Yahoo Odd News with Phil Lamaar

Phil Lamaar with Yahoo Odd News this week.

Topics covered include a kid from Milwaukee who jumps cars and just set a record, a jeweled john and can you belived a 700-day pregnancy?

Whoops... here's the link:

http://news.yahoo.com/video/oddnews-22772304/odd-news-car-jumping-record-jeweled-john-700-day-pregnancy-27198831.html

Snow and Winds Hit Alaska

With hurricane-force winds, an Alaskan storm of "epic proportions" hit the coastal communities, sending some residents fleeing to higher ground as it tore roofs from homes and knocked out power.

The strongest storm to hit the state in four decades sent water levels rising late Wednesday night in Nome, with flooding reported in low-lying areas, the National Weather Service said.

"It's barely beginning to wind down along the coast," Stephen Kearney, a meteorologist for the Weather Service in Fairbanks, said late Wednesday night.

Emergency officials warned that areas on Alaska's western coast between Norton Sound and Point Hope were vulnerable to a possible surge of sea water that could bring varying degrees of flooding to villages already soaked.

However, there were no new reports of substantial damage in Nome late Wednesday night, the National Weather Service said.

Flooding was reported in Point Hope, where the water came within 10 feet of the airport runway, but the community still had power, Kearney said.

Earlier, the storm produced 85-mph gusts, well above hurricane force. But emergency managers said that the winds had begun to taper off and were clocked with still-potent gusts of 55 mph. The storm passed through more southern points of its path.

Some villages, such as Kivalina, could be even more vulnerable with winds shifting as they head to Russia, officials said.

Water reportedly reached some reached homes in at least four Native villages, including Tununak and Kipnuk, state emergency managers said earlier Wednesday.

"This is a storm of epic proportions," said meteorologist Jeff Osiensky with the National Weather Service. "We're not out of the woods with this."

The last time the communities saw something similar was in November 1974, when a storm created a sea surge that measured more than 13 feet. The surge pushed beach driftwood above the level of the previous storm of its type in 1913.

Reducing Your Salt Intake May Be Bad For You, Study Says

Cutting back on salt consumption can lead to a drop in blood pressure, but that health benefit could be offset in some people by a small increase in cholesterol levels. That’s the troubling finding of a new study published today in the American Journal of Hypertension, which analyzed evidence from 167 studies measuring the effects of sodium reduction.

And it adds to a growing body of research questioning the value of cutting back on salt if you’re otherwise healthy and don’t have high blood pressure. A study published last May in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that healthy people who ate the least amount of sodium didn’t have any health advantage over those who ate the most, and they actually had a slightly higher risk of dying from heart disease.

Another review analysis in July found that lowering salt intake led to lower blood pressure levels but not fewer deaths from heart attacks and strokes -- even in people who already had established heart disease.

Some of the results, salt intake did lower blood pressure as expected, but it caused a 2.5 percent increase in cholesterol and a 7 percent increase triglycerides. The researchers also found dietary salt reduction caused kidneys to produce more enzymes and hormones that regulate the body's salt levels, which in turn cause the body to retain more salt. All these increases were considered significant, and could be harmful for cardiovascular health, the researchers said.

Should Americans stay put when it comes to their salt intake?

"Certainly I would not tell my patients not to lower their sodium because it might then raise your cholesterol," Dr. Tara Narula, a cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told WebMD. "I'd be hard pressed to find other cardiologists who would say that based on this study that they would not recommend low-sodium diets to people, especially those that have hypertension and heart failure."

Kindle Fire Apps Coming Next Week

Amazon said Wednesday morning that it will have “several thousand” apps coming for the Kindle Fire’s launch next week.

The apps will include access to Netflix, a selling point that Barnes and Noble highlighted with its launch of the new Nook Tablet this week.

Other apps available through Amazon’s curated version of the Android market will include Facebook, Pandora (also a Nook partner), Rovio, PopCap, Zynga and Gameloft, all powerhouses for mobile consumption.

In a press release, Kindle vice president Dave Limp said that the new apps were “only the beginning -- we’re adding more apps and games every day across all categories.”

The Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet are set to compete head-on for consumers looking for cheaper tablets that focus on reading. At $199, the Kindle Fire has the price advantage, though the Nook has more memory. On the other hand, the Fire is aimed at being more of an all-in-one device for mobile media, providing access to Amazon’s extensive retail ecosystem.

A new report from ChangeWave Research, Boy Genius Report shared, has found that demand for the Kindle Fire slightly outstrips the demand the company measured for the iPad 2 ahead of its 2010 launch: Five percent of customer said they were “very likely” to buy the Fire, compared with 4 percent of folks who said the same about iPad 2. Analysts have said that the Fire is not likely to be a major threat to the iPad, because the Amazon tablet going after the low end of the market. The iPad is more of a high-end device.  I expect Kindle Fire sales to be stronger than even the experts are planning this holiday season.

Alaska Readies for Major Storm

Western Alaska residents braced for an unusual Bering Sea storm headed toward the coast, packing hurricane-force winds and churning giant waves.

The storm was lashing parts of the shoreline with winds in excess of 80 mph late Tuesday, said Neil Murakami, a National Weather Service forecaster in Anchorage. Tiny coastal communities were at particular risk for damage from wind and expected flooding.

The storm caused a dramatic rise in sea levels, an upsurge of more than 3 feet, National Weather Service meteorologist Stephen Kearney in Fairbanks said. Officials have said the water is expected to rise another 7 feet overnight. Reports of heavy flooding are expected Wednesday morning, Kearney said.

State officials warned residents in harm's way to secure home heating fuel tanks in case sea water flooded into communities. Making communities more vulnerable than in past years is the lack of shore-fast sea ice, said Jeff Osinsky, the Weather Service's regional warning coordinator. "The presence of sea ice can sometimes act to protect coastal areas," he said.

Wind and waves started picking up by late morning, said Scott Johnson, 28, a Nome banker, prompting some people to evacuate inland to stay with friends or family in case predictions for a big ocean wave surge prove to be true.

"The waves are starting to go up against our seawall," he said from his second-story apartment that sits on the ocean.

Businesses are closing early and residents need to take every precaution.