Bernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distribution of child pornography

Bernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distribution of child pornography by e-mail in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years.

Ward, 57, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a fixture on KGO-AM 810 for three hours every weeknight, known in recent years for his fervent denunciations of President Bush and the war in Iraq during his news talk show. He also hosted "God Talk," a Sunday morning program on religion, and was a prolific fundraiser for the station's charity drives.

But his career disintegrated Dec. 6 with the unsealing of a federal grand jury indictment, issued three months earlier, that charged him with two counts of distributing and one count of receiving Internet images of child pornography. KGO fired him Dec. 31.

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It's radioactive, and it's missing

Britain's intelligence service MI5 has launched a high priority search for more than 1,000 pieces of missing radioactive medical equipment used in the treatment of cancers and other illnesses in British hospitals, says a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

The loss was discovered after Britain's understaffed National Health Service hospitals made their quarterly inventory returns to the government Environmental Agency -- responsible for the safety of all medical radioactive materials.

In all, some 10,000 items -- mostly used in nuclear medicine -- were accounted for. Those past their use-by date were destroyed at one of Britain's nuclear reactors.

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Code Pink Protesters Try Witchcraft at Anti-Marine Rallies

Code Pink is now resorting to witchcraft to beef up the number of its supporters protesting a controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center in Berkeley, Calif.

The women's anti-war group has told ralliers to come equipped with spells and pointy hats Friday for "witches, crones and sirens" day, the last of the group's weeklong homage to Mother's Day.

"Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we're going to end war," Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FOXNews.com.

More at Fox News

Depressed teens, marijuana a dangerous mix

Teenagers who use marijuana put themselves at higher risks for serious mental health problems, including worsening depression, schizophrenia, anxiety and suicide, according to a new White House report.

Although the report from the Office of National Drug Control Policy notes that use of the drug among teenagers has dropped by 25 percent in the past seven years, it emphasizes that more teens use marijuana than all other illegal drugs combined.

That use can have serious consequences, according to the report. Teenagers who smoke marijuana to self-medicate can compound their depression, the report said.

Depressed teens are more than twice as likely as others to abuse or become dependent on marijuana, it said. And teenagers who use marijuana more than at least once a month are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than teenagers who do not use the drug, it said.

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Gas prices rattle Americans

Record high gas prices are prompting Americans to drive less for the first time in nearly three decades, squeezing family budgets and causing major shifts in driving habits, federal data and a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll show.

As prices near — or in some places top — $4 a gallon, most Americans say they are cutting back on other household spending, seriously considering buying more fuel-efficient cars and consolidating their daily errands to save fuel.

Americans worry that steep gas costs are here to stay: eight in 10 say they doubt today's high prices are temporary, the poll finds. It's the first time such a large majority sees pricey gas as a long-term problem.

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Fluoride: Miracle drug or toxic-waste killer?

From Pennsylvania to Nebraska and from Europe to New Zealand, there is growing and fierce opposition to plans to fluoridate public drinking water, fueled by a battery of shocking new studies that seriously question a practice routine among U.S. municipalities for nearly the last 50 years.

A study released in February by the Collaborative on Health and the Environments Learning and Development Disabilities Initiative found excessive ingestion of fluoride can decrease thyroid hormone levels. It also cited a recent Chinese study that links lower IQ levels in children with fluoridated drinking water.

In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences found the Environmental Protection Agency's maximum standard for fluoride of 4 milligrams per liter could cause health problems such as dental fluorosis and weakened bones over a lifetime of consumption.

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Gas price protest singer arrested at Ind. convenience store

A man with a guitar and a megaphone climbed atop a convenience store roof to serenade commuters with his musical protest of high gasoline prices - until police halted the impromptu concert.

Once atop the roof of the Family Express store Monday, and above pumps dispensing fuel at $3.78 per gallon, Jay Weinberg, 29, performed his ditty called "Price Gouge'n."

Dozens of supporters chanted: "I can't afford it. I'm banging on my dashboard. I can't believe they think I'm a fool."

The performance lasted about 15 minutes before three police officers arrived and arrested Weinberg on charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct. Police said he was cooperative.

The crowd, made up of Weinberg's friends and other people who just happened to be pumping gas, continued singing. Then some, including his wife, Danielle, drove to Porter County Jail to bail him out.

Weinberg left the building around 7:30 p.m. and was greeted with cheers.

From Seattlepi.com

We've reached a Milestone because of YOU!

I just want to thank everyone who has visited this blog and my sister blog "Good, Pure and Wonderful" in the past few months. Since starting in Feb. we have together gotten in excess of 10,000 hits. I know that tiny compared to a lot of sites on the web, but at least to me, it's a good start. And it's all because of you, so pat yourself on the back. Keep coming back, tell your friends and I'll try to let you know when we hit our next goal of 25,000.

I hate to tell you this but posts may become less frequent in upcoming months. I've got to get bunch of CEU hours quickly for my certification as a counselor, so that will take up much of my free time. I'll try to keep you informed though.

Thanks,
John

Nearly 100 arrested in drug investigation at San Diego State - And Most Were Students

Nearly 100 people, most of them students, were arrested in an undercover drug investigation at San Diego State University that began after a student's fatal cocaine overdose last spring, authorities said Tuesday. Authorities seized several guns, at least $60,000 in cash, marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, hash oil, methamphetamine and illicit prescription drugs, authorities said. Two kilograms of cocaine and 350 ecstasy pills also were seized, officials said. About 75 students faced charges. Those arrested included a student who was about to receive a criminal justice degree and another who was to receive a master's degree in homeland security. Some defendants were scheduled to appear in state court to face charges Tuesday.
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Commonly Used Medications Associated With Impaired Physical Function In Older Adults

Older adults who take drugs designed to block the neurotransmitter acetylcholine -- including common medications for incontinence, high blood pressure and allergies -- are more likely to be dependent in one or more activities of daily living and to walk slower, according to new findings from researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues.

"These results were true even in older adults who have normal memory and thinking abilities," said Kaycee M. Sink, M.D., M.A.S., lead author. "For older adults taking a moderately anticholinergic medication, or two or more mildly anticholinergic medications, their function was similar to that of someone three to four years older."
More from Science Daily

Oil prices rise to record near $123 a barrel on prediction of $200 oil, supply concerns

Oil futures blasted to a new record near $123 a barrel Tuesday, gaining momentum as investors bought on a forecast of much higher prices and on any news hinting at supply shortages. Retail gas prices edged lower, but appear poised to rise to new records of their own in coming weeks.

A new Goldman Sachs prediction that oil prices could rise to $150 to $200 within two years seemed to motivate much of Tuesday's buying, although a falling dollar and increasing concerns about declining crude production in Mexico and Russia contributed, analysts say.

The Energy Department raised its oil and gasoline price forecasts, but also predicted that high prices will cut demand more than previously thought.

More from Yahoo Finance

Aid arrives in Myanmar as death toll passes 22,000, but worst-hit area still cut off

Aid began to trickle into cyclone-ravaged Myanmar late Tuesday but the worst-hit Irrawaddy delta, where nearly 22,000 people perished, was largely cut off from the rest of the world four days after winds, floods and high tidal waves tore through the densely populated region.

With more than 40,000 still missing and as many as 1 million possibly left homeless, the international community was struggling to deliver aid in the military-ruled country, which normally seeks to shut out foreign officials and restricts their access inside the country.

But the WFP said in a statement worst-hit coastal areas — including the Irrawaddy delta — were out of reach for aid workers due to flooding and road damage.
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Men 'not interested in sex'

Counselling and sex therapy charity Relate says it has seen a 40 per cent increase in men who simply cannot be bothered to make love to their wives and partners.

The findings are a world away from just ten years ago, when hardly any men contacted them with a loss of libido. The main sufferers who call its helpline with the problem are generally aged between 30 and 50 and are married.

“It is a serious issue. It counts as a pychosexual dysfunction rather than just a relationship problem, because these men haven’t simply gone off their partner but off sex altogether.”
More at the Telegraph

The reason fat people find it hard to lose weight is found

Scientists have discovered why fat people find it so hard to lose weight, which will lead to many new approaches to weight loss.

The difference in the number of fat cells between lean and obese people is established in childhood and, although fat people replenish fat cells at the same rate as thin ones, they have around twice as many.

This remarkable glimpse of what gives us beer guts, love handle and muffin tops could also lead to new approaches to fight the flab, by cutting the overall number of fat cells in the body, as well as providing an insight into why fat people find it so hard to lose weight, because the number of fat cells in a person remains the same, even after a successful diet.
Does this apply to fat cats?
More from the Telegraph

Gas has gotten so expensive, some gas pumps won't work

As gas prices rise, some stations with older pumps are encountering an unexpected challenge: They can't be set to charge more than $3.99 9/10 per gallon.

For example, take the three pumps at Vashon Island's Engels Repair & Towing -- please, said Lou Engels, 68, who has owned the garage for 41 years.

"When I bought these brand-new in 1995, nobody could imagine gas would ever be higher than $3.99 a gallon," he said.

"Now, it would cost thousands of dollars to replace them, and the upgrades for the pumps are back-ordered."

More at Seattlepi.com

Some Lip Gloss May Promote Cancer

Spring is here, legs have been reacquainted with the razor and women are buying lots of shimmery lip gloss on impulse. But have you heard the buzz that cheap, fun, non-SPF gloss can possibly increase your skin cancer risk?
More from ABC News

Feds launch 'Gestapo raid' over raw milk

A rally has been set for tomorrow in front of the magistrate's office in Mt. Holly, Pa., in support of a Mennonite farmer who has brought the wrath of the government on himself for selling raw milk and other products – an act government prosecutors say violates a number of regulations.

That's when the next court hearing is scheduled for Mark Nolt, a Pennsylvania farmer who turned in his state permit to sell raw milk because it didn't allow for the sale of the other products he offered.

"They swooped in ... like a bunch of Vikings, handcuffed me and stole $30,000 worth of my milk, cheese and butter," he told the New York Daily News.

His case is just an example of what the government is trying to do to those who believe – based on medical results – that raw milk is better for them than the processed milk available in most grocery stores, according to Nolt's supporters.

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Virus epidemic kills 26 toddlers in China

Parents in the central Chinese city of Fuyang were today warned to keep an eye on the health of their children, after more than 20 infants were killed and thousands more left hospitalised by a highly contagious disease.

A virulent form of hand, foot and mouth disease has killed 22 young children in the dirt-poor industrial city in central Anhui province. Another four have died in two other provinces and officials say the illness may have yet to reach its peak.

The Ministry of Health has issued a national alert, and the minister heads a special task force to try to curb the spread of enterovirus 71, or EV71, that has now infected nearly 10,000 people - mainly children - across China. The disease spreads through direct contact with the mucus, saliva or faeces of an infected person. Young children are usually the most susceptible because of their less developed immune systems.

More from Times Online

China farms the world to feed a ravenous economy

As Beijing scrambles to feed its galloping economy, it has already scoured the world for mining and logging concessions. Now it is turning to crops to feed its people and industries. Chinese enterprises are snapping up vast tracts of land abroad and forging contract farming deals.

This quest raises both hope and criticism.

More at Wired

Millions of Americans in Chronic Pain

Nursing a migraine today? New research shows you're not alone. More than a quarter of Americans suffer daily pain, a condition that costs the U.S. about $60 billion a year in lost productivity. And how often you're in pain depends largely on the size of your paycheck.

Americans in households making less than $30,000 a year spend nearly 20% of their lives in moderate to severe pain, compared with less than 8% of people in households earning above $100,000, according to a landmark study on how Americans experience in pain. The findings, published Thursday in the British journal the Lancet, also found that participants who hadn't finished high school reported feeling twice the amount of pain as college graduates. "To a significant extent, pain does separate the classes," says Princeton economist Alan Krueger, who authored the study along with Dr. Arthur Stone, a psychiatry professor at Stony Brook University.
More at Time

Drug resistant TB 'rising in UK'

Drug resistant tuberculosis is posing a growing threat in the UK, probably fuelled by immigration, say experts.

A Health Protection Agency team examined 28,620 TB infections in England, Wales and Northern Ireland between 1998 and 2005.

They found the proportion of cases resistant to any of the first-line drugs rose from 5.6% to 7.9%.

The British Medical Journal study also found a small increase in cases of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB).

However, although the number of people becoming infected with drug-resistant TB has almost doubled, from 170 in 1998 to 336 in 2005, they still make up a small proportion of the total number of TB infections.
More from the BBC

Poll: 70 percent in U.S. say things are going badly

The vast majority of Americans think things are going badly in the country, according to a new poll.

Seven in 10 people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say things are going badly, with only 30 percent saying things are going well.

"It's been 16 years since the public gave the country's condition such a bad rating: January 1992, to be precise, in the last year in office of the last president named Bush," CNN pollster Keating Holland said.

"Seventy percent is a lot worse than two years ago, when 48 percent thought times were bad and the Republicans lost control of Congress," CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider added.

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Is the Newspaper as we know it about to be history?

Pick almost any American newspaper company and you can tell a similar story. The ABC reported that for the 530 biggest dailies, average circulation in the past six months was 3.6% lower than in the same period a year earlier; for Sunday papers, it was 4.6% lower. Ad revenues are plunging across the board: by 22.3% at Media General, for example. In 2007 total newspaper revenues fell to $42.2 billion, not to be sniffed at, certainly, but a lot less than the peak of $48.7 billion in 2000.

Much of this decline is being blamed on the rise of the internet, which offers free, round-the-clock coverage, and which has provided a new, better home for classified advertising, once the bedrock of most newspapers’ revenue. But some of the fall in revenues is actually due to the economic slowdown in America, and especially in the housing market, which contributes a large slice of classified advertising.
More from the Economist

Barack Obama Defends Opposition to Partial-Birth Abortion Ban in Interview

In a Sunday interview, pro-abortion presidential candidate Barack Obama defended his opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortions. Though he wasn't in Congress at the time it voted on the ban, he said he would have supported it had it contained a health exception.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Obama said, "On an issue like partial-birth abortion, I strongly believe that the state can properly restrict late-term abortions. I have said so repeatedly. All I've said is we should have a provision to protect the health of the mother, and many of the bills that came before me didn't have that." Obama also claimed pro-life advocates only brought the partial-birth abortion ban forward to "polarize" the abortion debate.

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All salmon fishing banned on West Coast

Salmon fishing was banned along the West Coast for the first time in 160 years Thursday, a decision that is expected to have a devastating economic impact on fishermen, dozens of businesses, tourism and boating.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez immediately declared a commercial fishery disaster, opening the door for Congress to appropriate money for anyone who will be economically harmed.

The closure of commercial and recreational fishing for chinook salmon in the ocean off California and most of Oregon was announced by the National Marine Fishery Service.

It followed the recommendation last month of the Pacific Fishery Management Council after the catastrophic disappearance of California's fabled fall run of the pink fish popularly known as king salmon.

It is the first total closure since commercial fishing started in the Bay Area in 1848.

More from SFGate

Younger Women Often Miss Signs of Heart Attack

Many younger women ignore or simply don't recognize the warning signs of a heart attack, often because it doesn't resemble the typical "Hollywood heart attack."

So say the authors of a study being presented Friday at the American Heart Association's annual Scientific Forum on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke, in Baltimore.

"So many women said, 'We wish we had a better stereotype, you never see anything in the media,'" said study author Judith Lichtman, an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale School of Medicine. "I personally would love to see some cutting-edge TV series of, for example, a young person having a heart attack with atypical symptoms."

Heart disease is the leading killer of American women, claiming almost half a million lives a year, or about one death per minute. According to background information from the authors, 16,000 young women with heart disease die every year and 40,000 are hospitalized.
From the Washington Post

Uh-oh, here we go again: Meet Obama's new pastor

More pastor problems for Sen. Barack Obama?

The man slated to become chief pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ has called blacks "lepers" with a "skin disease," claimed U.S. entertainment corporations operate with "disdain" for black people, and in a fiery sermon claimed retired pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright was "lynched" by the media and compared the embattled pastor to Jesus.

Otis Moss III, lauded this week by Obama as a "wonderful young pastor," also recently refused to deny claims by Wright that the U.S. government was involved in distributing illegal drugs to minorities or spreading the AIDS virus to blacks.
More at WorldNetDaily

Why Airlines Might Abandon Your City

What the airlines are doing to stay "aflight" is raising prices and cutting back flights to make sure those price hikes stick. You know all about the raising-prices-and-fees part (American Airlines was the final airline to announce $25 to check a second bag); but what might be more nefarious for many travelers, especially those in smaller cities with regional airports, is what one airline analyst tagged as an inevitable "mother of all capacity cuts" that will occur as legacy airlines begin to merge.

Deciding where to cut routes and cities is fairly easy; airline bean-counters simply sort their city-pair spreadsheets by profitability, and those at the bottom are first on the hit list. Naturally, they look at the number of passengers who travel in and out of the cities in question.
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Overconfident Docs Need Dose of Reality

Most of the time a medical diagnosis is on point. But misdiagnoses do occur, and an overly confident doctor may be partly to blame, a new review suggests.

The rate of diagnostic error is as high as 15%, Eta S. Berner, EdD, and Mark L.. Graber, MD, write in a special edition of The American Journal of Medicine dedicated to understanding and addressing diagnostic errors.

Physician overconfidence and a lack of feedback following a diagnosis are two important contributors to the problem, they note.

"When directly questioned, many clinicians find it inconceivable that their own error rate could be as high as the literature demonstrates," Berner and Graber write. "They acknowledge that diagnostic error exists, but believe the rate is very low, and that any errors are made by others who are less skillful or less careful."

More from WebMD

Americans tapping the attic for spare cash

Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates.

To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother's dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful — families forced to part with heirlooms.

"This is not about downsizing. It's about needing gas money," said Nancy Baughman, founder of eBizAuctions, an online auction service she runs out of her garage in Raleigh, N.C. One former affluent customer is now unemployed and had to unload Hermes leather jackets and Versace jeans and silk shirts.

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