By Daniel B. Wood
The Christian Science Monitor

Los Angeles - Pointing south from the corner of Figueroa and Adams in South Central L.A., Tanisha Jackson says when it comes to fast food, her community “has it all.”

“If you want it cheap and quick - McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken - we’ve got it,” says the mother of two.

Some city officials see the myriad fast-food outlets as a health problem and are seeking change. “Fast food is primarily the only option for those who live and work here,” says City Councilwoman Jan Perry. “It’s become a public-health issue that residents be given healthier choices.”

She has introduced a two-year moratorium on new fast-food outlets in this part of the city, where small, single-family homes dominate and gangs thrive in a rough urban landscape.

Many national food and health experts say the measure - which is slated for a vote on Sept. 18 - may be the first example of a health-zoning law in the United States. In 2006, New York City health committee chairman Joel Rivera lobbied against uncontrolled growth of fast-food chains, but did not introduce legislation. These observers are applauding the idea as a way to raise awareness about America’s obesity epidemic, which hits poorer neighborhoods disproportionately.

read more HERE

AFP

TOKYO (AFP) - Generations have praised the wisdom of getting up early in the morning, but a Japanese study says early-risers are actually at a higher risk of developing heart problems.

The study, conducted by researchers from several universities and hospitals in the western Japanese city of Kyoto, revealed a link between wake-up times and a person’s cardiovascular condition.

“Rising early to go to work or exercise might not be beneficial to health, but rather a risk for vascular diseases,” said an abstract of the study.

The study, covering 3,017 healthy adults aged between 23 through 90, found that early risers had a greater risk of heart conditions including hypertension and of having strokes.

However, the study also noted that early risers were usually older.

The study is being presented this week at the World Congress of the World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies, being held in Cairns, Australia.

A separate study released in June by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that chronic sleep deprivation adds stress to the heart, putting a person at greater risk of cardiovascular disease and death.

By NATASHA T. METZLER
The Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Va. - Drunken driving fatalities increased in 22 states in 2006 and fell in 28 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, federal transportation officials said Monday.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released data showing there were 13,470 deaths in 2006 involving drivers and motorcycle operators with blood alcohol levels of .08 or higher, which is the legal limit for adults throughout the country. The number was down slightly from 2005, when 13,582 people died in crashes involving legally drunk drivers.

The overall number of deaths involving drivers and motorcycle operators with any amount of alcohol in their blood was 17,602 last year. That was up from 17,590 in 2005, according to spokeswoman Heather Ann Hopkins.

“The number of people who died on the nation’s roads actually fell last year,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said at a news conference in this Washington suburb. “However the trend did not extend to alcohol-related crashes.”

Transportation officials announced the new figures as they unveiled a $11 million nationwide advertising campaign as part of a Labor Day weekend campaign “Drunk Driving. Over the Limit. Under Arrest.”

“This crackdown is very, very, very important because it’s the penalties that are imposed when someone chooses to ignore the law that really have the ability to make changes,” Peters said.

Among states, Arizona, Kansas and Texas had the greatest increases in number of drunken driving deaths last year. But Utah, Kansas and Iowa had the largest percentage increases compared with 2005. Texas had the largest actual number drunken driving deaths with a total of 1,354.

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from the PEW RESEARCH CENTER

In a series of tracking surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, online Americans report that the internet has brought significant improvements to four areas of their lives: the ability to pursue hobbies and interests, shop, work, and obtain health-care information; some 33% say their ability to pursue hobbies and interests has greatly improved, 32% say so about their ability to shop, 35% say so about their ability to do their jobs, and 20% say the internet has greatly improved the way they get information about health care. In all four categories, the internet earns the highest marks among those who use it most frequently. Daily internet users are twice as likely to report that it improves their ability to do their job “a lot.” Similarly, 39% of daily internet users say it has improved their ability to pursue hobbies and interests “a lot,” while the proportion of weekly internet users who say so is about half as large.

read more HERE

from YOU TUBE

The script was obviously written by an adult. But this young lady really tells it like it is. - JS

By Richard Wolf
USA TODAY

The Social Security Administration faces a record - and rapidly growing - backlog of appeals by people who claim they are too disabled to work. Through June, it had just over 745,000 cases pending, and the wait for a hearing averaged 17 months, also a record.

Claimants in some parts of the country must wait up to 31 months, according to the agency. “People have died waiting for a hearing,” Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue says.

The agency says the backlog doubled in six years and could reach 1 million by 2010.

FEELING PAIN: Delays can lead to personal havoc; wait times in your city

Astrue is trying to reduce the waits, but Congress has provided nearly $1 billion less than President Bush sought over the past six years. Field offices have lost more than 2,300 workers in less than two years, leaving the agency with its lowest staffing level since the early 1970s. The agency froze staffing levels for nine months last year after threatening furloughs.

read more HERE

By Matt Woolsey
Forbes.com

The fastest-growing suburb in the country is Lincoln, Calif., just outside Sacramento. Its population jumped from 11,746 to 39,566, or an increase of 236%. The fastest-growing big suburb (with a population of 100,000 or more) is Gilbert, Ariz., outside Phoenix, which expanded from 112,766 people to 191,517.

While not cheap by national standards, the growth in Sacramento’s outerlying areas is strong because it’s a less-expensive alternative to Los Angeles, San Francisco or San Diego. The Phoenix area saw the greatest positive domestic migration of any American metro last year, with 115,000 more people moving into town than leaving. Affordable housing and a growing economy draw a lot of people to the city.

Rounding out the top 10 fastest-growing suburbs after Lincoln were four Phoenix suburbs: Buckeye, Surprise, Goodyear and Avondale; Plainfield, outside of Chicago; Beaumont, outside San Bernardino, Calif.; Frisco and Wylie outside of Dallas; and Woodstock, outside of Atlanta.

While Los Angeles is sometimes called the “Sultan of Sprawl”, not one of its suburbs makes the list.

Instead, Angelinos are packing their bags and heading 60 miles east to San Bernardino, where twelve of the country’s 100 fastest-growing suburbs are located. Leading the pack? Beaumont. It has experienced 130% growth since 2000.

read more HERE

Steven Schwankert
IDG News Service

News Corp’s popular MySpace.com social networking site hosted Web pages for at least 29,000 known sex offenders as of July 2007, North Carolina’s Attorney General said Tuesday.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper’s office said in a statement that based on MySpace’s own estimates, the number of registered sex offenders with MySpace pages under their own names was four times more than the company’s previous estimate.

Cooper is proposing that North Carolina pass legislation to ban registered sex offenders from using social networking sites that allow minors, and strengthening other anti-child pornography and criminal penalties for Internet solicitation of minors and children for sex. The proposal also suggests that social networking sites’ underage users be required to get parental permission before registering and posting personal information.

Young people have been the early adopters and most avid users of social networking sites, making them targets for sexual predators.

MySpace said it would provide sex offender data to state attorneys general in late May, after first saying it would not make such disclosures. Cooper did not say when MySpace had provided the data.

The site has come under attack not only for the risque content posted by some of its members, but by allegedly providing a venue for sexual predators targeting children. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal estimated in May that at least 5,000 sex offenders were registered for MySpace using their own names, with an unknown number using false identities.

read more HERE

By LAURA BEIL
from The New York Times

Texas has seen the smallest decline in pregnancy and birth rates despite receiving the most money for abstinence education.

HALLSVILLE, Tex. - When Jami Waite graduated from high school this year in this northeastern Texas town, her parents sat damp-eyed in the metal bleachers of Bobcat Stadium, proud in every way possible. Their youngest daughter was leaving childhood an honor graduate, a band member, a true friend, a head cheerleader - and a steadfast virgin.

Eric Love, director of the East Texas Abstinence Program, travels by “Virginity Van” to talk to students. “Sex was designed to bond two people together,” he says.

“People can be abstinent, and it’s not weird,” she declared. With her face on billboards and on TV, Ms. Waite has been an emblem of sexual abstinence for Virginity Rules, which has risen from a single operation in nearby Longview to become an eight-county abstinence franchise.

For the first time, however, Virginity Rules and 700 kindred abstinence education programs are fighting serious threats to their future. Eleven state health departments rejected abstinence education this year, while legislatures in Colorado, Iowa and Washington passed laws that could kill, or at least wound, its presence in public schools.

Opponents received high-caliber ammunition this spring when the most comprehensive study of abstinence education found no sign that it delayed a teenager’s sexual debut. And, after enjoying a fivefold increase in their main federal appropriations, the abstinence programs in June received their first cut in financing from the Senate appropriations committee since 2001.

read more at The New York Times

from USA Today

Al Gore’s youngest daughter marries

BEVERLY HILLS (AP) - Al Gore’s youngest daughter Sarah was married Saturday night at the Beverly Hills Hotel, according to a family spokeswoman.

Sarah Gore, 28, married Bill Lee, 37, a Los Angeles businessman, said spokeswoman Kalee Kreider.

Kreider declined to give any further details.

The daughter of the former vice president and Democratic presidential nominee is a Harvard graduate and a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco.

Sarah is the third youngest child of Al and Tipper Gore. Their oldest daughter, Karenna, 34, is married to Drew Schiff. Kristin Gore, 30, is married to Paul Cusack. Al Gore III, 24, is single and lives in Los Angeles.

Rebecca Romijn, Jerry O’Connell wed

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O’Connell have married, a spokesman for the Ugly Betty TV star said.

Romijn, 34, and O’Connell, 33, married at a small ceremony in their home Saturday, spokesman Lewis Kay told People magazine.

Romijn, the former model who played the title role in the WB sitcom Pepper Dennis before joining the cast of ABC’s Ugly Betty, divorced actor John Stamos in 2005 after five years.

It is the first marriage for O’Connell, who appears in the NBC medical crime drama Crossing Jordan and acted in the films Stand By Me and Jerry Maguire.

Bin Laden’s son confirms wedding to U.K. divorcee

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - A son of Osama bin Laden confirmed Sunday he had married a British woman nearly twice his age, and voiced outrage at the publicity the wedding attracted.

Jane Felix-Browne, a 51-year-old grandmother from Moulton, a village in northwestern England, told The Associated Press last week that she met Omar bin Laden, 27, while riding a horse near Egypt’s Great Pyramid and that they married on April 24.

The Times and Sun newspapers, which initially reported the story, said she was in Egypt for medical treatment for multiple sclerosis at the time.

In a written statement published by the Saudi newspaper Al Watan on Sunday, Omar bin Laden said he was “stunned and outraged” by the publicity surrounding his marriage to Felix-Browne, whom he identified as Zaina Bint Mohamad Al-Sabah.

Osama bin Laden’s fourth son said his British bride was a Muslim and of partly Kuwaiti descent. This could not independently be verified.