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This past Labor Day, a Sacramento family escaped the fire consuming their house. Fire rescue crews were still inside when the inferno, whose flames shot 50 feet into the air, caused the roof to collapse. Around one o'clock in the morning, Jesse Chan heard a noise from outside. He opened the front door to find a small fire on the porch. Chan immediately ran to tell his parents, who were asleep. “My dad ran through the front door while the flames were still small," said Chan. "He ran through the front door and grabbed the hose. I went through the garage and opened the garage door." As Chan's father tried to use the hose to douse the flames, neighbors look on in disbelief. “We felt the heat from our balcony, just standing up there”, said Jocelynn Tupou. “It was scary, especially f...

The Facebook Diet is the new fad weight loss routine that's taking New York city by storm. Instead of deleting or untagging themselves from unflattering photos, people are heading to the gym, using the pictures as motivation to work out, get healthier, and lose weight. “Sometimes looking in the mirror just isn't enough,” says Lisa young, an expert in health and nutrition. “You’re seeing what you look like and not hearing it from somebody else.” Part of the reason why Facebook pictures have provided dieters with such great motivation is because of the constant comparing people do with their friends and followers. “It’s a measuring stick for people socially to say, ‘How do I stack up with my friends?’ " says Kevin Audley, a life coach. It's no secret that social media has an affe...

Drivers in New York have a new way to stay off the road when they're drunk, and it's as simple as opening an app on their smartphones. The "Have a Plan" app was designed to reduce impaired driving by providing drivers with resources to test their sobriety, report drunk drivers, and look into other ways to get home. "The most common punishment for a DUI conviction is custody with local law enforcement in the form of public work service," says George Gedulin, Attorney at Law at Gedulin and Greany Criminal Defense Attorneys. "Essentially this is an eight hour period of physical labor in the custody of a Sheriff. Public works are often a 5-15 day sentence. For multiple DUI convictions custody can be enforced with actual time in jail or home detention. It is not uncommon to see individuals s...

In New York City, members of the construction industry are petitioning the city to loosen safety regulations they claim have halted hundreds of jobs. Currently, construction sites are required to pass a safety inspection that ensures that the safety equipment they use is up to standards. However, shortages of trained safety inspectors are reportedly causing jobs to be put on hold for months as they wait for a requisite inspection. According to the Department of Buildings, there are only about 500 active inspectors working in the city. This is especially problematic as construction in the city has entered a boom cycle, putting a number of multi-million dollar projects on hold as inspectors work through several months worth of examinations. This has had a number of consequences for the co...

As of this year, the WNBA -- women's pro basketball league -- will be celebrating its 18th birthday. Over the past two decades, the league has matured from a questionable proposition -- many thought it would quickly fold, as earlier attempts had -- into an organization in its own right. Still, the league often struggles to get the same media coverage as men's sports teams, and it has a much smaller fanbase overall. Although many people are quick to point to smaller, niche audiences for women's sports, many in the industry say it's more about a lack of coverage than anything else. The WNBA has its season during the summer, when the NBA is off-season. Even during this time, the NBA receives more coverage than the WNBA does. Similarly, even though the WNBA games score higher TV rates than ...

Physical therapy is often associated with illness, injury, or surgery -- patients tend to only think about the importance of physical therapy after something serious occurs. But new studies show that physical therapy has benefits beyond what we have seen before. A local Newark news source recently profiled a physical therapist who helps young children -- some younger than three years old -- who need extra help with mobility and coordination skills. As therapist Tara Parsley explains, pediatric physical therapy can be a very different process from our "normal" conception of treatment because kids "don't always see the medical side of it, that we're doing this to make them better." Small exercises that we tend to take for granted -- jumping on a trampoline, for instance, or rolling acr...

With summertime comes summer events, with weddings, graduation parties, and family get-togethers being among the most popular. Using party tent rentals to shelter guests is just one choice that hosts have, along with renting tables, chairs, linens, and decorations, too. Yet with renting a tent comes a certain amount of risk. Although a tent can provide protection from wind, rain, and hot sun, there are safety precautions party hosts most take when relying on one of these structures. Having the right area for an event is one concern: This August, in Dorset, Vt., a man was cited for crashing into two party tents and a tree at a church. The man claimed to have fallen asleep at the wheel. He drove away from the scene only to report it to police later. No injuries were reported. Yet...

Everyone's heard the legend about founding father George Washington's wooden teeth, but have you also heard that it's not true? Washington did wear dentures, but they were made of ivory, gold, and even bone -- never wood. Where did the tales of our first President's most famous quirk come from, and how did it come to be established as fact, to the point that school teachers were including it in their curriculum? English professor William M. Etter, Ph.D., who writes for the Mount Vernon website, is unsure of the explanation, though it's likely because Washington's ivory teeth became stained over time, leading to a grainy appearance that seemed wood-like. "Indeed, in a 1798 letter to Washington, (John) Greenwood emphasized the importance of cleaning these dentures regularly after ex...

Plymouth Speedway dirt track in Indiana was expected to have around 2,500 people show up this Saturday, but due to a fatal on-track crash there's no telling how many people will show up. On Saturday August 10, three-time Nascar champ Tony Stewart was involved in yet another horrific accident on the track at Canandaigua Motosports Park in upstate New York. Stewart's car struck Kevin Ward Jr's at high speed, causing Ward's car to crippled under the high impact, resulting in Ward's death. Stewart made the executive decision to pull out of the race event in Indiana after the accident which has rocked the racing world. This was the second consecutive race Steward has withdrawn from after already deciding not to compete in a Nascar Sprint Cup race at Watkins Glen International in New York....

For years, graffiti has slowly been transitioning from a renegade act of defiance to a nearly mainstream form of art. Graffiti pieces are selling at contemporary art auctions, and the internet is making it easier for images to proliferate, allowing artists to make a name for themselves. Of course, no transition this big comes without it's share of hurdles, as demonstrated by several major lawsuits filed this month. First, three graffiti artists targeted Terry Gilliam for violating the copyright they hold on a large scale Buenos Aires mural called Castillo by including the mural in his newest film, The Zero Theorem. Then Maya Hayuk took singer Sara Bareilles and Sony Music to task for using her Bowery Street mural to promote a concert tour. She's also in a legal battle with Coach over...