Dubai was popular as ever with the famous crowd recently. The country has had a supermodel, rappers and even wrestlers post about their adventures on social media, so we've rounded them up for you to enjoy.
Flick through the gallery to see them and other celebrities who have been loving the Emirate in 2016.
Days after his mother passed away from leukemia, Louis Tomlinson courageously returned to the X Factor UK stage to debut his first solo single. Titled "Just Hold On," the song seems to memorialize this difficult moment in his life.
Moments before taking the stage with Steve Aoki, Louis thanked his fans on Twitter before saying, "Let's do this together tonight."
According to The Telegraph, Louis was determined to perform because it's what his mother wanted. In a series of tweets following the performance, Louis said, "Mum would have been so f*cking proud." Adding, "Sorry for swearing mum."
While Louis held it together during the duration of his uplifting performance, he later tweeted that it was harder than he could have imagined. The former One Direction singer also appeared emotional as Simon Cowell applauded his "bravery." Cowell said, "What you've just done - the bravery. I respect you as an artist and I respect you as a person. Your mum was so proud of you, Louis, she was so looking forward to tonight, she's watching down on you now and you've done her proud."
That was harder than I ever imagined. I want to thank everyone around me and all of the amazing fans out there that made that so special!
- Louis Tomlinson (@Louis_Tomlinson) December 11, 2016
Feeling so much love around me and my family . Mum would have been so fucking proud ( sorry for swearing mum 😝 ) love you !
- Louis Tomlinson (@Louis_Tomlinson) December 11, 2016
This year has been an incredible year for the cast of Stranger Things, and they - especially the young guns of the Upside Down - are certainly not afraid to enjoy it. So naturally, when the teen actors who play Lucas, Dustin, Will, and Mike took to the Critics' Choice Awards red carpet, they turned it into their own private party. They posed for selfies with celebrities they admire, like Norman Reedus and Sterling K. Brown, and hammed it up for the cameras like only teenage boys can. Check out their fun behind-the-scenes snaps; there was nothing strange about their awesome night at the show! Now, where is their award for cast having the most fun on a red carpet?
This week the Department of Agriculture announced new rules for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Annie Gasparro reports in The Wall Street Journal.
“In a rare tuneup to the $74 billion food-stamp program, U.S. regulators deemed potato chips and ice cream too unhealthy to count as staple foods,” Gasparro writes. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture made other changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program this week that fell short of recommendations from many public-health advocates.”
Potato chips and ice cream had previously been included in the list of foods acceptable for purchase through SNAP because their primary ingredients — potatoes and milk — are considered staples by the Department of Agriculture.
Some advocates calling for reform to Supplemental #Nutrition Assistance Program #SNAP to incentivize healthy eating https://t.co/rA26Jz7HlO
— Nutrition Advocacy (@NutrAdvocacy) November 28, 2016
The new SNAP rules also prohibit stores that earn half of their sales from prepared meals or meals that are heated on site, such as microwavable pizzas or burritos, from accepting SNAP payments. Public-health advocates had wanted the threshold to be a mere 15 percent of sales, according to Gasparro.
In a second blow to public-health advocates, grape juice and foods with “multiple ingredients,” like canned soups and frozen pizzas, also remained on the list, Gasparro notes.
“I’m disappointed that the rules don’t go as far as what was proposed early this year,” Danielle Nierenberg, president of the nutrition advocacy group Food Tank, told Gasparro. “USDA has missed an opportunity to increase the availability of and access to healthier foods for low-income Americans.”
Many public-health and nutrition advocates saw keeping so many prepackaged foods on the SNAP staples list as a win for companies like Campbell’s and General Mills.
Others saw the new Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program rules as a fair compromise between the interests of public health and the prepackaged food industry.
“These are very implementable changes that are long overdue…. This is a way of nudging access (to healthy food) in the right direction,” Kevin Concannon, the USDA undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services, told The Chicago Tribune‘s Greg Trotter.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (#SNAP) will help about 20 million children each month this year: https://t.co/zW9Tu5NlmB http://pic.twitter.com/hpUDouA8vF
— Center on Budget (@CenterOnBudget) October 3, 2016
In addition to removing some foods deemed unhealthy from the list and prohibiting stores from selling primarily prepackaged foods, the new SNAP rules also require stores to carry a greater diversity of staple foods.
“Currently, retailers are required to carry three varieties in each of the four staple food categories: dairy products; breads and cereals; meats, poultry and fish; and fruits and vegetables,” Trotter reports. “Under the final rule, they’ll have to stock at least seven. And retailers will have to stock three of each variety — instead of six as initially proposed.”
As is often the case, multiple sides felt their concerns were not addressed by the new rules. Just as public-health advocates were disappointed by the compromise, so where many small retailers such as convenience stores.
“We are encouraged by what appears to be significant progress in the final rule, although we remain concerned that (the USDA Food and Nutrition Service) is still trying to penalize retailers for sales of items to non-SNAP customers,”Anna Ready, director of government relations for the National Association of Convenience Stores, said in a statement quoted by Trotter. “We are going through the rule in detail to determine how it will impact convenience stores and the SNAP customers they serve.”
It would be incredibly difficult for the Department of Agricultural to try to create and implement a system that could distinguish between the purchases of SNAP customers and non-SNAP customers. There would be too many ways to work around that.
While the new rules may have failed to satisfy public-health advocates, small retailers and those accustomed to being able to sneak a few treats like ice cream onto their shopping lists will likely feel the changes the most.
[Featured image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]
SNAP Rules Revised, Many Snacks And Prepared Foods Removed From ‘Staples’ List is an article from: The Inquisitr News
Hair loss is one of the more common, and unpleasant, effects of chemotherapy. But scalp cooling devices, or cooling caps, just may be what chemo patients need to avoid losing their hair while undergoing the treatment.
Chemotherapy is a form of treatment that works by killing quickly dividing cells, the Los Angeles Times wrote. But since that feature of cancer cells is also present in hair cells, that’s the reason why patients undergoing chemotherapy also end up losing their hair.
That isn’t as much of an issue to male patients as it is to females. According to the Daily Mail, over 75 percent of women suffering from cancer fear hair loss most of all when it comes to chemotherapy side effects. The publication also cited a study where one out of ten women admitted that they would rather opt for another form of treatment, or choose to have their treatment reduced if it means avoiding chemo hair loss.
https://t.co/0CY8mpAEzK : #BreastCancer #Chemotherapy – Scalp-Cooling Cap Reduces #HairLoss In Breast Cancer Patients Receiving Chemotherapy http://pic.twitter.com/SijQPnt1x8
— Anto IHQ (@AntoIhq) December 11, 2016
This common fear of hair loss in female cancer patients was shared in a statement from lead researcher Julie Rani Nangia, an assistant professor of medicine at Houston’s Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center. She appeared Friday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium to reveal the results of trials done with scalp cooling devices, and discussed why avoiding hair loss, or alopecia, is especially important to women who go through chemo.
“Chemotherapy fights cancer by attacking rapidly dividing tumor cells. However, hair cells also divide rapidly so the drugs target them as well, which is what causes alopecia. Hair is important, especially to women. Hair loss can really affect how a patient feels.
If you have a heart attack, you won’t look different, but if you have cancer and lose your hair, everyone knows what you are going through. Some people embrace it, but for others, having something so private made public is embarrassing.”
The L.A. Times wrote about how scalp cooling devices are supposed to work for the people who wear them. And it’s as simple in theory as redirecting the chemotherapy agent in such a way that less of it gets to a patient’s hair follicles. With the scalp cooled to about 66 degrees Fahrenheit, blood vessels are constricted, with blood flow reduced by about 20 to 40 percent. As chemo drugs travel through a person’s bloodstream, that means less drugs reaching the follicles.
Fantastic coverage of the Paxman Scalp Cooler on The One Show – @3MBIC 3D Printed the moulds, great to be involved! https://t.co/cnB8V14dEi
— 3MBuckley Innovation (@3MBIC) August 9, 2016
The researchers worked with 95 women suffering from breast cancer and assigned to wear a scalp cooling device as part of the test, as well as a control group of 47 women with the illness who didn’t get to test the cap. Out of the women in the cooling cap group, 51 percent had a “good amount” of hair after four chemo cycles. This was a sharp contrast to the women in the control group, as the L.A. Times noted that none of them had hair after a similar series of four cycles.
Although the researchers believe that the cooling caps can work on any cancer patient with a solid tumor, Nangia said that her team went with breast cancer patients because of the bigger impact chemo hair loss could have on women. It bears mentioning, though, that the caps cannot be used by anyone suffering from leukemia or other blood cancers, as it works by limiting blood flow.
The scalp cooling device used in the trial is called the Orbis Paxman Hair Loss Prevention System. While the cap is currently under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it will be pushed as an alternative to the FDA-approved DigniCap Scalp Cooling System, should it get the green light from the government.
[Featured Image by Chris Hondros/Getty Images]
Scalp Cooling Devices May Just Prevent Chemo Hair Loss In Patients is an article from: The Inquisitr News
