Month: November 2013

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama was briefed on a security incident at the Los Angeles International Airport on Friday, and White House officials are in touch with law enforcement officials on the ground, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Steve Holland; editing by Jackie Frank)

By Cameron French TORONTO (Reuters) – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's lawyer said on Friday his client was not smoking crack cocaine in a video that has been seen only by a few but has dominated Canadian headlines for months, and he urged the city's police to release the video to the public. His comments come a day after Toronto police said they had recovered a copy of a video that is "consistent" with one reportedly seen by journalists at the Toronto Star newspaper and by media blog Gawker earlier this year. Both the Star and Gawker said the video shows the mayor smoking what appears to be crack cocaine. Ford himself has denied the existence of the video and said he does not use crack cocaine.

In a mailer to Virginia voters, the conservative Heritage Action calls out President Obama for breaking his promise to save families up to $2,500 in premiums per year under his health care overhaul.

Chances of having a baby this large are approximately one in 100,000.        

By Shereen Jegtvig NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Eating a bit of flaxseed each day might help lower high blood pressure, a new study suggests. Researchers said it’s too early to swap out blood pressure medication for the fiber-filled seeds just yet. But if future studies confirm the new results, flax might be a cheap way to treat high blood pressure, they added. But so far, its effect on high blood pressure, or hypertension, has been better studied among animals than humans.

[7 Foods You Can Overdose On]. "For most healthy people, a high-protein diet generally isn't harmful if followed for a short time, such as three to four months, …

By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal appeals court in Washington joined other courts on Friday by ruling for an employer who raised religious objections to a provision of the 2010 U.S. healthcare law requiring companies to provide insurance that covers birth control. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on a 2-1 vote in favor of Catholic brothers Francis and Philip Gilardi, owners of Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics, who do not want to provide insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion. The legal question of whether employers can exercise their religious rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to avoid complying with the so-called “contraception mandate” is almost certain to eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote that as a result of the regulation, the brothers “can either abide by the sacred tenets of their faith, pay a penalty of over $14 million, and cripple the companies they have spent a lifetime building, or they become complicit in a grave moral wrong.” The latest ruling brings to four the number of appeals courts to rule for employers, including preliminary decisions, while two others have ruled that the regulation must be complied with, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.