Source: News10.net

SACRAMENTO, CA - An “extraordinary leader,” “statesman,” and “never defeatist” are just a few of the many accolades given Sen. Edward Kennedy who succumbed to brain cancer Tuesday night. He was 77.

Kennedy’s family said that he died shortly before midnight Tuesday, at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, surrounded by family and friends.

In 2008, the senator was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. But he continued his work on Capitol Hill and gave a memorable speech at the Democratic National Convention one year ago, Aug. 25, 2008.

Kennedy, known as Ted or Teddy, was the youngest of four Kennedy brothers. His three older brothers were President John F. Kennedy who was assassinated in 1963, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated five years later while campaigning for the presidency, and Joe Kennedy who died in combat during World War II.

On Aug. 11, Kennedy’s sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, died. She was the mother of California’s First Lady Maria Shriver.

The Kennedy family released this statement:

“We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever,” the Kennedy family said in a statement. “He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it.”

The Kennedys have confirmed that the senator will lie in repose at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston before his funeral Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica — known as the Mission Church — also in Boston on Saturday.

Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery near his slain brothers.

Both the service and burial was private.

Kennedy’s Life as the Last Brother Standing

Kennedy, began his public life as the prodigal son of a political dynasty and ended as its respected patriarch.

Kennedy’s political career spanned five decades and continued even after his diagnosis with terminal brain cancer. After surgery to reduce the size of the tumor in June, 2008, the senator returned to Congress, determined to help President Obama enact health care reform legislation - a longtime Kennedy goal.

Kennedy called the goal of expanding access to healthcare “the cause of my life,” in an emotional and unexpected appearance before the Democratic National Convention just three months after his cancer surgery.

“Ted Kennedy’s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said in a statement early Wednesday.

Although Kennedy never realized his dream of following his brother, president John F. Kennedy, into the White House, the Massachusetts Democrat became a towering figure in Washington who left his mark on every branch of government.

His early endorsement of Obama helped vault a relatively untested junior senator to the White House. As much as any president, Kennedy helped shape the Supreme Court from his seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he served longer than any other senator in history.

In the Senate, Kennedy was the driving force behind dozens of landmark bills that changed the social fabric of the nation, expanding the availability of health care, education and housing and advancing the rights of immigrants, women, minorities, gays and the disabled.

In a 2007 speech to the Senate, where he was being honored for having cast his 15,000th vote, Kennedy said he devoted his career trying “to be a voice of what I call the march for progress in this nation.”

A gifted speaker and skilled legislator, his career was punctuated by a series of personal setbacks and humiliations - often of his own making. The most devastating came in 1969 when a car that Kennedy was driving hurtled off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, killing a young female passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy fled the scene and did not report his role in the accident until the next day.

Decades later, Kennedy still refused to discuss the incident, according to his biographer, Adam Clymer, who wrote Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography in 1999.

Though he disagreed with church leaders on the issues of abortion and gay rights, Kennedy was a devout Catholic who clung to his religion’s belief in the potential for human redemption.

Kennedy was the youngest of nine children born to Rose and Joseph Kennedy, a wealthy businessman who served as president Franklin Roosevelt’s ambassador to Great Britain. At this outset of his career, he seemed destined to be overshadowed by the triumphs and tragedies of his overachieving older brothers Joseph, John and Robert.

Young “Teddy,” as he was known all his life, was expelled from Harvard in 1951 for cheating on a Spanish exam, but after two years in the Army, he re-enrolled. A tight end on the Harvard University football team, he attracted the notice of Green Bay Packers coach Lisle Blackbourn, who wrote a letter asking Kennedy about his interest in turning pro. Kennedy declined the offer, telling the coach he had plans to attend law school and to “go into another contact sport, politics.”

After earning his law degree from the University of Virginia and working on his brother’s presidential campaign, Kennedy entered the Senate as the result of blatant nepotism: When President Kennedy vacated his Massachusetts Senate seat for the White House, his youngest brother was two years shy of 30, the required constitutional age for senators. So the president arranged for a family friend to hold the seat and step down when the younger Kennedy was eligible to assume the seat.

Some senators were skeptical about whether the president’s kid brother was qualified to enter their exclusive club. “I did not particularly like him at the beginning. He did not like me,” Sen. Robert Byrd said in a speech just before Kennedy turned 75.

The two initially battled over legislation and leadership posts. Byrd ousted Kennedy as Democratic whip in 1971. But the West Virginian eventually was won over by Kennedy’s dedication to the Senate. On the day news broke of Kennedy’s cancer diagnosis, an anguished Byrd sobbed on the Senate floor, “Ted, Ted, my dear friend, I love you and I miss you.”

The unlikely bond that developed between the two underscored one of Kennedy’s most striking qualities: his ability to turn even ideological opposites into allies. A committed liberal known for his thundering oratory, Kennedy was also a quiet deal-maker who worked cooperatively with even the most conservative of Republicans.

He convinced former Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., to confirm Stephen Breyer to the federal bench, putting the former Kennedy aide on a path that would take him to the Supreme Court. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, worked with Kennedy on funding for AIDS research and on children’s health insurance and wrote two songs in his honor.

Kennedy also helped President Bush win passage of No Child Left Behind, a landmark education overhaul. He partnered with Republican presidential nominee John McCain on immigration legislation.

The same Republicans who made Kennedy a whipping boy and fundraising tool on the campaign trail acknowledged him in the Senate as a friend. “He is famous among his colleagues in the Senate for his warmth, good humor and his simply astonishing ability and will to get things done,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said after Kennedy cast his 15,000th vote.

Kennedy’s career as a Senate statesman took off after he abandoned his dreams of the White House. He was drawn to the collegial, clubby Senate in ways that his more impatient brothers were not.

When Ted and Robert Kennedy served in the Senate, there was a “huge difference between the two brothers,” recalls Leon Panetta, an aide at the time to Sen. Thomas Kuchel, R-Calif. “Bobby was much more doing his own thing,” said Panetta, who later went on to become a congressman, White House chief of staff for president Bill Clinton, and CIA director under President Obama. “Teddy would work on legislation; he would work to get things done in the Senate.”

Nearly killed in a 1964 plane crash that left him with a permanently bad back, Kennedy used the five months that he was immobilized, waiting for his vertebrae to heal, to bone up on Senate issues and procedure.

Kennedy spent more than half his life in the slow-moving but tight-knit chamber, serving longer than all but two other senators, Byrd and Thurmond. He was elected nine times by his Massachusetts constituents, usually by overwhelming margins. Kennedy won his last Senate race, in 2006, with 69 percent of the vote.

He had three children, Edward Jr., Kara and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., with his first wife Joan, a statuesque blonde socialite who never adapted to the Kennedy family’s ferociously competitive and public lifestyle. The couple were divorced in 1982.

By 1991, Kennedy’s bachelor lifestyle was beginning to take a toll on his reputation and friends were worried.

After an Easter weekend of pub-crawling with his nephew, Will Smith, turned into a scandal when Smith was accused of raping a woman who returned to the Kennedy’s Palm Beach compound with him, Kennedy asked Senate colleagues to vouch for him. According to Clymer’s biography, Hatch told Kennedy “if you keep acting like this, I’m going to send the Mormon missionaries to you,” and Kennedy replied, “I’m just about ready for them.”

As it turned out, fate had a different rescue in store for Kennedy. In 1992, he married Victoria Reggie, and began to turn his life around. By the time of his death, he was widely respected as one of the Senate’s senior statesmen.

“Harry Truman used to say ‘If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen,’ ” former senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican, told USA TODAY earlier this month. “Ted came under a lot of heat - some of it of his own making - but he was not a quitter.”
News10/KXTV and ABC News
Copyright 2009 / All Rights Reserved

Girls, read these tips. Very helpful one and can be applied for a lifetime. Very simple to follow and effective. Plus the good news, they are from professional make-up artists.

1. EYES FIRST: Always apply your eye shadow before applying foundation. If your eye color gets on your skin and mixes with your foundation, you will have a “caking” and “creasing” effect under your eye.

2. NATURAL COLORS: Brown tones are always the most natural. Light colors like cream enhance and bring forward and dark colors like brown push back. The light tones can be applied to your entire eye lid. The darker tones should be applied with an eye shadow brush in the crease of your eye like a windshield wiper.

3. STRAIGHT LINE: Use a liner brush to apply eye liner and point the angle toward your nose for a straight line.

4. CURLING LASHES: Always curl your lashes prior to applying mascara to avoid breaking, clumping, and to keep healthy lashes.

5. CLEANSE SKIN: Makeup remover must be applied underneath your eyes and on your cheek bones after applying shadow. You will be surprised how much makeup you take off. Imagine that mixing with your foundation.

6. EXACT MATCH: Foundation should always be matched to the color of your neck or jaw bone. Your face is naturally darker than your neck because the sun hits your face more. If you match your foundation to your face, this is bad because your neck will appear much lighter in pictures. Your neck is your natural skin tone with a lot less UV damage.

7. FLAWLESS FOUNDATION: Blend, blend, & blend again! Apply liquid foundation with a triangular wedge and blot around your skin for best results.

8. POWDER PERFECT: The trick to perfect skin is to apply powder after your foundation for a smooth and flawless appearance.

9. BLUSHING BRIDE: Make a fish face by sucking in your cheeks or smile wide to locate our cheek bones. Apply blush to the entire cheek bone with a blush brush. Never use too much blush; blush should be subtle and natural.

10. PUCKER UP: Lips should be filled in with lip pencil prior to applying or gloss for a longer lasting color.

See for yourself now by trying these beauty tips by yourself!

Working on night shift is a tough job.

Not only did night shifts can make your eyes looked tired, most of the time it is the comfort of having a good sleep that you are deprived of- a normal sleep which eventually make you look so tired.

Stressful activities can also develop tired looking eyes. Sometimes I lack sleep because it was hard for me to sleep during the day prior to working on night shift. No wonder I happen to have these tired eyes. It looks so awful to carry those baggy eyes. Plus our job requires us to stare at a computer for hours, so definitely it causes much strain to the eyes.And me, myself dreaded to have those. But women listen. You need not fret and look for that dayto have an operation to treat those eyes. There are many solutions to that problem.

You just have to choose which one is comfortable for you to treat those tired eyes.

Some natural treatments for tired-looking eyes are

1. drinking water,
2. avoiding the sun,
3. using sunscreen,
4. using vitamin K cream,
5. treating allergies,
6. applying cold compresses (tea bags or cucumbers), and
7. sleeping on your back with your head elevated

Home remedy for tired eyes

If your eyes are tired and stressed, try these simple tricks:

• Take 2 used teabags, refrigerate them for some time and place on your tired eyes for 20 minutes. Voila ! You have fresh and beautiful eyes.
• Or boil some tea in a little water and let it cool. Dip 2 cotton pads in it and place the pads on each eye for 15 minutes. This is an effective treatment for tired eyes.
• Place cucumber slices on your eyes for half an hour. And then wash your eyes with cold water.
• If you have tired eyes, wash them with cold water several times a day. This treatment reduces inflammation, relaxes the eyes & provides relief from eyestrain & fatigue.
• Dip two cotton pads in rose water and place them on your eyes for atleast 20 minutes.
• Lavender oil is also known to offer relief for tired and strained eyes. Add a drop of lavender oil to 500 ml of water and shake the solution well. Dip two cotton pads in it, squeeze out the excess water and place one pad on each eye.

Because of the busy schedules we follow, and the continuous hours we spend before the computer, eyes are the worst affected due to stress. Here are some tips to reduce the tiredness in your eyes and to make them sparkle with health.

• Boil tea powder in a some water and let it cool. Dip 2 gauzes in this liquid and place the gauzes on each eye for around 15 minutes. Keep dipping the cotton wads into the liquid, as soon as the gauzes dry up. This is a very effective treatment for tired eyes.
• Wash the tired eyes with cold water, many times a day. This treatment reduces inflammation, moisturizers the skin /tissues, relaxes the eyes & provides relief from eyestrain & fatigue.
• Lavender oil offers relief to tired and strained eyes. Add a drop of lavender oil to 500 ml of water and shake the solution well. Dip two cotton wool pads in the liquid, remove the excess water and place one pad over each eye.

I read a blog about a photograph of a woman’s figure which shows her nakedness and small flabby fat in her tummy. I can tell that this picture is powerful that it affects the perspective of some physically conscious women. It gives them the confidence and appreciation of what figure they actually have and accept that they have different body types. .Here, I want to repost what the original article is saying. It’s from glamour.com. I believe that every woman should read this:

It’s a photo that measures all of three by three inches in our September issue, but the letters about it started to flood my inbox literally the day Glamour hit newsstands. (As editor-in-chief, I pay attention to this stuff!) “I am gasping with delight…I love the woman on p 194!” said one…then another, and another, andanotherandanotherandanother. So…who is she? And what on earth is so special about her?

Here’s the deal: The picture wasn’t of a celebrity. It wasn’t of a supermodel. It was of a woman sitting in her underwear with a smile on her face and a belly that looks…wait for it…normal.
I’d loved this photo at first sight myself–we’d commissioned it for a story on feeling comfortable in your skin, and wanted a model who looked like she was. But even so, the letters blew me away: “the most amazing photograph I’ve ever seen in any women’s magazine,” wrote one reader in Pavo, Georgia. From another in Somerset, Massachusetts: “This beautiful woman has a real stomach and did I even see a few stretch marks? This is how my belly looks after giving birth to my two amazing kids! This photo made me want to shout from the rooftops.”

The emails were filled with such joy–joy at seeing a woman’s body with all the curves and quirks and rolls found in nature. (Raising a question: With all the six-packs out there, do you even know what a normal belly looks like anymore–other than the one you see in the mirror?)

So what’s the story behind the photo? “The woman on p. 194″ is actually 20-year-old model Lizzi Miller, and this is her second appearance in Glamour, shot by fashion photographer Walter Chin. A size 12-14 and avid softball player/belly dancer (”I like exercising when it’s fun”), Lizzi moved to New York City from San Jose three years ago to become a model (a “plus-size” one by modeling industry standards, though hello, at size 12 she’s actually “normal size”…but I digress).

“When I was young I really struggled with my body and how it looked because I didn’t understand why my friends were so effortlessly skinny,” Lizzi told me. “As I got older I realized that everyone’s body is different and not everyone is skinny naturally–me included! I learned to love my body for how it is, every curve of it. I used to be so self-conscious in a bikini because my stomach wasn’t perfectly defined. But everyone has different body shapes! And it’s not all about the physical! If you walk on the beach in your bikini with confidence and you feel sexy, people will see you that way too.”

As for the letters, Lizzi’s loving them. “When I read them I got teary-eyed!” she says. “I’ve been that girl, flipping through magazines trying to find just one person who looked a little bit like me. And when I didn’t find it I would start to think there’s something wrong with the way that I looked. When J. Lo and Beyoncé came out and were making curves sexy, I started to accept myself more. It’s funny, but just seeing them look and feel sexy enabled me to do the same.” Lizzi, now you’re doing the same for all of us–massive congrats on that.

We had some rollicking debates in this blog last week about “fattism” and the TV shows for plus-size women. So let’s start off this week with something we can all get behind: a toast to the woman on p. 194, and to the spectacular sexiness of owning who you are. Trust me, Glamour’s listening, and this only strengthens our commitment to celebrating all kinds of beauty.

Now tell me…what do you think of the picture? Can a photo make you feel better or worse about your own looks?

Say goodbye to those pesky ants, safely and effectively.

Yes, those durable creatures…they come crawling in their lines and missions dead set to get into your cupboards and climb over your counters. Seeming to come out of the walls from nowhere, suddenly they appear from all directions. And, all you want is to get them out!

Do not worry! There are practical things you can do to keep these marching soldiers out of your home without having to resort to toxic bug killing repellents. You do not have to worry about inhaling dangerous fumes and you will remedy your problem.

Try some of these out and see what a difference a little ingenuity can make!

• Use Vinegar

  Put some vinegar in a spray bottle. Spray around the areas that these pesky critters show up. Vinegar leaves behind a natural ant repellant.

• Chalk

  School teachers get your chalk out. Yes, that’s right, for some reason if you draw a line of chalk on the ground, ants will not cross over it. Maybe they know that once you “draw the line” one side is theirs and the other is yours. (pun intended) If only it was that easy with all things in life. Maybe we can all learn something from ants.

• Black Pepper

  Black Pepper is a natural safe way to send these insects running back to their anthills. Sprinkle some near their entryway and rest assured that they will not visit you while that pepper stands in the way.

• Cayenne Pepper

  This is another pepper that ants avoid. Lay some down and remedy the problem right away.

• Mint and Chewing Gum

  Some types of mint and chewing gum keep these segmented bugs away. Place some down and they will find some other place to hang out.

• Cinnamon

  Cinnamon is also known for its ability to keep those crawling bugs away. Sprinkle some around the areas they frequent the most.

These are just some great ideas especially if you don’t like the idea of killing anything. Ants, while they can be troublesome in your home, are remarkably interesting creatures. It is a wonder to think that even when they are running from the risk of their own life, they will stop to pick up a fellow fallen soldier and try to carry him home.