"rays" news and stories

Shark fin soup, long considered a Chinese status symbol and delicacy, and served at weddings and important business banquets, will soon be illegal in Hawaii.

A bill prohibiting the possession, sale or distribution of the prized cartilage was signed into law by Gov. Linda Lingle last week, the Washington Post reported, and will take effect July 2011. That move has cheered environmentalists who say immense pressure placed on the world's shark population have decimated their numbers.

"They could be wiped out from the world's oceans in a blink of an evolutionary eye," said Dr. Julia Baum, a researcher at the University of Santa Barbara, during the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Sustainable Foods Institute. "These declines matter because predators [like sharks] play important roles in the ecosystem."

According to Oceana, up to 73 million sharks per year are being killed for their fins. The practice is known to be especially brutal for the sharks who are dumped back into the ocean, often still alive.

Even Chinese superstar Yao Ming has been trying to raise awareness through a video, but scientists warn that many of these apex predators are on the verge of collapse. An attempt this spring to list six shark species, including scalloped hammerheads and oceanic whitetip sharks, as endangered under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) failed.

Why aren't egg creams more popular? They're easy, they're cheap and they're one of the less hazardous methods of getting one's chocolate fix (low-carb fans take note). In New York City, they're practically an official beverage, with such august practitioners as Gem Spa on Second Avenue, Ray's on Avenue A and, of course, Junior's out in Brooklyn. You can even buy an egg cream kit!

This delightful beverage is hard to find beyond Gotham, however, and the few bottled varieties out there simply don't measure up. No, best to mix it up yourself: All you need is about one-half cup of milk, a few tablespoons of chocolate syrup (many swear by Fox's U-Bet, but Hershey's will do in a pinch) and about a cup of seltzer. There is some dispute as to whether to pour the syrup or the milk into your glass first, but mix them up with a long-handled spoon, then add the seltzer straight down the middle. Other flavors can be made by changing up the syrup, although again, the purists would squawk. Don't even go into the squabbles of who invented it or how -- the only thing egg cream fans can agree upon is that we'll have another.