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A study that interviewed HIV-infected crack users at Grady Memorial Hospital highlighted the risky behavior and lack of care among this population. Researchers interviewed 190 HIV-infected crack-using patients at Grady and Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami over 14 months half had not seen an HIV specialist in the last six months, and more than three-fourths were not getting important medical treatments.

Voting-rights advocates have been predicting New York would not be able to roll out new voting machines by September 2009, as ordered by federal court, but the state Board of Elections has now made it official. In its latest update to U.S. District Court Judge Gary Sharpe, the board said it will not have enough time to complete testing and certifying voting machines (to replace its 20,000 or so mechanical-lever ones) before next year’s primary. The Board of Elections wrote in its weekly report (July 25) that its “activities and progress toward HAVA (Help America Vote Act) compliance are in...

Cigarette sales have dropped by nearly 25 percent in Maryland since the state's tobacco tax doubled in January, as sticker shock apparently has curtailed some residents' smoking and sent others across the border for better deals. Maryland lawmakers voted last fall to raise the tax to $2 a pack to help bridge a budget shortfall and expand subsidized health care. Fiscal analysts predicted that the new rate, the sixth highest in the nation, would cause cigarette sales to drop off, following a pattern with past increases. But the decline during the first six months of the year significantly exceeded their...

Republican Sen. John McCain, engaged in increasingly sharp attacks on rival Barack Obama, pledged that if elected president, he would work closely with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, praising her as an effective leader and an "inspiration to millions of Americans." "I respect Speaker Pelosi. I think she's one of the great American success stories," McCain said during an interview with The Chronicle prior to a fundraiser at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. "We talk about (New York Sen.) Hillary Clinton and her inspiration to millions of Americans. Speaker Pelosi has been an inspiration as well" in a role...

McCain: Obama Might Be a Socialist Laura Meckler and Susan Davis report on the presidential race. Sen. John McCain said rival Sen. Barack Obama may be a socialist. In a town hall meeting Thursday in Kansas City, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said that his Democratic opponent had the “most extreme” record in the Senate. Later, McCain was asked by the Kansas City Star if he thought Obama was an extremist. He replied: “His voting record … is more to the left than the announced socialist in the U.S. Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

To get to the Old Allen police station....

there is money to be made in the business of "fighting crime"From nailing seat belt offenders to grabbing druggies to arresting thugs there is money to be made in the buisinessand selling protection in every from insurance to anti-virus software feeds off the mal-activity in our societyso let's don't put a lot of good folks out of business by reducing or eliminating mal-activity. good jobs are scarce these days

The list of people Sen. Barack Obama probably wishes were passive, rather than active, supporters of his bid for the presidency is growing. Already on the list are the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Rev. Michael Pfleger. Obama may be ready to add retired Gen. Wesley Clark. Clark, not a stranger to foot-in-mouth disease, on Sunday took a shot at Sen. John McCain's fitness to be president. Stressing that he views McCain as a hero, Clark said of the Republican candidate for president, "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification for...

In a research brief this month, Bradford Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia, analyzed three national studies in order to discover if "there is any evidence that religion is playing a role in encouraging a strong family orientation among contemporary American men?" His research led him to conclude that men who regularly attend Christian services are engaged in happier and stronger marriages and are more involved in the lives of their children than men who do not. "70 percent of husbands who attend church regularly report they are 'very happy' in their marriages, compared to 59 percent...

Gore endorses Obama By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago Al Gore says he is backing Barack Obama and will do whatever he can to help him get to the White House. In a letter to be e-mailed to Obama supporters, Gore says Obama has united a movement over the past year and a half.

Say it ain't so. Barack Obama has worked hard over the last 18 months to convince Americans that he is the untraditional politician – immune to special interests, loyal to his faith, close to the people, guided by principle. SNIP And now Obama goes and does something foolish that shows he is a traditional politician after all and may suggest that his religious convictions are not all that firm: He quits Trinity SNIP Not because he is uncomfortable sitting in the pews all those years but because other people were uncomfortable that he sat in the pews all those years....

Long-term heavy use of marijuana may cause two important brain structures to shrink, Australian researchers said on Monday. Brain scans showed the hippocampus and amygdala were smaller in men who were heavy marijuana users compared to nonusers, the researchers said. The men had smoked at least five marijuana cigarettes daily for on average 20 years. The hippocampus regulates memory and emotion, while the amygdala plays a critical role in fear and aggression. The study, published in the American Medical Association's journal Archives of General Psychiatry, also found the heavy cannabis users earned lower scores than the nonusers in a verbal...

The headline may seem like a trick question — even a dangerous one — to ask during an election year. And notice, please, that I didn’t ask whether certain politicians are more honest than others. (Politicians are a different species altogether.) Yet there is a striking gap between the manner in which liberals and conservatives address the issue of honesty. Consider these results: Is it OK to cheat on your taxes? A total of 57 percent of those who described themselves as “very liberal” said yes in response to the World Values Survey, compared with only 20 percent of those...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - While John McCain is practically assured the Republican presidential nomination, many party members are having a hard time accepting him -- and showing it with symbolic votes against him in primary contests. The Republican nomination battle has been all but decided for over two months. Still, some Republicans used the April 22 Pennsylvania primary and last week's votes in Indiana and North Carolina to register their unhappiness with the de facto victor. Some vote for libertarian Texan Ron Paul, who has refused to quit the race and has racked up more than one million votes, according to...

Some things just don't need a lot of introductory material. This is the case with the VIDEO below. Andrew McCarthy is the author of "Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad." He was the federal prosecutor responsible for leading the investigation of Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and others involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Lou Dobbs had a talk with Mr. McCarthy about Bill Ayers and his relationship with Obama. McCarthy: "Yeah, well he's denying the relationship, but I think more importantly what he's trying to obfuscate is that there's a trajectory to all of this and there's...

Signs of increasing risk along the shore are apparent from space. Satellite photos released by NOAA show steady development of coastal lands between Texas and North Carolina. The space and weather agency lists Hillsborough County among the top 10 areas in the South in the amount of visible new development. A closer look confirms that the trend picked up in the high-altitude photos and is cause for concern. The Hillsborough coast, south of the Alafia River and west of U.S. Highway 41, has grown by 71 percent from 2000 to 2007. The more people who live in zones that must...

Hillary Clinton wins Pennsylvania Democratic primary: Fox 8:46pm EDT 20:51 ETNBC projects Pennsylvania victory for Clinton

Turnabout is fair play, as Barack Obama and his campaign found out today. Ten days after demanding the resignation of Geraldine Ferraro for her “divisive” comments on race, Ferraro launched another broadside at the Obama campaign. Calling Wright a “racist bigot,” she criticized Obama for his own failure to address divisiveness: Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro said today that she objected to the comparison Sen. Barack Obama drew between her and his former pastor in his speech on race relations Tuesday.In the speech, Obama sought to place the inflammatory remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a broader context,...

With the way the forum page has changed, I can no longer find the search option. Anyone able to help me.

Antenatal programmes are giving women an unrealistically rosy view of childbirth, researchers warn. They claim the gulf between a woman's expectations of what will happen during labour and the reality is now so wide that many need to be prepared for the worst. Pregnant women should be warned giving birth can be painful and that they may well need drugs to cope, they add. The research team from Newcastle University, whose findings are published in the journal BMC Medicine, looked at existing studies on women's experiences during labour. They found a gap exists between expectations and experience in four areas...

People who have been injured while walking and texting on their cell phones may be in luck. A London street is experimenting with padded lampposts to protect those not paying attention from banging into them, ITN reports.

Jobs are flocking to low-tax states for a reason. The Pacific Research Institute has crunched the tax numbers in all 50 states and published the "U.S. Economic Freedom Index" ranking all states according to how friendly or unfriendly their policies were toward free enterprise and consumer choice... Where a state falls on the U.S. Economic Freedom Index also indicates how likely it is to experience real economic growth over the long term. Individuals looking to open a new business, expand operations or market new products weigh the comparative costs and benefits of different locations.... They also assess the policy climate....

TOKYO (AFP) - The age-old belief goes that alcohol helps people drown their sorrows, but in truth the bottle only makes bad memories linger, a Japanese study said Friday. Researchers at the University of Tokyo concluded that ethanol -- an intoxicating agent in alcohol -- does not cause memory to decrease, as widely believed, but instead locks it in place. The researchers, led by pharmacology professor Norio Matsuki, gave mild shocks to lab rats to condition them to fear. As a result, the rats would freeze in terror and curl up the moment they were put in their cages. Researchers...

Jessica Mattson said she hears a lot about "critical thinking" from her English teachers at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda. To the 18-year-old senior, the term refers to the skill of "reading deeper into what is written." It means more to Walter Johnson history teacher Nathan Schwartz. When Schwartz teaches about the rise of the samurai in Japan, he works with students not simply to memorize facts related to it but also to understand why it happened by employing the thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, application and reflection. But at the University of Virginia, Daniel T. Willingham, a psychology...

(CNN) — The more likely a Louisiana Democratic presidential primary voter was to have been affected by Hurricane Katrina, the more likely they were to support Democrat Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton.

Senior religious leaders attack multiculturalism and sharia law today, warning that they are "disastrous", socially divisive and are destroying Britain's culture and values. Lord Carey and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor rebut the call of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, for Islamic law to be recognised in Britain. Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, said: "His acceptance of some Muslim laws within British law would be disastrous for the nation. He has overstated the case for accommodating Islamic legal codes. "His conclusion that Britain will eventually have to concede some place in law for aspects of sharia is a...

Since about 6:00 pm PST I have been unable to connect to forums. Get taken to latest posts instead. Help!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve should not cut its benchmark interest rate as low as 1 percent because of the inflation risks and danger of weakening the dollar, the manager of the world's biggest bond fund said on Tuesday. Economists expect the fed funds target rate, now at 3.5 percent, will bottom at around 2.5 percent in the current monetary easing cycle, according to a Reuters poll on Monday. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke "must recognize the reduced benefits and obvious dangers of a deja vu trek to 1 percent short rates," wrote Bill Gross, chief investment officer of...

BALTIMORE - A white woman beaten by a group of black students on a bus has prompted a hate-crime investigation, attempts by transit officials to reassure riders of the safety of the system, and radio talk-show chatter over comparisons with the Jena Six case. The uproar prompted two leading black politicians to issue statements decrying the attack. Sarah Kreager, 26, suffered broken facial bones and other injuries after she was punched, kicked and dragged off the bus Tuesday afternoon. Kreager's companion, Troy Ellis, was also attacked, but not beaten as severely. Kreager has an unlisted phone number and attempts to...

Washington, December 1 : Amid reports of a higher likelihood of AIDS affliction among homosexual men in developing countries, the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) has called on policymakers to put aside their prejudices and to provide the resources and the leadership required to deal with the disease. The organisation has been moved by a new study at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, suggesting that homosexual men have an average of 19 times greater chance of being infected with HIV than the general population in 38 low and middle-income countries. Published in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine,...

Saying spending is poised to grow more than 50% faster than revenues, the state's chief budget analyst called on lawmakers Wednesday to immediately begin cutting government programs or raising taxes to address a budget shortfall that has ballooned to $10 billion. Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill, whom lawmakers of both parties look to for guidance on fiscal matters, said the cooling housing market, high energy prices and a batch of overly optimistic assumptions in the last budget are hitting state coffers hard. "The Legislature should start now" curbing spending and finding new revenue, she said. "All the easy solutions...

ALBANY - State election officials are worried that Gov. Spitzer's plan to allow illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses will make it difficult for them to catch people voting illegally. "There has been concern," state Board of Elections spokesman Lee Daghlian told The Post. While it is up to the local boards of election to determine who is eligible to vote, it is rare that election officials check into a person's legal status, particularly if they have identifying information on their voter-registration form like a driver's license or the last four digits of a Social Security number, Daghlian said. In...

WASHINGTON - Sorry, sister: Laura Bush says experience as First Lady may count, but she won't vote for Hillary Clinton just to see the first female President. Putting party over gender pride yesterday, Bush said she wasn't at all conflicted over opposing the first woman with a real chance to break the marble ceiling. "It doesn't matter to me - I hope it doesn't matter to other people," the First Lady said. "I hope that people will choose the candidate that they think really has the views that they want. "I'll be supporting the Republican," Bush added on "Fox News...

SALT LAKE CITY, October 15, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A male homosexual was the teacher most apt to have sex with his pupils in a study encompassing 7 countries. Overall, 43% of teachers who made the news for having sex with their pupils over the last 27 years engaged in homosexuality. Homosexual teachers violated 1,925 (56%) of the 3,457 pupil-victims. Women were 11% of perpetrators, but a heterosexual female teacher was least apt to have sex with pupils. Sexual abuse incidents are frequently kept hidden by victims out of fear and shame and so the actual numbers of such teacher...

September 15, 2007 Japan leads Asia’s race to the Moon Richard Lloyd Parry in Tokyo Asia’s race to the Moon began yesterday when Japan launched an unmanned lunar probe, the most ambitious mission of its kind since the United States’ Apollo missions of the 1970s. The lunar orbiter Kaguya, named after a Moon princess in a Japanese fairytale, was launched from Japan’s space centre on the small southern island of Tanegashima. The 55 billion yen (£240 million) Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE), to give it its full name, will orbit the Earth twice before beginning a 20-day, 237,500-mile (380,000-km) journey...

Per FR rules, USA Today is link only. Read Story Here.

It's Iran we're fighting, says Basra commander By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent Last Updated: 1:54am BST 07/09/2007 British forces in southern Iraq have been fighting a "proxy war" against Iran, the commander of the troops who withdrew from Basra Palace has said. Frontline: Our troops in Afghanistan and IraqWhile the Army has frequently accused Iran of stirring violence across southern Iraq by arming Shia militias, no officer has been as blunt as Lt Col Patrick Sanders, commander of 4th Battalion The Rifles.   British forces leave central Basra He told the BBC that 5,500 British soldiers still based at Basra...

Being soul mates has often been considered the benchmark for any budding relationship. In fact, looking for love is a much simpler process. New scientific research has reached the conclusion which many of us have long suspected - that men are attracted by beauty while women focus on a partner's wealth. Data taken from a speed-dating study reveals that when it comes to the rules of attraction people behave like stereotypical Neanderthals. It found that men would try to entice the most attractive woman they met, although they accepted they would make do with someone who falls somewhat short of...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks. And guys won't be surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they are. "Just because people say they're looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn't mean that is what they'll end up choosing," Peter M. Todd, of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, said in a telephone interview.

Rock stars -- notorious for their "crash and burn" lifestyles -- really are more likely than other people to die before reaching old age. A study of more than 1,000 mainly British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population. Between 1956 and 2005 there were 100 deaths among the 1,064 musicians examined by researchers at the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University. As well as Presley, the toll of those dying before their...

Despite the glowing press coverage they get from the MSM, the KOmmies are in reality just as idiotically gullible as the DUmmies. And who is making this charge of KOmmie idiocy? Why head KOmmie Kos himself who has berated his fellow KOmmies for turning themselves into laughingstocks for swallowing a tall tale from a highly dubious source as you can see in his THREAD titled, "Don't believe everything you read on the internets." This thread could be more accurately titled, "Believe in almost nothing posted in KOmmieland." The cause for the head KOmmie's concern is the extreme gullibility exhibited...

A coworker of mine was at New York Penn Station on Tuesday night at 8:45 PM waiting on a train to New Jersey after arriving from Boston. As this person was looking at the departure board in the concourse, there stood Joe Biden, on the phone, with a blonde haired woman next to him. "I just spoke to Hillary. Yeah, I'm in the top 3 for VP." Biden then looked over at my coworker and said, "I'll call you back in a minute when I'm not in public," and then made a bee-line for the platform of the departing DC...

Cannabis users are 40% more likely than non-users to suffer a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia, say UK experts. Writing in the Lancet, a team led by Dr Stanley Zammit from Bristol and Cardiff Universities said young people needed to be made aware of the dangers. In an additional article, experts said up to 800 schizophrenia cases a year in the UK could be linked to cannabis use.

A single joint of cannabis raises the risk of schizophrenia by more than 40 per cent, a disturbing study warns. The Government-commissioned report has also found that taking the drug regularly more than doubles the risk of serious mental illness. Overall, cannabis could be to blame for one in seven cases of schizophrenia and other life-shattering mental illness, the Lancet reports. The grim statistics - the latest to link teenage cannabis use with mental illness in later life - come only days after Gordon Brown ordered a review of the decision to downgrade cannabis to class C, the least serious...

LONDON - Using marijuana seems to increase the chance of becoming psychotic, researchers report in an analysis of past research that reignites the issue of whether pot is dangerous. The new review suggests that even infrequent use could raise the small but real risk of this serious mental illness by 40 percent. Doctors have long suspected a connection and say the latest findings underline the need to highlight marijuana’s long-term risks. The research, paid for by the British Health Department, is being published Friday in the medical journal The Lancet.

"The Pope's private secretary has given warning of the Islamisation of Europe and stressed the need for the continent's Christian roots not to be ignored, in comments released yesterday. "Attempts to Islamise the West cannot be denied," Monsignor Georg Gaenswein was quoted as saying in an advance copy of the weekly Sueddeutsche Magazin to be published today."

Thousands of dollars in Michael Vick jersey's hang in limbo at a North Augusta sports store. A container with dozens more, still waiting for customers. "We don't know what we're going to do. We know we can't sell it for anything close to retail. We're either going to give it away at $10.00 or 80% off or just throw it away," SMS Sportsworld manager Bobby Sheridan said. Vick's Footballs on display, but no takers. Boxes of Vick's new football cleats, still taped up. SMS Sports World, sending back the leather. "No one is interested at all," Sheridan said. Since the...

A “concentrated crackdown” on illegal immigrants started Friday night in Maricopa County. Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced he’s dispatched more than 200 deputies and posse members to saturate valley cities and roadways known to be corridors for human smuggling. East Valley hot spots include Bush Highway, U.S. Highway 60 and “any major highway,” said deputy chief Brian Sands. Arpaio said he’s also opening a hotline for tipsters to report suspected illegal immigrants. Arpaio said the program is comprehensive and controversial, but that it’s constitutional. “We’re not going to go out on a street corner and round up people because they look...

Women drawn to men with muscles By Julie Steenhuysen Reuters - Monday, July 9 10:36 pmCHICAGO (Reuters) - Muscular young men are likely to have more sex partners than their less-chiselled peers, researchers at the University of California Los Angeles said on Monday. Their study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, suggests muscles in men are akin to elaborate tail feathers in male peacocks: They attract females looking for a virile mate. "Women are predisposed to prefer muscularity in men," said study author David Frederick of UCLA. [snip]

(From an article titled:Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature)Most suicide bombers are Muslim Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim. Why? The surprising answer is that Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.