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June 23, 2010 Oil from the BP oil spill disaster is spewing again into the Gulf of Mexico at nearly full force after a venting system connected the so-called containment cap over the blown-out wellhead was damaged in an accident with a robot sub, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the commander in charge of the government's effort to control the 65-day-old spill. COO Doug Suttles is dispatched to Florida's Pensacola Beach to oversee cleanup.Separately, Allen said two cleanup workers have died in unrelated accidents in the Gulf, the first deaths reported since 11 people died in when Deepwater Horizon...

Youngsters celebrating the 100th birthday of the scouting movement have been banned from eating burgers and bangers - because they might offend youngsters of other religions. And the scouts have been banned from having campfires and instead have to sit round a potplant - because of safety fears. The traditional camping food made way way for vegetarian dishes - a hundred years after Scout founder Lord Baden-Powell took his first group of 20 boys to the great outdoors. The 1907 boys caught rabbits and cooked them on an open fire on Brownsea Island, in Poole Harbour, Dorset. But in 2007,...

On the night of his 12th wedding anniversary, Dr. Andrew Friedman was terrified. This brilliant surgeon and researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School feared that he was about to lose everything - his career, his family, the life he'd built - because his boss was coming closer and closer to the truth: For the past three years, Friedman had been faking - actually making up - data in some of the respected, peer-reviewed studies he had published in top medical journals. "It is difficult for me to describe the degree of panic and irrational thought that...

SAN MARCOS, Calif. (AP) -- Filmmaker and Michigan native Michael Moore has established a scholarship for students who defy the administration at California State University, San Marcos - the same school that canceled his talk last year. The Michael Moore Freedom of Speech Scholarship will award two $2,500 annual scholarships to Cal State San Marcos students "who have done the most to fight for issues of student rights by standing up to the administration," according to a news release issued Wednesday. The first scholarships will be awarded in the 2005-2006 academic year. Winners will be announced in June. Cal State...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal regulators have told the makers of the popular drugs Levitra and Zyrtec to pull some advertisements the regulators said made unsubstantiated claims. The Food and Drug Administration said Friday it sent letters this week notifying Bayer Pharmaceuticals Corp. and Pfizer Inc. that a television commercial for Levitra and three direct-mail advertisements for Zyrtec made unsubstantiated claims of superiority over competing products. In Levitra's case, Bayer also failed to disclose FDA warnings and product information, the letter said. It was the fourth such warning for Pfizer about Zyrtec. The commercial for Levitra, an erectile dysfunction drug, features...

Recovered data on star's hard drive can't be used SANTA MARIA, Calif. - The judge in Michael Jackson’s child molestation trial on Wednesday denied a bid by prosecutors to show jurors evidence -- including teen porn -- seized from the entertainer’s computers at his Neverland Valley Ranch Prosecutors said the four hard drives from the 14 computers police seized from a November 2003 raid on Jackson’s estate showed the pop star was a practiced Web surfer who looked at teen-themed porn sites as well as sites related to Walt Disney, toys and photographs of adoptable children. Jackson’s accuser, now 15,...

LOS ANGELES - Jake Zeiss bolts from his west LA bungalow before 8 a.m., red hair damp and shirttail flapping After seven hours of back-to-back meetings, he volleys for an hour with his tennis pro. Still perspiring, he slides back into his Mercedes, gobbles a nutrition bar and does paperwork on a lap desk while his chauffeur burrows through the nation’s worst rush hour traffic. Jake Zeiss is 9 years old. His paperwork is multiplication tables. He gropes for a pencil that has dropped down the dark, sticky crevasse of the back seat. And he’s tempted by a new yo-yo....

LONDON (AP) - Photos of Prince Charles and his bride-to-be Camilla Parker Bowles grace a set of royal wedding commemorative postage stamps unveiled by Britain's Royal Mail on Wednesday. Britons will have a choice of two Charles and Camilla commemorative stamps, which will go on sale at post offices on April 8, the couple's wedding day. A 30-pence (57-cent) stamp features a profile of the couple looking relaxed and laughing heartily, while a 68-pence ($1.30) stamp, commonly used for posting letters overseas, shows Charles and Camilla in a formal pose. The photographs, which have been approved for use on the...

More than a year after Sarah Nome was deemed healthy and given her discharge papers, the 82-year-old woman stubbornly refuses to leave her hospital bed. Nome admits there is no reason she should be racking up unpaid medical bills - which have now topped $1 million - but says she has nowhere else to turn. Now Kaiser Permanente's San Rafael Medical Center in California is suing her for the cost of her stay and trying to show her the door. "The thing is, I have no medical problem. I've been here more than a year, never had any medication, never...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A man who used an Internet chat room to try to set up a mass suicide on Valentine's Day had been trying to persuade women for at least five years to have sex with him and then kill themselves, a sheriff said Sunday. Gerald Krein faces charges of solicitation to commit murder, but prosecutors are expected to increase the charge to attempted manslaughter Monday, said Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger. Combing through old chat room records, investigators discovered that Krein had been enticing women across North America to commit suicide as far back as 2000, Evinger...

DECATUR, Ga. (AP) -- When Becky Cleaveland is out with her girlfriends, they all pick at salads except for the petite Atlanta woman. She tackles "The Hamdog." The dish, a specialty of Mulligan's, a suburban bar, is a hot dog wrapped by a beef patty that's deep fried, covered with chili, cheese and onions and served on a hoagie bun. Oh yeah, it's also topped with a fried egg and two fistfuls of fries. "The owner says I'm the only girl who can eat a whole one without flinching," Cleaveland said proudly. Amid a national obesity epidemic and the South's...

OWYHEE COUNTY, Idaho (AP) - Idaho's most infamous outlaw, Claude Dallas, killed two state officers in a remote desert 24 years ago in a crime that brought him notoriety as both a callous criminal and a modern-day mountain man at odds with the government. Now a bespectacled 54-year-old, Dallas is to be released from prison Sunday after serving nearly 22 years for the execution-style slayings of Conley Elms and Bill Pogue, officers for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. The case has been among the most polarizing in Idaho history, with some expressing disgust at how Dallas has gained...

After Ted Kennedy's disgusting comments about the Iraqis not doing their own fighting I am sad to see it has become the new Dem talking point. Just a quick glance through the headlines will give any reasoning person an understanding that his statements are not true. Can someone point me in a direction where I can find the death toll among those in the Iraqi police force and army. Thanks

BOSTON -- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers have identified a molecular mechanism in the liver that explains, for the first time, how consuming foods rich in saturated fats and trans-fatty acids causes elevated blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides and increases one's risk of heart disease and certain cancers. In the Jan. 28 issue of Cell, scientists led by Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, report that the harmful effects of saturated and trans fats are set in motion by a biochemical switch, or co-activator, in liver cells called PGC-1beta. Until now, scientists lacked a detailed explanation of how saturated and trans fats caused...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing miniskirts and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man’s face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider’s written account. A draft manuscript obtained by the Associated Press is classified as secret pending a Pentagon review for a planned book that details ways the U.S. military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics to get terror suspects to talk. It’s the most revealing account so far of interrogations at...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Two computer disks that supposedly disappeared last summer, prompting a virtual shutdown of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in fact never existed, according to a report released Friday. In a harshly worded review that described severe security weaknesses at the nuclear laboratory, the U.S. Energy Department concluded that bar codes were recorded for the disks but that the disks themselves were never created. A separate FBI investigation supported that finding, according to the report. “The weaknesses revealed by this incident are severe and must be corrected,” said the report. As punishment for the problems, the Energy Department...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - In Baghdad, armed men hand out fliers threatening people with death if they vote in the upcoming elections. But on the Internet a more effective campaign against the vote is under way. Militant groups have stepped up their anti-election propaganda and threatening statements on the Internet, hoping a stepped up cyberspace psychological operation will suppress turnout and damage the elections' legitimacy. Although only about 2 percent of Iraqis have Internet access, due to weak infrastructure, the threats and messages reach the general public when they are reported by local and international television stations and newspapers. "No...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Nightfall approached, the military curfew drew near and Baghdad residents scurried from shop to shop on one of the city's main streets to stock up on food, water and gasoline before Sunday's national election. Umm Ahmed, a 33-year-old housewife, rushed to a store. Like many Iraqis, she was worried she may not be able to shop in coming days because of curfews and violence. "I am looking for bread," she said, explaining that most of the bakeries near her house are closed. Glancing down the street toward a bread shop where people were waiting in line,...

PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) - For students at Princeton University, final exams are even more stressful this year: The Ivy League school decided to make it harder to earn an A. The crackdown on high grades, part of a national battle against grade inflation at elite schools, has increased anxiety, and in some cases, made friendly students wonder whether they should offer study help to their competitors, er, classmates. "Sometimes, your old high school mentality comes back to haunt you," said Monica Saumoy, recalling the cutthroat competition to get the grades she needed to get into Princeton. As she studied for...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Rescuers on Thursday airlifted food and medical supplies to about 135 people cut off for at least four days by flooding in the mountains above Los Angeles. "It's been tense around here. We're running out of food, so when we get our food shipped in, it should keep the edge off things," Lt. Tim Dowling of the volunteer fire department in the stranded community of Follows Camp said by cell phone. The raging, storm-swollen San Gabriel River washed out three bridges around Follows Camp, tucked into a canyon in the rugged Angeles National Forest about 30...