Lima, Ohio, police say Donald "Chip" Pugh was arrested Tuesday in Century, Florida, and is being held on another warrant out of Georgia. Police in Ohio say Pugh also is wanted for failing to appear in court and is a person of interest in several other cases. Lima police say Pugh, displeased with his mug shot, sent them a picture of himself in a sport coat and sunglasses along with a message stating, "Here is a better photo that one is terrible."   read more

“In 2016, 1,685,210 new cancer cases and 595,690 cancer deaths are projected to occur in the United States,” according to the American Cancer Society's latest annual report. "Overall cancer incidence trends...are stable in women, but declining by 3.1% per year in men (from 2009-2012), The cancer death rate has dropped by 23% since 1991... Despite this progress, death rates are increasing for cancers of the liver, pancreas, and uterine corpus."   read more

The photos were taken during a 2011 trip to Sulawesi by British nature photographer David Slater. The monkey took the photos by "purposely pushing the shutter release multiple times, understanding the cause-and-effect relationship between pressing the shutter release, the noise of the shutter, and the change to his reflection in the camera lens," PETA said in its lawsuit. PETA had sought a court order allowing it to it administer all proceeds from the photos for the benefit of the monkey.   read more

"No worker should have to face the choice: Do I take a bathroom break, or do I get paid?" said Adam Welsh, a U.S. Dept. of Labor attorney. The department filed a lawsuit in November 2012, claiming the company violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act because employees weren't earning the minimum wage— $7.25 per hour —when the company required them to clock out for breaks.   read more

Free housing. Free healthcare. Paid college tuition. Thirty days of vacation each year. The U.S. military might be the closest thing the U.S. has to a socialist utopia. All basic needs are taken care of. Families with children get more money than singles. Morale-boosting programs such as vacation lodging, golf courses and movie theaters. “The military invests time and money in service members while making the maximum effort to keep their morale high,” Scott Beauchamp wrote in The Atlantic.   read more

Conventional rare earth element (REE) extraction requires the grinding of huge amounts of hard rock. It is "energy intensive, disturbs large areas of pristine land, and generates large volumes of toxic tailings,” reported HSNW. Now WVU has been given nearly $1 million by the Dept. of Energy to see if REEs can be extracted from coal waste. In Pennsylvania and West Virginia alone, it is estimated [coal mining] generates about three times the current U.S. demand for total REEs.   read more

Both cars and guns killed Americans at the same rate in 2014: 10.3 fatalities per 100,000 people. Firearm related deaths included homicides, suicides and accidental deaths, while motor vehicle deaths resulted from car crashes, collisions between cars, and pedestrian struck by autos. Christopher Ingraham at The Washington Post reported that auto deaths have been dropping since the 1960s, while gun deaths have erratically gone up over time.   read more

Jane, a retired science teacher, said the solar technology might interfere with nearby plants’ ability to carry out photosynthesis. “She added that no one could tell her solar panels didn’t cause cancer,” the Huffington Post reported. Lane said Woodland had already approved three major solar farms within the past year, and that the decision to reject the fourth had more to do with space and location because it “would have completely boxed the town in with solar farms.”   read more

Research until now showed that people tend to get happier as they grow older, at least until age 65. But starting right after the Great Recession the trend shifted. Since 2010, adults have reported less happiness than young people, “reversing old notions of how happiness changes across the life span,” Stephanie Pappas wrote at The Washington Post. “My conclusion is that our current culture is giving teens what they need, but not mature adults what they need,” psychologist Jean Twenge said.   read more

President Obama has called for more gun control laws on 16 occasions, which triggered an increase in gun sales and investments. Since 2010, shares of Smith and Wesson have risen by 400%. At the same time, initiatives for divestment of stakes in the gun industry were launched following the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the recent San Bernardino attack. Some of these are being sponsored by cities and major retirement funds.   read more

This year Montana was at the top of the list again. The state was the worst in the country for its traffic fatality rate and was among the worst in several other categories, including speeding, careless driving and failure to obey traffic laws. “Montana has the potentially deadly combination of high speed limits and severe winter weather that could really be driving up fatality rates,” said Tyler Spraul, director of the study. Second place went to South Carolina and New Mexico in a tie.   read more

Pew Research Center conducted a survey last year to discover what differences appear between telephone polls and those conducted online. Pew found that questions asked on the phone about the quality of a respondent’s life tended to have more positive answers than those posed online. Societal discrimination was another area that had a noticeable difference, with telephone subjects more often saying gays and lesbians, Hispanics and blacks face a lot of discrimination.   read more

Nix, a federal employee, gave a copy of his film to the FBI, but sold the original to then-wire service UPI for $5,000. UPI promised to keep it for 25 years. Nix died in 1972. When Nix’s granddaughter, Gayle Nix Jackson, tried to recover the film from UPI, the wire service said it no longer had it. Jackson has been trying for years to get the government to return the film to her family and has now filed a lawsuit seeking its return.   read more

At the bottom of the popularity scale is Kansas’ governor, Sam Brownback, with a 26% approval rating. Brownback is widely disliked in his state for his financial policies that have forced massive cuts in school funding and infrastructure spending. Second from the bottom is Republican Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, with 35%. Since Republicans hold more than 60% of the governors’ seats in the United States, it makes sense they would land at both ends of the scale.   read more

Seventy-two percent of Americans believe that the country is still in recession, although the Great Recession ended in 2009. Janell Ross at The Washington Post said these numbers may reflect how bad off many people still are financially. “A situation where people’s personal economic circumstances remain either so bad or so reduced from what they were in the run up to the Great Recession that they continue to view the economy through irrationally grim glasses,” she wrote.   read more

Supporters of the laws say the change will help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. But some medical professionals say the new laws don’t go far enough, preferring that birth control be available over the counter, cutting both pharmacists and doctors out of the process. “My basic tenet is there should be nobody between the patient and the pill,” said Dr. Mark DeFrancesco. “I’m afraid we’re going to create a new model that...[will] derail the over-the-counter movement.”   read more