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It's no secret that smoking causes lung cancer. But what about diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, erectile dysfunction? Fifty years into the war on smoking, scientists still are adding diseases to the long list of cigarettes' harms - even as the government struggles to get more people to kick the habit. A new report from the U.S. Surgeon General's office says the nation is at a crossroads, celebrating decades of progress against the chief preventable killer but not yet poised to finish the job.

SAN JOSE (CBS SF) — A San Jose woman bilked out of $500,000 by a Nigerian scam artist on a dating website luckily recovered $200,000 from a bank in Turkey, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. The case of the 66-year-old woman conned out of her money through a meeting on ChristianMingle.com should serve as a warning about fraud schemes on international dating sites, Deputy District Attorney Cherie Bourland said.

WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Following a primetime broadcast of the Golden Globes that featured prominent images of celebrities smoking e-cigarettes, U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Edward J. Markey (D-MA) today asked NBC Universal and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to take action to ensure that future broadcasts avoid the glamorization of smoking and protect the health of young fans. Electronic cigarettes – or “e-cigs” – have more than doubled in use among high school students in just one year from 2011 to 2012. A report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

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Between global warming suckers getting entombed in ice while trying to prove the Antarctic ice cap has melted to most of America doing a Frigidaire impression, the entire façade of this bogus leftist power grab is crumbling. Understand that the climate change meme is simply the latest attempt by leftists to trick society into remaking itself in their image. It was never about science. It was always about power and money. The scammers have been ably assisted by a palace guard media that eagerly reports the scammers’ every lie while ignoring every inconvenient truth. You’ll skim the mainstream media in...

A Congressional report quietly released last month suggests that bitcoin could be a threat to US monetary policy, and makes the case for continued central banking control. The report, Bitcoin: Questions, Answers, and Analysis of Legal Issues, was published by the Congressional Research Service, which produces research reports for US policy makers. It argues for the benefits of a single, incumbent currency (the US dollar), for stability. “If greater use of bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) leads to multiple monetary units, these benefits could be threatened, particularly if these new currencies continue to exhibit a high degree of price volatility,” the...

Scores of retired New York City police officers, firefighters and prison guards were charged Tuesday with faking psychiatric problems to get federal disability benefits—with some falsely claiming their conditions arose after the Sept. 11 attacks, prosecutors said. Four ringleaders coached the former workers on how to falsely describe symptoms of depression and other mental health problems that allowed them to get payouts high as $500,000, said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. The ringleaders made tens of thousands in dollars in secret kickbacks, Vance said. Among the retirees arrested were 72 city police officers, eight firefighters, five corrections officers...

Inside the Beltway: Polar vortex fits leftist agenda By Jennifer Harper The Washington Times Monday, January 6, 2014 The word of the day is “polar vortex,” which has inspired several thousand press accounts obsessing over the frigid weather pattern now freezing much of the nation — along with a call of fraud. “Right on schedule, the media have to come up with a way to make it sound like this is completely unprecedented, because they’ve got to find a way to attach this to the global warming agenda. And they have. It’s called the polar vortex. The dreaded polar vortex,”...

DAILY CURRANT – Colorado is reconsidering its decision to legalize recreational pot following the deaths of dozens due to marijuana overdoses. According to a report in the Rocky Mountain News, 37 people were killed across the state on January 1st, the first day the drug became legal for all adults to purchase. Several more are clinging onto life in local emergency rooms and are not expected to survive. “It’s complete chaos here,” says Dr. Jack Shepard, chief of surgery at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Denver, “I’ve put five college students in body bags since breakfast and more are arriving...

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION FBI. WASHINGTON DC. ANTI-TERRORIST AND MONETARY CRIMES DIVISION FBI HEADQUARTERS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING 935 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, NW WASHINGTON, D.C. 20535-0001 Attention: Beneficiary, Series of meetings have been held over the past 7 months with the secretary general of the United Nations Organization. This ended 3 days ago. It is obvious that you have not received your fund which is to the tune of $3.5,000,000,00 Million us dollars due to past corrupt Governmental Officials who almost held the fund to themselves for their selfish reason and some individuals who...

Believe it or not, the first cold fusion power plant is now available to pre-order. The E-Cat 1MW Plant, which comes in a standard shipping container, can produce one megawatt of thermal energy, using low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) — a process, often known as cold fusion, that fuses nickel and hydrogen into copper, producing energy 100,000 times more efficiently than combustion. It sounds like E-Cat is now taking orders for delivery in early 2014, priced fairly reasonably at $1.5 million. Has cold fusion — the answer to all our energy needs — finally made its way to market?

On the flat lava plain of Reykjanesbaer, Iceland, near the Arctic Circle, you can find the mines of Bitcoin. To get there, you pass through a fortified gate and enter a featureless yellow building. After checking in with a guard behind bulletproof glass, you face four more security checkpoints, including a so-called man trap that allows passage only after the door behind you has shut. This brings you to the center of the operation, a fluorescent-lit room with more than 100 whirring silver computers, each in a locked cabinet and each cooled by blasts of Arctic air shot up from...

It might be easy to forget, but ultraliberal Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla) is one of those dreaded "greedheads" who deal in millions of dollars of stocks. A story on the front of The Washington Post business section on Sunday reports Grayson “got burned twice by ‘stock loan’ schemes that have cost him nearly $50 million.” Dina El Boghdady reports Grayson is ranked 21st in the House for wealth, with a net worth of “at least $16.7 million, in part due to the value of his stock portfolio.” Grayson lost about $18 million in transactions with Virginia businessman William Dean Chapman,...

Overstock.com – the American internet retailer with over a billion dollars per year in sales – will accept Bitcoin starting in 2014. As Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne told the Financial Times: I think a healthy monetary system at the end of the day isn’t an upside down pyramid based on the whim of a government official, but is based on something that they can’t control. If there’s going to be some part of the population which adopts it… I think that we’ll get that business. And the people who switch to it will respect that we started adopting it. Europe...

The New York City Council voted Thursday to ban the use of e-cigarettes in public places where smoking is prohibited, including offices, restaurants, hospitals, parks and beaches. “Because many of the E-cigarettes are designed to look like cigarettes and be used just like them, they can lead to confusion or confrontation,” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn told CBS New York.

he New York City Council approved legislation Thursday to ban the use of electronic cigarettes from indoor public spaces where smoking is already prohibited. Because many of the e-cigarettes are designed to look like cigarettes and be used just like them, they can lead to confusion or confrontation,” Quinn said

Q uestions about the health benefits of vitamin supplements have been percolating in the medical establishment for decades — even as the multivitamin industry has grown to a multi-billion powerhouse in the U.S. This week, the respected journal the Annals of Internal Medicine put its well-heeled foot down. "We believe that the case is closed — supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful," the journal said in an editorial. "These vitamins should not be used for chronic disease prevention. Enough is enough." Here's Dr. Edgar Miller...

In a perfect world, it wouldn’t be necessary for me to begin this article by affirming that I am not a supporter of smoking, nor am I a paid shill of the tobacco industry. But in our real world–in which a goodly amount of scientific research grant money is awarded on the basis of sensationalized fearmongering results–those who question the validity of such results are often attacked. “Kill the messenger” is hardly a new phenomenon, having been recorded as early as 442 BC in the play Antigone by Sophocles. That said, let’s proceed to the matter at hand: The overblown...

WASHINGTON—Former Energy Secretary Steven Chu is joining the board of directors of a Canadian company that says it has a cost-effective way to capture and reuse carbon dioxide from power plants fired by coal and natural gas. Vancouver-based Inventys Thermal Technologies says it has developed a process that it says uses less energy than conventional carbon capture techniques and is less expensive. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Chu served as energy secretary in President Barack Obama's first term and now teaches physics at Stanford University. "It's a cause I believe in, and it is also something that has a shot at...

A confidential training manual for Obamacare navigators that threatens prosecution for unauthorized dissemination is on the Internet for the world to see. The 217-page manual reads like a primer for Amway or novice car salesmen, offering sales advice on how to disarm potential customers who could be lured into purchasing insurance through exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act. Section headers include “Smile: Maintain a Positive Demeanor,” “Make the Customers Feel Welcome,” “Listen” and — in what must now seem ironic given Barack Obama’s troubles with over-promising — “Build Trust: Be True to Your Word.”