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Morning Radar: Three things we're talking about this morning

Cold turkey: Rumours are swirling that Angelina Jolie has cancelled American Thanksgiving for her sprawling family. It all started with a Fox news report that had insiders close to the movie star quoting her: "Jolie hates this holiday and wants no part in rewriting history like so many other Americans," the friend supposedly said.

"To celebrate what the white settlers did to the native Indians, the domination of one culture over another, just isn't her style. She definitely doesn't want to teach her multi-cultural family how to celebrate a story of murder."

This seems like an escalation of Jolie's previous fairly-mild complaint about turkey-meal holidays: that she needs help because she's not very good at cooking them.

But the LA Times has rushed to her defence, suggesting that, essentially, no one talks the way the quote above reads.

Fair point. But there must be earnest types who say this stuff over turkey and stuffing - then move on to other divisive issues like vegtarianism vs eating meat, politics and religion.

While we're through Canadian Thanksgiving, many of us are ramping up for Christmas turkey overload. Does even Fake Angelina have a point? Are there reasons to opt out?

Tobacco tactics: Brown-bags or corpses - which do you think will kill the smoking craving? Britain has just announced a proprosal to start packaging cigarettes in plain, paper-bag-coloured boxes as a way to deter teenagers from smoking.

Called one of the most public health measures ever implemented in the UK, by the Guardian, the country's health secretary suggested kids were attracted to the "glitzy packaging."

Meanwhile, the United States is going with the shock-and-awe approach, with plans to put corpses, gaping mouths with rotten teeth and open sores, and babies sitting in smoke, on cigarette boxes.

One recent study of Canadian and American smokers found that the more gruesome the labels, the more likley smokers were to express at least an "intention to quit."

No word on changes in Canada, although so far health officials have moved away from the more gruesome depictions.

Training for tots: Should we get those kiddies pumping iron? The popular notion has been that strength training would do little good for kids, and may instead make them prone to injuries.

But a new study published in the medical journal Pediatrics, took a look at 60 years worth of studies on children between the ages of 6 and 18, and weightlifting.

As the New York Times reported, researchers found benefits to the kids and teenagers, almost without exception. They got stronger - and although teenagers did better, the differences with younger kids weren't all that large.

Now experts are suggesting that strength training, when done properly, can prevent injuries in young athletes.

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