Free Republic

A Florida man is under arrest after police say he stole from a gas station and left his debit card with his name on it at the scene of the crime. Deputies with the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office responded to an alarm at a gas station early Sunday morning in Palm Coast, Florida, and found the front door of the business unlocked, Fox 35 Orlando reported. After searching the gas station, deputies found a debit card with the name Lantz Kurtz sitting on the counter near a register. Security camera footage showed a man entering the store from the back...

ANNAPOLIS — Maryland health advocates are celebrating an upcoming tax increase on cigars and smokeless tobacco, but they aren’t stopping there. Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, is expected to sign a bill Tuesday that will raise the state’s tax on non-cigarette tobacco products for the first time since 1999, in an effort to combat what state health officials say is increased use of the products among teens. The measure is part of $260 million in tax increases that were approved during last week’s special session and will be signed into law Tuesday. About $247 million of the increases will come...

Obesity is more dangerous than smoking and will dramatically shorten the lives of millions, a landmark study has found. While smoking reduces life by an average of ten years, the research says being seriously overweight can cut life expectancy by as much as 13 years. The Foresight report, written by 250 leading scientists, says Britain's obesity crisis is so severe that it would take at least 30 years to reverse. If current trends continue, by 2050 about 60 per cent of men, 50 per cent of women and 25 per cent of children in the UK will be clinically obese...