QUIRKY WORLD ... Chimps have all the brainpower to get cooking

CONGO: They’re not likely to start barbecuing in the rainforest, but chimpanzees can understand the concept of cooking and are willing to postpone eating raw food, even carrying food some distance to cook it rather than eat immediately, scientists said yesterday.

The findings, based on nine experiments conducted at the Tchimpounga Sanctuary in Republic of Congo and published Proceedings of the Society B, suggest that chimps have all the brainpower needed to cook, including planning, causal understanding, and ability to postpone gratification.

They do lack the ability to produce fire. But if they were given a source of heat, chimps “might be quite able to manipulate [it] to cook”, said developmental psychologist Felix Warneken of Harvard University, who conducted the study with Alexandra Rosati.

While the finding may seem esoteric, it lends support to the idea that cooking accelerated human evolution. Cooked food is easier to digest, spurring the growth of large brains in our australopithecine ancestors, Harvard’s Richard Wrangham proposed about a decade ago.

If chimps have the cognitive skills to cook, australopithecines likely did, too, said Wrangham, who was not involved in the study: “It suggests that with a little extra brainpower, australopithecines could indeed have found a way to use fire to cook food.”

You’ve got some bottle

US:

Babies will be kept off the front of any beer bottles in New Hampshire.

Democratic governor Maggie Hassan has vetoed a measure that would have allowed some images minors to grace alcoholic beverage labels as long as they didn’t encourage young people to drink.

Republican state Representative Keith Murphy, who runs a tavern, sponsored the bill because he wanted to be able to buy Breakfast Stout, crafted by Founders Brewery in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The beer’s label depicts a Norman Rockwell-esque child scooping porridge into his mouth.

Hassan said allowing the images could undermine the state’s efforts to underage drinking.

Murphy said the veto was an overreach and noted that Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont sold the beer. He also pointed out that a New Hampshire-produced craft beer, Smuttynose Baltic Porter, would have to come off the shelves because its label shows Father Time and a baby. The government already prohibits labelling or advertising that minors.

Pork pie

Israel:

An Israeli soldier was spared 11 days detention for eating pork, a non-kosher food, the military said, after a public outcry.

Secular sometimes clashes with conservative Jewish law in Israel.

Local media said soldier, an American immigrant, was not aware that his ham sandwich, obtained off-base, was in breach of religious dietary restrictions enforced on military premises.

“Bottom line — we made a mistake,” armed forces spokesman Brigadier- General Moti Almoz said on Facebook of the sentence.

“There are tensions in Israeli society, and there are varied positions and opinions. In the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] there is room for everyone.”

See that coming?

US:

A Pennsylvania woman went on trial on Monday for the rarely offence of fortune-telling, accused of persuading a client she could lift a cloud of “spells and curses” in exchange for payments that likely reached thousands of dollars.

April Uwanawich, 38, of Philadelphia faces 55 counts of fortune-telling, theft by unlawful taking, and theft by deception in Chester County Court of Common Pleas.

She is accused of approaching Jennifer Gardiner in 2009 at a shop, where she identified herself as a fortune teller and said she could rid Gardiner of her “dark cloud”, according to a police complaint.

During the following two years, Gardiner met with Uwanawich on a regular basis, “continually paying Uwanawich to work on her life, to rid it of evil and to get rid of spells and curses”.

Gardiner was persuaded to stop taking prescribed mental health medication and to buy candles, oils, perfumes, and crystals to help ward off evil spirits, the complaint said. Her financial loss probably ran into “tens of thousands of dollars” but only about $10,000 (€8,880) could be verified.

Uwanawich has two previous arrests for fortune-telling fraud in Chester County, according to court records.

She was ordered to pay court costs in the first case and received two years of probation in the second, records showed.

Uwanawich faces a cumulative life sentence if convicted of all 55 counts and sentenced to the maximum on each. The state’s fortune-telling statute bans fortune-telling for money as well as the use of “spells, charms, necromancy or incantation” in the perpetration of fraud.