Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO -- Let's hope you weren't planning to cook that turkey over an open fire. Air quality officials have called a Spare the Air alert for Thanksgiving, meaning the burning of wood and manufactured fire logs is banned both indoors and outdoors from midnight tonight until midnight Thursday. The use of any wood-burning device, including fireplaces, wood stoves, pellet stoves and outdoor fire pits, is illegal during that period, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District said. The wood-burning ban covers Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, southern Sonoma and southwestern Solano counties.

Fast food vendors will be told to offer low-fat fish and chips and "diet" kebabs in a Government healthy-eating campaign. Takeaway restaurants are to receive guidelines as part of the campaign to improve the nutritional value of meals eaten outside of the home, following a report for the Government's food watchdog, the Food Standards Agency. Kebabs, Chinese and Indian meals will be among those foods targeted. A spokesman for the FSA said: "The average person eats one in every six meals out of the home so the choices we make can go a long way to help us maintain a...

Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has gotten the Consumer Financial Protection Act through his House Financial Services Committee. This bill will create a new federal agency to oversee consumer credit. “Too many people are frivolously abusing credit,” Frank alleged. “They’re buying things they don’t need with money they don’t have. This is a recipe for bankruptcy. We have to stop it.” Under the legislation, a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) would review all current credit cards, as well as applications for new cards, to determine whether the cards are, or would be, used appropriately. Cards intended for uses that don’t meet...

The obesity bubble is in no danger of bursting. While lawmakers like to vilify insurance and pharmaceutical companies for driving up health-care costs to make fat profits, obesity is actually a far bigger reason for ballooning costs. Call it the obesity bubble, and a study out this week shows that it's in no danger of bursting. Obesity is defined as having a body-mass-index (BMI) of 30 or greater. For example, a person who is 5'8 and weighs 200 pounds has a BMI of 30 and would be considered obese. According to the study's author and the executive director of the...

Wednesday night, scores of people turned up at a town hall meeting in the Village of Barrington Hills, Ill., 40 miles outside of Chicago. Residents are resisting a new lighting ordinance being entertained by the village government. In a bid to win plaudits from the International Dark-Sky Association—which fights outdoor lighting as a blight that blots out the starry splendor of the natural night—local officials want radically to restrict how residents use light on their properties. In response, some 200 people, out of a village of 4,000, have formed a group they call Homeowners Against Lighting Ordinances, or HALO. Barrington...

The American Association of Public Health Physicians (AAPHP) has challenged opponents of electronic cigarettes to justify their condemnation of this product given that the FDA's study of these devices found that they contain only miniscule levels of carcinogens, compared to the high levels present in traditional cigarettes. According to a press release issued earlier this week: "In July of this year, the Food and Drug Administration released a study that condemned electronic cigarettes as an unsafe alternative for smokers, but not all physicians are convinced that the study was accurate or even completely transparent to the tax payers that fund...

Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- Power-hungry TVs will be banned from store shelves in California after state regulators Wednesday adopted a first-in-the-nation mandate to reduce electricity demand. On a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission required all new televisions up to 58 inches to be more energy efficient, beginning in 2011. The requirement will be tougher in 2013, with only a quarter of all TVs currently on the market meeting that standard.

A quartet of highly promoted energy drinks targeting children have been pulled off shelves by Health Canada. The agency is advising you not to consume Chaotic Beverages sold under the brand names Mind Strike, Fearocity, Elixir of Tenacity and Power Pulse. The drinks, tied to a trading card game, animated TV series and website, are unauthorized products with ingredients that may pose a health risk, Health Canada warned. The Canadian importer, U&ME Marketing, has initiated a national recall of all four brands. You should not consume these unapproved products, as they have not been assessed for safety, quality and efficacy...

OAKLAND — Former state Senate President Pro Tem and 2010 Oakland mayoral candidate Don Perata joined cancer research and health advocates Monday to launch a ballot measure that would hike cigarette taxes by a dollar a pack. "This is the right measure for the right time," Corey Goodman, a UC San Francisco professor and former biotech entrepreneur, said at a news conference in the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, adding the half-billion dollars per year this measure could raise would help move scientific breakthroughs "from the bench to the bedside" to save lives. Perata said he conceived of the measure...

Top federal food regulators threatened on Friday to ban caffeinated alcoholic drinks unless their makers quickly proved that the beverages were safe. In a statement, the Food and Drug Administration said it had told nearly 30 manufacturers of the drinks that unless they could provide clear evidence of safety, it would “take appropriate action to ensure that the products are removed from the marketplace.” Officials did not say how long such a determination might take. The drinks, which combine malt liquor or other spirits with caffeine and fruit juices at alcohol concentrations up to about 10 percent, have become increasingly...

A plumber whose arm was left twisted grotesquely out of shape in an accident ten months ago has had an operation to correct it 'cancelled four times'. Torron Eeles, 50, has been left unable to work since falling down the stairs and now fears he may lose his home after being denied incapacity benefit. The father-of-three today hit out at the NHS for the 'unacceptable delays', but East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust said Mr Eeles had his operation cancelled on 'only' two occasions on clinical safety grounds. His left arm has hung limply by his side since he fractured...

Health Care Reform: Failure to buy health insurance in the just-passed health care bill could get you five years in jail with a $250,000 fine. How can violating a law that's unconstitutional be a felony? The passage last Saturday night of the House health care measure by a fragile 220-215 margin may well prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. In polls, townhall meetings and tea parties, Americans have shown they don't want a "reform" that costs a staggering $1.2 trillion yet fails to meet the left's desire of insuring all the uninsured. And they certainly don't want a bill that...

DUDLEY, Mass., Nov. 4 (UPI) -- A Massachusetts town outlawed owning three cats without a kennel license after a man complained his neighbor's felines were hurting his lawn. Voters at a Dudley town meeting Tuesday night approved the addition of the new language to a town bylaw, which will impose a $100 per day fine for violations, after a local man complained that some of the 15 cats owned by Mary Ellen Richards had destroyed his grass, the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette reported Wednesday. Richards said at the town meeting that she now plans to put her house up...

HOUSTON -- The Houston Police Department launched a new creative campaign to crack down on dangerous and aggressive drivers, KPRC Local 2 reported Wednesday. The plan calls for putting plainclothes officers in different locations around the city to spot drivers who are speeding, not wearing seat belts, or changing lanes erratically. In one tactic, senior Houston Police Officer William Dodson will dress in street clothes and stand at a street corner with a sign in his hand. Some people could mistake him for a vagrant, but on closer inspection, they will see that the sign is reminding people to wear...

HOLLY HILL -- The yard sale at 722 Center Ave. has been canceled. That much is clear. The rest of the story, including allegations that police threatened to arrest the 80-year-old homeowner because she didn't have a permit? Not so much. The facts are these: After 60 years in Holly Hill, Pauline Liles is moving to Tennessee to live with her daughter's family. Her husband, Jack, is already there, having suffered a stroke that has immobilized him. Pauline, an old hand at yard sales, was hoping to sell most of their stuff before joining him next week. She advertised the...

Soda, pop, cola, soft drink — whatever you call it, it is one of the worst beverages that you could be drinking for your health. As the debate for whether to put a tax on the sale of soft drinks continues, you should know how they affect your body so that you can make an informed choice on your own. Soft drinks are hard on your health Soft drinks contain little to no vitamins or other essential nutrients. However, it is what they do contain that is the problem: caffeine, carbonation, simple sugars — or worse, sugar substitutes — and...

AMERICA IS FAT!! Why spend so much time on effect when problems are solved by dealing with cause. We do not have a health care system, we have a disease care system. And we all are about to go over the cliff with a new system that rewards those who make bad choices, which has led to a great part of the problem in the first place. Come on America, wake up!! Come on Washington, deal with the real issues instead you becoming the solution to a problem you created. Take some time today and look at your fellow Americans....

Halloween is a spooky holiday. Without realizing it, three out of four American adults become inadvertent "sugar pushers" tempting some 36 million young trick-or-treaters into gorging on sugar-filled candies. Indeed, every Halloween, just about everyone "forgets" that our nation’s kids are experiencing never-before-seen rates of obesity, which can be triggered by consuming too many sweets. And this year, despite the fact that many are facing economic challenges, Americans will spend $1.89 billion on candies, 6.8 percent more than last year, according to IBISWorld, a market research firm. That’s about $45 per household. But you’re tricking, not treating kids, every time...

Call it a culture clash, trans-Atlantic style. The British think Americans are puritanical and somewhat batty. Americans find the British morally lax and too willing to bend the rules. It all started at a high school in Maine when a student consumed half a bottle of Fentimans Victorian Lemonade, then looked at the label and discovered it contained small amounts of alcohol, listed as less than 0.5 percent. By contrast, a typical American beer usually contains about 5 percent alcohol. Not wanting to get in trouble, he showed it to school administrators, who called police. Police referred the matter to...

Feeling guilty about not doing enough exercise? Well, guilt might soon be the least of your problems. Thanks to a new Big Brother-style gadget being adopted by American companies — and coming to Britain early next year — bosses can measure exactly how many calories you are burning in a day and compare the data with “performance benchmarks”. In other words: staying in shape might soon become as important as getting to the office on time. The gadget, from the Dutch electronics company Philips, is slightly larger than a postage stamp and must be carried around at all times, either...

Parents have been banned from supervising their children in public playgrounds, because they have not undergone criminal record checks. Only council-vetted "play rangers" are now allowed to monitor youngsters in two adventure areas in Watford while parents must watch from outside a perimeter fence. The Watford Borough Council policy has been attacked as insulting and a disgrace by furious relatives who say they are being labelled as potential paedophiles.

Light a fire at home, pay a $400 fine.Burning wood fires in home fireplaces and stoves on bad air nights in the Bay Area becomes illegal again as of Sunday, when the region enters its second cold-weather season with lighting up banned during Spare the Air alerts. The crackdown, aimed at protecting public health from smoke, has two significant changes this year, the Bay Area Air Quality Management announced Wednesday: The district will slap a fixed fine of $400 on second-time violators, who received a written warning the first time they burned on a dirty-air night. Violators last year were...

NEW ORLEANS – Federal officials plan to ban sales of raw oysters harvested from the Gulf of Mexico unless the shellfish are treated to destroy potentially deadly bacteria — a requirement that opponents say could deprive diners of a delicacy cherished for generations. The plan has also raised concern among oystermen that they could be pushed out of business. The Gulf region supplies about two-thirds of U.S. oysters, and some people in the $500 million industry argue that the anti-bacterial procedures are too costly. They insist adequate measures are already being taken to battle germs, including increased refrigeration on oyster...

The Justice Department says it's backing off the prosecution of people who smoke pot or sell it in compliance with state laws that permit "medical marijuana." Attorney General Eric Holder says "it will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers." Party hardy! I mean -- let the healing begin! I don't think the federal government should be spending a whole lot of time on small-time druggies, and I'm undecided about legalizing pot, which enjoys 44 percent support among the general public, according to a recent poll. Recreational use is not...

Once upon a time in a land not that far away there existed happiness and freedom. Then a regime of persecution, taxation and control came along. And the country was cast into eternal darkness and despair. The end? I bloody hope not. This YouTuber is great! A Patriot from across the sea. (a few rough words in the video)

Health Reform: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says it's constitutional to mandate insurance coverage. Congress, he insists, has "broad authority" to make us buy things to provide for the "general welfare." Democrats' Alice In Wonderland interpretation of what they consider to be a "living Constitution," where words mean what they say they mean based on political considerations, gets more bizarre by the minute. (snip) We've been down this road before. In 1994, Hillary Clinton's secretive health care task force was trying to nationalize health care. "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of...

Big Government: Hardly a day passes without the unveiling of some new federal intrusion into our lives. At some point Americans must say "enough's enough," or sit silently as all our precious liberties are taken away. The Democrats in Congress and the White House are pushing through the most sweeping changes toward direct government control of our economy since at least the Great Depression. Consider just a few news items from recent days: • The Senate moves to give the Food and Drug Administration huge new power over what we eat and drink, and what medicine we take. • A...

A Minnesota man has pleaded guilty to driving his motorized La-Z-Boy chair while drunk. . . . Police said the chair was powered by a converted lawnmower and had a stereo and cup holders.

Get in shape or pay a price. That's a message more Americans could hear if the health care reform bills passed by the Senate Finance and Health committees become law. By more than doubling the maximum rewards and penalties that companies can apply to employees who flunk medical evaluations, the bills could put workers under intense financial pressure to lose weight, stop smoking or even lower their cholesterol.

Big screen plasma televisions are to be banned in California because they use too much energy. In a world first, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has given his backing to the crackdown on sets more than 40 inches wide. These liquid crystal display and plasma high definition sets can use as much as three times the power of smaller cathode ray models. Experts say the ban will reduce the state's rocketing electricity bill by £5billion over the next decade. This is the equivalent of about £20 a set per year. Environmentalists have applauded the move by the California Energy Commission, but manufacturers...

California considering banning giant TVs Electricity-guzzling giant-screen televisions are on the verge of being banned in California in an attempt to cut the state's soaring energy bill. By Tom Leonard in New York Published: 8:38PM BST 16 Oct 2009 Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state's governor, has supported controversial proposals by the California's energy commission to impose strict energy consumption limits on TVs with screens that are more than 40 inches wide. The commission claims that California's estimated 35 million televisions and related gadgets account for about 10 per cent of household energy consumption in the state. Experts say that the large...

Reporting from Sacramento - The influential lobby group Consumer Electronics Assn. is fighting what appears to be a losing battle to dissuade California regulators from passing the nation's first ban on energy-hungry big-screen televisions.

Smoking bans in places like restaurants, offices and public buildings reduce cases of heart attacks and heart disease, according to a report released Thursday by a federally commissioned panel of scientists. The report, issued by the Institute of Medicine, concluded that exposure to secondhand smoke significantly increased the risk of having a heart attack among both smokers and nonsmokers. The panel also said it found that a reduction in heart problems began to take effect fairly quickly after a smoking ban was instituted and that exposure to low or fleeting levels of secondhand smoke could cause cardiovascular problems. “Even a...

A Palm Bay woman and her boyfriend were arrested Monday for child abuse after the couple went old school to punish their 8-year-old daughter for swearing. They washed her mouth out with soap. We don't know about you, but we would petition President Obama and Congress to make it mandatory for every parent to carry a bar of Irish Spring in their back pockets with all the profanity kids use today.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is calling out his wife, Maria Shriver, for apparently violating a state law he signed — holding her cell phone while driving. The celebrity Web site TMZ.com posted two photographs Tuesday showing Shriver holding a phone to her ear while she's behind the wheel. It says one was snapped Sunday and the other in July. The Web site claimed that this was not the first time California's first lady was caught chatting on her cell while driving. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CBS) - On his Twitter feed Tuesday, Schwarzenegger wrote to TMZ.com founder Harvey Levin: "Thanks for bringing her...

One topic that has only recently begun to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest anti smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s,supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race. Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe-Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco-were all non-smokers. Hitler was the most adamant,characterising tobacco as "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man for having been...

To begin know it is said amongst the knowledgeable North Carolina is sprinkled with a number of “sweet spots” where a fellow can stand in an open field and box the compass in four opposite directions (North,East,South and West) for a few hundred yards and find himself under four conflicting sets of hunting regulations........... The leading (current) contender for complete Alice-In-Wonderland-Mad-Hatter “the law is ours to know and yours to find out” bureaucracy is DUPLIN COUNTY.......

The burning question about precisely where a person can smoke these days is flaring up again in Ontario, where a 48-year-old trucker faces a $305 fine for lighting up on the job: while driving his big rig along Canada's busiest highway. The man, who hails from London, Ont., a two-hour drive southwest of Toronto, was headed for the Ontario border city of Windsor when he was pulled over Wednesday along Highway 401 and given a ticket under the Smoke-Free Ontario Act. The law, considered a Canadian standard-setter when it was passed in 2006, forbids smoking in all workplaces and enclosed...

A new internet game is about to be launched which allows 'super snooper' players to plug into the nation's CCTV cameras and report on members of the public committing crimes. The 'Internet Eyes' service involves players scouring thousands of CCTV cameras installed in shops, businesses and town centres across Britain looking for law-breakers. Players who help catch the most criminals each month will win cash prizes up to £1,000. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218225/Internet-game-awards-points-people-spotting-crimes-CCTV-cameras-branded-snoopers-paradise.html#ixzz0TNOMuvRg

Americans need more exercise, not another tax. Obesity is a complex issue, and addressing it is important for all Americans. We at the Coca-Cola company are committed to working with government and health organizations to implement effective solutions to address this problem. But a number of public-health advocates have already come up with what they think is the solution: heavy taxes on some routine foods and beverages that they have decided are high in calories. The taxes, the advocates acknowledge, are intended to limit consumption of targeted foods and help you to accept the diet that they have determined is...

NANNY STATES NANNY DUELS THE WINNER LOSES LIBERTY, FREEDOM Many of you no doubt read of the Brit's attempt to humiliate and criminalize a police woman who exchanged baby sitting services with a close friend. They had given birth about the same time and the arrangement suited both their schedules. This enraged authorities. As reported in The Daily Mail: "A policewoman told last night how she was banned from looking after her colleague’s daughter because she was not a registered childminder. Detective Constable Leanne Shepherd was ordered by the education watchdog Ofsted to end her private arrangement with her...

UTICA, N.Y. -- Twelve Utica residents face federal charges for approximately $2 million in food stamp fraud. These charges come after an 18 month state and federal investigation. Police say those indicted were accepting food stamp benefits in exchange for cash, which is a violation because these benefits are only to be used for eligible food products. A federal grand jury indicted the 12 Tuesday. Only eight were actually arrested and charged Tuesday with defrauding the USDA Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program formerly known as the Food Stamp Program. They include: · Muteea Alfahdd, 41 · Najeeb Abdullah, 44 · Hamoud...

Politics: The administration stages a photo-op with handpicked doctors who support its health care reform. Fortunately, most doctors still believe that the first rule of medicine is to do no harm. It would seem some doctors still make house calls. Some 150 of them made one at the White House Monday in an attempt to give a booster shot to the administration's chaotic and stalled health care reform drive. Rather than a grass-roots uprising of physicians, this was a classic case of AstroTurfing. Attendance was by invitation only, and 40 of the 150 were said to be members of Doctors...

According to a study by the Health division of the RAND Corp., restrictions on the availability of fast food in poorer neighborhoods of Los Angeles "are unlikely to improve the diet of residents or reduce obesity." Why? Because people aren't getting fat on fast food. Instead, liquor stores and small convenience stores are "more likely to be the source of high-calorie snacks and soda consumed substantially more often by residents of South Los Angeles as compared to other parts of the city." So go long on McDonald's, short 7-11.

<p>As if Michigan isn’t having enough trouble with the effects of the recession and the ailing auto industry, some of its citizens are suffering under laws and enforcement policies that simply defy common sense.</p> <p>But Michigan is not alone in having goofy laws and dopey bureaucrats. Vermillion County, Indiana, Prosecutor Nina Alexander said that she is proud to be "enforcing the law as it was written" by prosecuting a grandmother for buying two boxes of cold medication in less than a week.</p>

As Montana bars dealt with their first smoke-free weekend since the state’s indoor smoking ban went into effect, ingenuity ruled. In Missoula, according to a great piece by Michael Moore in the Missoulian, the Rhino Bar gave smokers their very own place to light up: a Butt Hutt, created by Dave Golden of Well Done Welding and Jim Bell, a general contractor. Moore describes the hut as a 4-by-8-foot “metal smoking dugout” in the alley behind the Rhino in Missoula. The no-smoking laws spark the type of debate that never seems to get extinguished. Pro-smokers argue that the bans hurt...

Bake sales are banned in NY city schools BY JENNIFER MEDINA NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK — There shall be no cupcakes. No chocolate cake and no carrot cake. According to New York City's latest regulations, not even zucchini bread makes the cut. Trying to limit how much sugar and fat students put in their bellies at school, the Education Department has effectively banned most bake sales, the lucrative if not quite healthy fundraising tool for generations of teams and clubs. The change is part of a new wellness policy...

A retired policeman, Ralph Harvey, in the town of Saltash (United Kingdom) was ordered to take down the electrified wires he installed to protect his home from break-ins. Harvey constructed the system after burglars had stolen all his wife’s jewelry. Local police have been unable to solve the case or to prevent frequent episodes of vandalism against Harvey’s property. Saltash Police spokesman, Andy Dunstan said that “While I’m not entirely unsympathetic, what with Mr. Harvey being a former policeman and all. But we can’t abide the risk to potential thieves from this fence.” The electrified fence is only 12 volts—not...

Few minutes ago I came back from local Safeway.I had to buy Robitussin for my son.The cashier asked me for ID.He told me that Safeway does it at the government request.Something new???

Apparently the population of stupid children and even dumber parents has grown so large in North Carolina it is now necessary to ban the retail sale of novelty cigarette lighters. EVERY novelty cigarette lighter that resembles a cartoon character,toy,gun,watch, musical instrument, vehicle, animal, food or beverage, or SIMILAR articles( Heaven only knows what THAT means!) is banned for retail sale. So that clever .50 Caliber Cartridge you keep on your desk to light cigars? Gone baby, gone.