By JASON GREENBERG

Chillicothe-based Petland Inc. announced Monday that it is expanding its international reach into the Middle East North Africa region.
In the last two years Petland has opened more than 20 new locations into international markets. The pet store chain has stores set to open in the next year in Saudi Arabia and has signed a master franchise agreement to develop stores in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Lebanon, Kuwait and Bahrain.

“Finding the right partner takes time. We spent more than two years working with a family to determine the Petland Master Franchise was the right fit for a partnership,” Petland Vice President of Business Development and International Relations Steve Huggins said. “Our new partners plan to develop many Petland locations. They believe this will improve the lives of their people and their pets.”

“We are pleased with the opportunity to expand our international family,” Petland President and CEO Joe Watson said. “Petland stores in Middle East will make a positive, consistent impact on overall pet retail and will provide a unique, convenient pet shopping experience for families looking for a new pet or buying supplies for their current pets.”

Various members of the Petland team will be visiting Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where they will be planning the launch of the first Petland pilot store in the MENA region. They will assist with site location, pet selection, merchandise and training.

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By JASON GREENBERG

Sports Interactive Ltd., the creative studio behind the Football Manager series of games and Mondogoal Trading Ltd., the leader in global daily fantasy football for free and for cash formats, today announced a major exclusive partnership. As part of the partnership, Sports Interactive will now offer its loyal customer base the chance to play Mondogoal daily Fantasy Football and Mondogoal will be featured on pitchside advertising hoardings within Football Manager 2016.

Mondogoal CEO and Founder Shergul Arshad states, “We are excited to be involved with Football Manager, their fans are among the most passionate and sophisticated football fans in the world. With the introduction of ‘Fantasy Draft Mode’ into this year’s version of the game it seemed like the perfect time to get involved and integrate two top products in the world of football gaming.”

“Our fans are famously knowledgeable about football and this partnership with Mondogoal will allow them an opportunity to test that knowledge against their fellow supporters,” says Miles Jacobson, Studio Director of Sports Interactive. “In addition to offering our fans a series of exclusive offers, we will also work closely with the Mondogoal team to promote both Football Manager and daily fantasy football to the widest possible audience.”

Mondogoal, with gaming licenses in the Isle of Man and United Kingdom, already partners with some of the world’s leading teams, including the reigning EPL champions, Chelsea FC and the La Liga champions, FC Barcelona. Mondogoal also works closely with West Ham United FC, Tottenham Hotspur, Valencia C.F., and AS Roma. With Mondogoal, simply login or create an account, add funds, and every matchday there is the chance to win money by building a formidable starting 11 and competing in a Head-to-Head battle or Multi-User-Tournaments.

By RYAN WICKER

Joseph S. Renzulli, a leading authority in the field of Gifted and Talented Education launched Renzulli Creativity Programs at a meeting of the Society For Cultivating Innovators conference in Shenzhen, China on January 15th. The Society, a division of the Chinese Ministry of Education is charged with increasing innovation and creativity among Chinese students. The event was attended by hundreds of China’s leading educators.

Renzulli’s philosophy is based upon more than 40 years of academic research. As opposed to an exam performance curriculum focus, he believes the highest levels of creativity and overall academic performance, are achieved by tapping into students personal interests, which allow them to leverage individualized motivation and curiosity to solve problems.

Renzulli encouraged China’s leading educators to provide students with opportunities to support creativity. “Student enjoyment, engagement and enthusiasm directed toward learning projects they are passionate about increases creativity, test scores and overall academic performance,” stated Renzulli. To achieve this goal, Renzulli Creativity Programs will be offered to partner schools in China.

The program enables students to increase levels of independence and maturity, while working on stimulating projects in select areas of study with peers from around the world who share the same passions and interests.

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From casual conversation to pop culture, the heart is the organ we love to talk about. We reminisce about our high school heartthrobs, center our hearts in yoga class and cry over our last heartbreaks.
The human heart is important — essential, actually — but not infallible. Heart failure is the cause for over a million hospital visits in the U.S. annually and an unimaginable $31 billion dollars of health care expenses. It is a chronic, progressively worsening disease with high mortality that affects more than 5.1 million Americans. Is your heart at risk? Here are five facts about heart failure that you need to know:

1: Heart failure occurs from an overworking heart.
Heart failure occurs when the heart can’t pump enough blood to meet the body’s demands. Initially, in patients with heart damage from problems such as coronary artery disease, heart attack or chronic high blood pressure, the heart will work harder to provide the body an appropriate blood supply. As the heart becomes overworked, the heart muscle gradually weakens. Over time, the heart will fail to pump appropriately, generating a condition commonly known as heart failure.

2: Identifying heart failure is tricky.
Most people don’t discover they have heart failure until after they have experienced a heart attack or stroke. The leading causes of heart failure are diseases that damage the heart.

3: Heart failure is common.
Every 30 seconds, someone in America is hospitalized due to heart failure. In the United States, 550,000 people are diagnosed with this disease each year, and 30 percent of these individuals will pass away within six to 12 months.
Certain groups are at an increased risk. African-Americans are 20 times more likely to have heart failure before the age of 40. People over age 65 are at the greatest susceptibility.

4: There is hope.
New treatments and innovative monitoring tools are now available for people with heart failure. These include the CardioMEMS HF System, a first-of-its-kind remote monitoring device for Class III heart failure patients. The device, developed by St. Jude Medical, creates a monitoring bridge between a patients home and care team by remotely sending vital information to the physician’s office on a regular basis.

5: Stay in control.
If at risk for heart failure, manage your health by scheduling a checkup with your physician. If you have heart failure, talk to your physician about your options, including remote monitoring tools like the CardioMEMS HF System.

The human heart has earned a spot in our everyday conversation for a reason. Don’t take this organ for granted. Find more information about St. Jude Medical and its commitment to healthy hearts at www.heartfailureanswers.com.

The CardioMEMS HF System is indicated for wirelessly measuring and monitoring pulmonary artery (PA) pressure and heart rate in New York Heart Association (NYHA) Class III heart failure patients who have been hospitalized for heart failure in the previous year. The hemodynamic data are used by physicians for heart failure management with the goal of reducing heart failure hospitalizations.
The CardioMEMS HF System is contraindicated for patients with an inability to take dual antiplatelet or anticoagulants for one month post-implant.

Potential adverse events associated with the implantation procedure include, but are not limited to, the following: infection, arrhythmias, bleeding, hematoma, thrombus, myocardial infarction, transient ischemic attack, stroke, death, and device embolization. Refer to the user’s manual for detailed indications, contraindications, warnings, precautions and potential adverse events.

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Is ginger ale the world’s most evolved beverage? It has been enjoyed as a mixer for many liquors, a tonic for the queasy and a stand-alone refreshment. Over time, its variations have been many, but there’s no doubt this libation has serious staying power.

Today, deep into the 21st century, what is commonly considered America’s first soft drink is evolving again by receiving a hard makeover. “Spiked,” or hard ginger ales infused with alcohol, are making their way onto store shelves. Craft beer companies, such as Brooklyn, New York-based Coney Island Brewing Co., are noticing the demand to return to one’s roots and are playing on these nostalgic beverages with quality ingredients as this trend in the craft beer scene grows.

Dating back to nearly three centuries ago in Ireland, ginger ale’s first incarnation can best be described as a homemade tonic consisting of sugar water and a healthy heaping of ginger root. By the mid-1800s, it was barrel-aged into a golden beverage with a sweet, bubbly texture and a ginger punch. By the time ginger ale crossed the Atlantic into the United States, it evolved still, receiving new life during Prohibition. During this period, ginger ale, in all of its golden, dry effervescence, served as an ideal mixer to mask powerful, bootlegged liquors. Beyond the Prohibition era, ginger ale’s hold over consumers stood firm, and thanks to dry ginger ale pioneer and Canada Dry brewer John McLaughlin, this version of the drink — which consumers know and love today — became a fixture in grocery stores.

“We launched our Hard Root Beer this summer and the response was unprecedented,” said Chris Adams, brewery operations manager for Coney Island Brewing Company. “We knew we would appeal to the tastes of craft beer drinkers if, like with Hard Root Beer, we created hard craft sodas that are both delicious and nostalgic, and we are excited to be doing that once more with our recent Hard Ginger Ale and Hard Orange Cream Ale.”

For more information, visit www.coneyislandbeer.com.

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By– Harriet Babs

In light of Thanksgiving, Babs is feeling sentimental and would like to help these puppies-yes, puppies- find a home. Two eighteen-week-old Maltese puppies need a home. The owner is leaving the country on Missionary purposes and would like to give the puppies (one male and one female) for free to a good home.

The animals are located in Cuba, New York.

Contact the news station at News@EmpireStateNews.net with all serious inquiries.

 

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By– Harriet Babs

‘Tis the season to spend an exorbitant amount of money. As Black Friday approaches our friends at CardHub & WalletHub have put together some guidelines that you can buy (or abide) by.

• The best deal of the season can be found at JCPenny and Kohls.
• You will get the most value for your money in the department of music, books and movies
• Jewelry is likely to have the worst “sale” prices
• Of the most popular gift cards, Visa, Amazon and American Express are the top three.
• 17% of items on Amazon will actually be more expensive on Black Friday than they are today.

For more information about the holiday shopping outlook and how to get the most for your money, check out CardHub’s guide for best holiday shopping credit cards here!

 

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by– Carly St. James

Adele has released a statement that her new album, 25 (no, she is not still 25-years-old), will not be made available on streaming services such as Spotify and the new iTunes streaming service.

This makes Adele one of many artists who are taking a stand for their livelihood. In a statement made by Taylor Swift regarding the expectation on artists to offer their music for free, she said “We don’t ask you for free iPhones”, why should we give you our music for free?

Other artists, like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger share this stance and have withheld the majority of their music from streaming sites, as well. These efforts are made to both preserve the artistry of music, and the artists themselves, in particular the less established artists who need their albums or singles to sell in order to pay the bills.

 

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by– Carly St. James

A study done at Indiana University draws a correlation between the hours of sunlight received per day and the level of aggression displayed in test mice.

During the study, several test groups were established with all factors controlled for except for amount of sunlight exposure per day, the test variable. The study finds that female rats who were exposed to the least amount of sunlight displayed the most aggression. The aggression was channeled toward a perceived territorial threat and was not observed in male rats.

The findings indicate that rather than being controlled strictly by sex hormones (estrogen, testosterone and the like), aggression is strongly influenced by Melatonin. During the winter time, the level of sex hormones decreases sharply. Melatonin levels, however, increase as response to the change in sunlight. Despite this drop of sex hormones, aggression increased notably in the female rats, indicating that Melatonin levels affect aggression just as much, if not more than, estrogen and testosterone. Melatonin does this by acting on the adrenal glands, causing a release of dehydroepiandrosterone, DHEA. DHEA has consistently been linked to aggression in both mammals and birds.

Humans, too, experience seasonal changes in behavior. We have coined the term Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) for when these behavioral changes interfere with normal functioning. Interestingly enough, 3 out of every 4 SAD-sufferers are female*. This statistic could further imply the connection between Melatonin and female non-sex hormones (DHEA) and the behaviors that coincide.

The full study can be viewed in the Proceedings of the Royal Academy B.

*[MentalHealthofAmerica.net]

 

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by– Fiona Von Bier

Paris Police raid apartment 2km from a targeted location in last week’s ISIS attack.

The apartment, which is located in Saint-Denis (a Paris-Suburb) has been under surveillance since the November 13th attack. Evidence found in the first apartment, led to the raiding of another apartment nearby. Two deaths of terrorists (& their affiliates) have been noted:  a female, who blew herself up using a suicide vest; the second, a male; it is unclear if the male was shot or blown up by a grenade.

A total of seven people have been arrested as direct result of the sting operation: three males were arrested inside the apartment, the apartment landlord (male) and his female acquaintance were arrested immediately outside the apartment, and two other suspects were found hiding among the debris were subsequently arrested.

The identities of the arrested remain to be known, as police are working to verify who they have in custody. The primary suspects targeted by the raid were Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the purported ringleader of last week’s attacks, Salah Abdeslam, a Belgium national and the suspected driver in last week’s attacks, Bilal Hadfi, a french national, among others.

Police report that the ISIS suspects were on the  brink of launching another terrorist operation when police raided. It is unclear what that operation was.

 

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