists and a few extras and had them all

IMG: Sxc.hu

wrapped under the tree, that is until last night.

We began opening our gifts on Decemeber 21st, which is our tradition. He now knows what his gifts are by the shape. Last night he was watching the three younger (he’s 12) play with their toys and replied, “I wish I was younger.”

I looked up and responded, “Why?” He said, “So I could play with toys again too.”

I freaked out inside because there wasn’t a single toy I’d bought him, he’d requested games, dvds and music…not toys. Later he saw me on amazon and told me wanted army men, I thought he was joking but wonder now if he was serious. He loves to line things up and shoot his darts (NERF) at them, so he could. Should I make a rush out to grab at least one toy? What would you do? I understand the need/want to feel like a kid and he still is.

What age do you stop buying toys?

Post from: Blisstree

When Do You Stop Buying Toys?

Green goals are excellent, but there’s no need to go overboard. Starting slow means you can concentrate on making sure you follow through on the little green tasks you choose before you try to build up to bigger goals naturally. Following are four totally easy green goals you can take on for 2010 – they won’t take much time, won’t cost much (if anything), and are a great start if you’re new to green living.

Ditch common paper trails – two common paper trails include bills and notes. You can easily leave these trails behind in 2009. Get some whiteboards, leave them by phones, hang one on the fridge, and place little ones out where you normally take and leave notes for people. You can thus skip pads of paper and memos. As for bills, sign up for paperless billing whenever possible. There’s no point to paper bills nowadays and paying bills online saves you a check as well.

Green your take out – the best way to green take out meals is to eat less of them. However, if you still grab food on the go once in a while make sure you skip the extra napkins, silverware, and other extras you already have at home. This is a simple step to remember for the year.

Hang a water saving note – if you haven’t been shutting off the tap while you brush or shave you’re wasting a ton of water; up to 3 gallons a minute. Hang a simple note in the bathroom reminding people to simply turn the tap off while not actually using the water. Think about it, if you brush your teeth for two minutes, three times a day, you’re saving almost 18 gallons of water per day while brushing your teeth alone.

Donate a cell phone or two – each year about 65,000 tons of waste are created when people toss their cell phones away. Cell phones can contain icky stuff like lead and mercury and although small add up to a lot of toxic trash in our landfills. It’s also totally unnecessary to toss a cell phone. There are plenty of cell phone donation sites and recycling centers all over and even available via mail.

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Blisstree

Simple green steps for the new year

Filed under: Health, Fitness

Over at MSNBC, they’ve unpacked the pros and cons of using certain sports drinks to quench your post-workout thirst. The candidates include electrolyte drinks, enhanced waters, coconut water, cherry juice, chocolate milk and good, old-fashioned, … Read more

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Bluetooth headphones have long been criticized, sometimes rightfully so, for their poor audio quality, but the Altec Lansing BackBeat 903 bluetooth headphones stand head and shoulders above the competition. Sporting a flexible design that combines street-style over-the-ear headphones with in-ear buds, the BackBeat 903s are comfortable to boot. If they sound so great and feel darned good, there’s got to be a drawback, right? Well, for all that awesomeness there’s absolutely no sound-isolation that makes the “OpenMic” system a gimmick at best.

read more

Five years to the month after it was founded, cross-blog social networking widget MyBlogLog will be closed down by Yahoo! in January, we’re hearing from sources close to the project. MyBlogLog is a service that shows blog writers and readers the faces and profile information of other MyBlogLog users that visit their sites.

MyBlogLog was a wildly innovative service that grew fast after launching and was acquired in January 2007 by Yahoo! for $10 million. It made a deal with users: Give us your personal information and we’ll show you the faces of people who read your blog. That was a compelling offer and the resulting data amassed could have proven invaluable, had Yahoo! chosen to cultivate it and a developer ecosystem around it. That potential was so great, in fact, that sunset for MyBlogLog is downright tragic. It’s also likely to anger bloggers all around the web.

Sponsor

In addition to showing the faces of recent blog visitors, MyBlogLog also offered programatic access to activity streams from social networks that users associated with their MyBlogLog accounts. For example, Yahoo’s Kent Brewster, now at Netflix, built a bookmarklet that would display the recent bookmarks on Delicious, photos on Flickr and job titles from LinkedIn of the latest MyBlogLog users to visit any given blog.

Yahoo! has let the service atrophy for years and will now put it to rest. To think that this service offered publishers and developers access to personal, demographic, taste and activity data of a website’s readers – and yet that offering has in the end gone no where – that’s downright crazy.

Here at ReadWriteWeb we scraped a feed from our MyBlogLog page of the new users just added to our community, then reached out to thank them for their support and welcome them personally. That was just the beginning of what could have been a very valuable source of data. Imagine getting a feed of the LinkedIn job titles of all your recent readers and presenting that to a blog’s advertisers. Both analytically and financially, there was so much potential in MyBlogLog. See our 2008 post The Significance of the MyBlogLog API if you’re a social web geek and want to have your heart broken.

Looking at the ecosystems beginning to form around Twitter, Facebook and other user data – MyBlogLog may just have been ahead of its time. The service isn’t alone among potentially world-changing technologies acquired and then starved of support at Yahoo! We’ve asked Yahoo! for comment and will update this post if we receive any.

Image via CrunchBase

We called co-founder Eric Marcoulier for comment and he offered the following perspective:
“So much of your company’s long term sucess when it’s acquired is based on the amount of executive juice it has. The only way it survives and flourishes is if you have an executive champion who promotes it internally. Shortly after we were acquired we were transfered away from our champion and under someone who didn’t feel the same way about MyBlogLog. In those circumstances, things simply slow down.

“For any startup that has earn outs, and this didn’t affect us, you’ve got to keep in mind that in 3 months you could be reorganized and the new guy could shut you down. The picture that gets painted early on when you have your product champions can change in a heartbeat and it’s important for entreprenuers to consider that when looking at the deal terms.”

R.I.P. MyBlogLog.

Update: Chris Yeh, head of the Yahoo! Developer Network, has responded over at the YDN blog: “Frankly, it’s no secret within Yahoo! that we’re actively discussing the future of MyBlogLog. However, it’s also true that we have not made any final decisions at this point. Is a shutdown on the table? Sure, that’s an option. But there are other options as well.”

Discuss

Filed under: Health, Healthy Eating

I’m currently in the midst of my annual trek home to the parents’ place for the holidays. Like a lot of people, no doubt, I always have mixed feelings about my return to the ol’ homestead. I love hanging out with my family; the raucous, “spirited … Read more

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Numbers are a funny thing — especially when it comes to cell phones. Separate them by company, and one brand comes out on top. But isolate different models, and suddenly another maker’s doing a happy dance.

Such is the case with two current cellular giants: RIM’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone. In one report, BlackBerry handsets cumulatively outsell the Apple smartphone by nearly two to one. But a recent report from The Nielsen Company shows that the iPhone is still the most popular handset over other individual phone models.

According to the chart, the top two phones are the iPhone (accounting for 4.0% of all mobile phone owners) and the BlackBerry 8300 series (which nabbed 3.7%), both of which are smartphones. The rest of the list is comprised primarily of feature phones. (BlackBerry’s Storm and 8100 series show up in 7th and 10th places, respectively.) Since the iPhone 3GS doesn’t show up as a separate item, the presumption is that it’s grouped with the 3G.

(What about Android? Well, don’t forget that the platform’s biggest boost — otherwise known as the Verizon Moto Droid, which debuted on the nation’s largest carrier along with the Droid Eris — has only recently launched. No doubt, Nielsen hasn’t factored that in yet.)  

Other noteworthy nuggets from the report:

• Pre-paid phones are still going strong. And the top reason people get them? It’s not due to lack of contract, but because the fees and plans are simple and uncomplicated (followed by “no monthly bills” and “emergency use only.” The lack of contract is #4 reason on the list.)
• More than 1/5th (or 21%) of households have cut their landlines and gone cell phone–only. This figure has shot up 6% in three years (it was 15% in 2006.)
• 15% of households now own at least one smartphone.

Is it possible to be astonished by these results, while simultaneously not being surprised at all? I am. I knew smartphone usage was on the rise, but 15% is a huge segment. And I wonder how long it will be before the majority of American households are cell only. (Hey, maybe that’s an argument I can use with my hubby. He refuses to give up our landline. But I’m still working on him. Seems crazy to spend the extra coin when we have perfectly good mobile phones, no?)

Has anyone out there cut the cord completely? Good decision or no?

Via: MobileCrunch

It seems like the old telegraph system is suddenly getting lots of new attention. A few weeks back, we wrote about some lessons from the old telegraph system that could be enlightening in the net neutrality debate. And, now, James Gattuso points us to a fun read over at The Economist about how people freaked out that the telegraph was going to kill newspapers. There was concern about how this device would lead to destroying quality reporting, getting people to focus more on the quick hits, and that there would be less reason to do “real” reporting — leading to more annoying opinion writing, rather than actual journalism. Sound familiar? Of course, it didn’t work out that way:

What lessons does the telegraph hold for newspapers now grappling with the internet? The telegraph was first seen as a threat to papers, but was then co-opted and turned to their advantage. “The telegraph helped contribute to the emergence of the modern newspaper,” says Ford Risley, head of the journalism department at Penn State University. “People began to expect the latest news, and a newspaper could not succeed if it was not timely.”

Today, papers are doing their best to co-opt the internet. They have launched online editions, set up blogs and encouraged dialogue with readers. Like the telegraph, the internet has changed the style of reporting and forced papers to be more timely and accurate, and politicians to be more consistent. Again there is talk of news being commoditised and of the need to focus on analysis and opinion, or on a narrow subject area. And again there are predictions of the death of the newspaper, with hand-wringing about the implications for democracy if fewer publications exist to challenge those in authority or expose wrongdoing.

The internet may kill newspapers; but it is not clear if that matters. For society, what matters is that people should have access to news, not that it should be delivered through any particular medium; and, for the consumer, the faster it travels, the better. The telegraph hastened the speed at which news was disseminated. So does the internet. Those in the news business use the new technology at every stage of newsgathering and distribution. A move to electronic distribution–through PCs, mobile phones and e-readers–has started. It seems likely only to accelerate.

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by Ken Ward

“So where do we go from here?” asks Geoffrey Lean. “How do we get from the … debacle of Copenhagen to a new and worthwhile climate treaty?”

The question reminds me of the old Bert & I tale about the Maine farmer who, when asked by a motorist for directions to Millinocket, answers, “You cahn’t get theyah from heea.”

Lean observes that “Rarely have such high hopes [for Copenhagen] been dashed so swiftly,” and says “the summit was only saved from total disaster by unprecedented negotiations between the leaders themselves.”

I’m more inclined to see the unprecedented, last-minute, let’s-save-ourselves-from-complete-embarrassment negotiations as adding final insult to grievous injury, but be that as it may, what’s most interesting in Lean’s analysis are the “7 Steps” he outlines to get from debacle to a worthwhile treaty, which may be summed up:

    1. Smooth ruffled feathers in the 187 nations cut out of the last-minute, 5 nation deal cutting.
    2. Persuade countries to pledge significant greenhouse emissions reductions, particularly the Europeans.
    3. Pass U.S. cap & trade bill.
    4. Revamp UN treaty negotiations process.
    5. Ensure that monies pledged in Copenhagen become monies spent.
    6. Figure out what we’re trying to do (extend Kyoto?, do something else?, extend Kyoto without the US?).
    7. Convince China of what we know, but they apparently don’t know, which is that signing a climate treaty is in their best interest.
 
Come now.

This is a list of things we’ve been trying for at least a decade (2, 3, 6 & 7), plus some stuff we apparently need to do now because what we’ve been trying to do for the last decade didn’t work (1, 4), and one thing to follow up on (5). Nowhere does Lean give even a flicker of an idea of how these things might be approached differently and nowhere does Lean consider the possibility that the debacle in Copenhagen might be the direct result of pursuing the wrong climate strategy.

I think we tried an extraordinary, radical approach to political change—in essence, to sneak something into place, bypassing the tough business of challenging how things are—which has inarguablly failed and it’s past time we return to more traditional means of winning tough stuff. In that spirit, here are 7 Steps + 3 I think will be far more productive.

    1. Ramp up the conflict between those nations that have recognized climate realities and are willing to take on the US, China, India, etc. (along with nations that think they can make a buck, and most likely deserve to).
    2. Drop the misplaced attention to emissions and focus on shutting down extractions. There are only a handful of oil, coal, and gas fields in the world, controlled by a few countries—like, whaddya know? the 5 that cut the deal in Copenhagen. Shutting down mines and wells is the only practical, last-minute measure humanity can take, so we’d best start a drumbeat for it now.
    3. Defeat any half-measure, in the US or elsewhere, intended to protect fossil fuel burning, particularly coal, and/or that tries to put off what must be decided immediately to some hypothetical future where political conditions are better, or someone else is responsible.
    4. Use the UN to focus pressure on the top 5-10 nations, but aim for a desperate, multi-lateral agreement between the US, China, Australia, and maybe India to phase out coal extractions (covering over 80% of supply), coupled with the massive ramp-up in efficiency and renewables to replace it; the lion’s share paid for by the US.
    5. Denounce the Copenhagen pledges as the pittance they are (though they should still be paid), and demand spending on a scale concomitant with saving our collective bacon.
    6. Figure out what we’re trying to do (see 4).
    7. Convince China that it is in their interest to sign a climate deal by making it in their interest (see 4). and,

    8. Focus on multi-nationals as well as nations. In all the swirl of action between and about nations, we seem to have forgotten that it’s Exxon-Mobil, BP, Peabody Coal, Gazprom, Shell, and the like that are making more money than the world has ever seen by selling out our future.
    9. Stop dissembling about how bad it is and stop pretending to ourselves that we’re not being disingenuous. Whenever we put this civilization-busting threat in terms of an opportunity (for energy independence, green jobs, or whatever), rather than what it is (a last bid to save our asses), we completely undercut the only point that matters.
    10. Increase—and dramatically increase—turmoil, dissent, civil disobedience, and conflict. We are never, and were never going to quietly negotiate an orderly transfer away from oil, gas, and coal. It will take an immense, global upheaval, which we must both foment and ensure remains non-violent.

Related Links:

With new year comes second chance to save the world

A conversation with Indian youth activist Ruchi Jain

Sarkozy scrambles to salvage carbon tax

In what’s sure to be a parade of new netbooks for 2010, MSI is leading the march with news of the Wind U135. Like just about every other new netbook coming soon, the U135 is built around the Intel Atom N450 at 1.66 GHz with integrated GMA 3150 graphics. Sadly, that’s about all that’s new when compared to the Wind U100 I bought nearly 15 months ago, aside from a revamped keyboard. The same 10.1″ inch display is there, as is the 1024 x 600 resolution. I realize that this display panel keeps costs down, but consumers might like the option of a higher resolution screen in 2010. The good news is that the increased power efficiency of the new Intel chipset will help with battery life while mobile. My old U100 typically lasts for five hours with the included six-cell battery — MSI claims the U135 will run for up to 7.5 hours.

The $329 price tag also includes Microsoft Windows 7 Starter Edition — although additional $80 will remedy that — a 250 GB hard drive, 4-in-1 memory card reader, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, 1.3 megapixel webcam and three USB ports. MSI did give the wireless capability a boost over my old netbook by adding support for 802.11n, but there’s no mention of Bluetooth in the email I received from the company. We’re sure to see the new U135 at CES and I’d expect availability soon after the show.

Both LAPTOP Magazine and Engadget have shared some hands-on reviews, so now’s your chance to get an early look. My Wind was — and still is — a workhorse, but it appears that other new netbooks are offering noticeably more battery life. And if most of these netbooks are the same in terms of specifications, I’d generally opt for the one that can stay away from an outlet longer than the others.

December 22, 2009

Dear Right Hon. Prime Minister Stephen Harper,

As the Liberal Opposition Critic for Amateur Sport and the Olympics and proud supporter of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, I write to express my concern regarding the discrimination faced by women ski jumpers who have been excluded from the 2010 Games. It is unacceptable for the Canadian government to be complicit in this breach of rights, and the government can and must take immediate corrective action.

The B.C. Supreme Court has acknowledged that the exclusion of women ski jumping in the 2010 Games is a classic case of gender discrimination, a finding that was not overturned by the Court of Appeal. In 2006, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) denied women jumpers inclusion into the 2010 Games, 83 women from 14 nations were competing at the elite international level in ski jumping. By comparison, the sport of women’s ski cross, which was newly added to the Olympics at that time, included only 34 women from 10 nations competing at the elite level.  Also in 2006, the International Sports Federation (which governs all snow sports), recommended by a 114-1 vote that the IOC should include the women ski jumpers; this validates their having met the criteria to qualify for inclusion.

Unfortunately, today’s refusal by the Supreme Court of Canada to hear the case of women ski jumpers confirms the lack of jurisdiction of Canadian courts over the IOC, a corporation based in Switzerland.  In absence of a legal resolution, a political solution is required. Gender discrimination is a clear violation of Canadian values, is contrary to Section 15 (1) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and is prohibited under both the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Human Rights Code of British Columbia. Therefore the government must prevent this egregious act of discrimination.

In 2007 Canadian women ski jumpers filed a discrimination complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. That complaint went to arbitration and was settled with the federal government promising to lobby effectively for their participation in the Vancouver 2010 Games. To date the women ski jumpers have seen no such government advocacy on their behalf. On the contrary, by supporting and enabling the IOC ‘s discriminatory decision to bar women ski jumpers, the Conservative government is tolerating, and indeed is complicit in a policy of gender discrimination.

As an Official Partner and funder of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games taking place on Canadian soil, the Government of Canada is responsible to ensure that decisions made by the IOC do not take away the women ski jumpers’ right to equal participation.  Canadian taxpayers should be outraged that the government is spending public funds promoting an initiative that blatantly violates Canadian values and policies supporting equality.

It is not too late to right this wrong, and it is not too late for the women ski jumpers to compete in the 2010 Games.  Thanks to support from VANOC for these women athletes, they continue to train on Olympic facilities and remain ‘Games-ready’.  VANOC has ensured the budget, facilities, and logistical capability to include women’s ski jumping in the 2010 Winter Olympics, if the decision is made soon.

I request that your government immediately exert appropriate pressure on the IOC, as promised in 2007, to do what’s right. I ask that you insist the IOC comply with Canadian principles of equality and eliminate this gender discrimination. Both men and women ski jumpers must be afforded the opportunity by the IOC to compete at the 2010 Games. If not, then to avoid discrimination, neither should be permitted to participate.

I look forward to your prompt response on this very important defense of Canada’s Charter rights.

Best regards,

Joyce Murray,
Member of Parliament for Vancouver Quadra
Liberal Official Opposition Critic for Amateur Sport and the Olympics

Cc:

Hon. Gary Lunn

MP, Saanich-Gulf Islands

Minister of State (Sport)

Amy Wagers wants to isolate the wound healing factors that are present in young animals that promote rapid healing and recovery.

Recently she has discovered a “partial pathway,” previously undescribed in the blood system, that is involved in the process of repair. “The reason we thought the factor that awakens muscle stem cells might be in the blood,” she explains, “is that organ systems decline globally with age, which implies that any signal has to reach many different locations.” A good place to look for a universal signal such as that, she reasoned, is in the blood.

In fact, her work has already shown that exposing an old animal to the blood of a young animal restores function to progenitor cells in a variety of tissues, not only in skeletal muscle. She is now collaborating with other Harvard laboratories to study such effects in the pancreas, liver, brain, and heart. “This might be a more broadly applicable mechanism,” she says, “an inroad for discovering pathways that can enhance repair activity.” In some cases, Wagers thinks, induced repair mechanisms that fail with age might overlap with genetic disorders, so that studying these pathways could advance research on cures for certain diseases. At the very least, she suspects that the “kinds of molecules we discover that enhance endogenous repair activity” could someday play an important role in readying tissues for cell therapy, once that field is mature. Adds Melton, “This has gotten us thinking more about not just fixing the human body when it is broken, but about how to harness the natural activity of stem cells for homeostatic repair to keep us healthy. We’re not there yet, but I think that is where we are headed.”

(via 3QD)

I don’t normally forward things that come in my inbox, especially jokes and such but earlier this week I got one that really pulled at my heart and wanted to discuss it here.

IMG: Sxc.hu

I won’t write the whole thing but I’ll share the basics with ya’ll and up front I’ll ask you: What would you have done? Or what would your child have done? This could be a great discussion you could have with your own children, or something for you to think on as we know our children copy our own actions most of the time.

The story opens with a father speaking at a fundraiser and begins telling a story about his own child that was born handicapped both physically and mentally and how one day they were walking and his son saw a group of kids he knew from school playing ball. He really wanted to play and asked his dad if it would be okay to ask. His father, knowing how cruel kids could be didn’t want him to do it, but at the same time knew his son needed this and if they would say yes it would make him feel a little connected to his peers.

I will admit that my kids don’t have disabilities but I do know how if feels to be left out or watch your child be left out because of one thing or another with them. I can only imagine what this must feel like. I thought, please let them say yes.

The child went up and asked the team, they actually said yes since they were losing anyways and were almost done it wouldn’t matter. They let the boy go outfield and then when it came his turn to bat the team had caught back up, they were one run away. The father worried they would decide to sit the boy out and let someone else bat and win the game, many probably would’ve done that. But to his surprise his son went up to bat and instead of the pitcher trying to strike him out, he tried to help the boy out by pitching softly. Now the pitcher knew if he struck the ball they could lose, but he also knew the other team was taking a risk. Long story short the child hit the ball the second time, it went right for the pitcher. Most would’ve grabbed it and threw him out, but he made sure it went over the baseman and each team player did the same thing as he approached their base, in the end the teams were rooting for him to make it home, even though this would mean the one team won.

The story was sweet, it showed that in nature, even in our world today that kids could show a lot of care. I have seen many try to act tough, some which are tough and mean but it is those that we teach to care for things that really give me hope. Now I ask you, what would you have done? Would you have allowed him to play, to bat? What would your own child have done?

Post from: Blisstree

What Would You or Your Kid Do?

Chris Henry #15 of the Cincinnati Bengals watches the second half of play from the side lines after breaking his arm in the first half against the Baltimore Ravens in their NFL game at Paul Brown Stadium November 8, 2009 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images, photo from ChicagoTribune.com)

The only sports I play well are volleyball, swimming and I’m all right on the pool table and the baseball field. I don’t memorize statistics, don’t follow sports news and usually if I recognize an athlete it’s because I think he’s cute. So my interest in the Chris Henry case came as a surprise to myself. His funeral was today, and his fiancée spoke about how “can’t nobody feel what I’m feeling now.” This is true, considering his wife, Loleini Tonga, was at the scene of the “accident.” But what I can say I feel is confusion and curiosity.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why someone would be so frustrated with a situation that he’d jump off of a moving pick-up truck knowing full well that he would not have the help of one arm, which was in a cast.

Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry, 26, died on Thursday, Dec. 17, at 6:36 a.m., in Charlotte, North Carolina after suffering head injuries in a Wednesday accident. But depending on what news report you read, his “falling” off the pick-up truck may have been him jumping off.

According to the Associated Press, Chris Henry and his fiancée, Loleini Tonga, got into an argument, she left the house, got into a pick-up truck and he jumped on the back. A witness said he was shirtless, wearing a cast, “beating on the back of his truck window” and saying “If you take off, I’m going to jump off the truck and kill myself.”

AP reported that Tonga did stop to help him when he fell about a half-mile from home. But what strikes me strange is why someone would drive a pick-up truck knowing that someone is beating against the back window to get her attention. Initially I wondered if she was scared for her life and just wanted to get away.

Chris Henry has definitely had some dark moments in his past–five NFL suspensions for weapons and drug charges. But judging from a USA Today article, it looks like Chris Henry was turning his life around.

TMZ reported that in a Tuesday, Dec. 15, meeting with a wedding planning company, Chris Henry was frustrated by the price of a photography package and asked Loleini, “How much we paying for all this?” He left “with an attitude,” and she dealt with the paperwork. Then an argument the next day and now he’s dead.

I am hoping that the dispute that led to the pick-up truck accident wasn’t about this photography package or money. It’d be really unfortunate if the reason he died was about the wedding all while Tonga is saying at the funeral, “We loved each other very much. We were supposed to get married in three months, but I’m going to wait until I see him again.”