Morning radar: Three things we're talking about this morning
Homeless hope: The latest You Tube phenom is full-on feel-good. In a video posted online by the Columbus Dispatch, homeless man Ted Williams is seen - and heard - giving faux radio addresses in his velvet, show-biz voice. It's a schtick he's been using to score handouts, but after the video exploded, he's being offered radio and voice-over work left and right. Here's hoping this one has a happy ending.
Infant obesity: According to a new study, almost one-third of U.S. 9-month-olds are obese or overweight, as are 34 percent of two-year-olds. The research looked at a sample of children born in 2001, according to LiveScience.
The study is one of the first to measure weight in the same group of very young children over time, lead researcher Brian Moss, a sociologist at Wayne State University in Detroit, told LiveScience. "If you were overweight at nine months old, it really kind of sets the stage for you to remain overweight at two years," he said.
The researchers classified the babies' weights based on the widely-used Centers for Disease Control growth charts, which compare a baby's growth to a standardized growth curve. Kids in the 95th percentile of weight were categorized as "obese," while kids in the 85th to 95th percentile were counted as "at-risk," similar to the adult category of "overweight," Moss told LiveScience.
The news has fueled discussion over at Strollerderby, with one blogger writing, "Just to head off an argument I hear every time this issue is raised: if your baby is in the 95 percentile it doesn't mean it's a problem (as I said, 5 percent were there at the time the charts were formed). The problem isn't heavy babies, it's the fact that there are more and more of them every year that matters."
Tuna tale: A huge bluefin tuna, which fetched more than about $390,000 in a Tokyo market, is both eye-popping and disturbing to conservationists.
The 342 kg tuna easily beat the previous record, set exactly 10 years ago when a 202 kg fish fetched 20.2m yen, according to the Guardian. (Yesterday's was sold for 32.49m yen). The tuna, one of more than 500 shipped in from around the world, will be divided between two sushi restaurants - one in Tokyo the other in Hong Kong - which joined forces at the dawn auction for the third year in a row, the paper reports.
In a report released last year, the WWF warned that if fishing continued at current rates, the Atlantic bluefin would be "functionally extinct" in three years.