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Fighting obesity by taxing sugary drinks and restricting junk food advertisements aimed at children has support from a wide majority of residents surveyed in a Southern California public health study released on Thursday.     The findings from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health come as friction mounts between the beverage industry and health advocates over the best way to fight obesity and diabetes, tied by studies to over-consumption of soda, sweets and junk food. “There have been a lot of arguments against this sort of policy," including claims it will cost the poor more to buy food, said Paul Simon, head of chronic disease prevention for the county and lead author of the study. But Simon said nearly two-thirds of those surveyed by the county in a broad 2011 assessment of public attitudes toward health issues, said they supported a soda tax, and three-quarters favored limiting junk food class="mandelbrot_refrag"> advertising . Public health ad

The number of U.S. fathers staying at home nearly doubled since the late 1980s, led by a sharp rise in child care by dads, a report on Thursday showed. High joblessness during the 2007-2009 recession helped boost the number of stay-at-home dads to 2 million in 2012, up from 1.1 million in 1989, the report by the Pew Research Center said. Almost a quarter of those fathers said they were at home because they could not find a job. But 21 percent were mainly staying home to care for family, a fourfold increase from 1989, the Pew report showed. Senior researcher Gretchen Livingston said the findings underscored experts' belief that gender roles between men and women were converging, with men taking on more caregiving tasks and women increasingly becoming breadwinners. "This increase in the number and share of stay-at-home dads would certainly fit with that," she said.One sign of convergence is that the amount of time that fathers are spending with their children has trip

The din of voices haggling over movies and pitching TV series, as familiar as the trademark meatloaf and grilled salmon, will soon disappear from Kate Mantilini, the Beverly Hills restaurant whose booths have long been a mainstay of Hollywood's power lunch crowd. Situated on Wilshire Boulevard in the heart of Beverly Hills, Kate Mantilini - a favorite of comedian Mel Brooks and late director Billy Wilder - will close its doors and pack up its wood-backed booths on June 14 after 27 years. "Many, many deals were made in those booths," said Adam Lewis, the restaurant's chief executive who made the decision to close after a rent increase. An outpost in Woodland Hills in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley will remain open. "There's a semblance of privacy in there, but you can hear everything everybody is saying," added Lewis, 59, whose older brother David is the executive chef. "I've listened to pitches go down; some were really good, some I c

A colonel in Russia's FSB security service has been jailed for stealing a rare bible by 15th century German printer Johannes Gutenberg and trying to sell it for about $1.15 million, a fraction of its true value, a court spokeswoman said on Friday. Sergei Vedishchev was sentenced on Thursday to 3-1/2 years in a penal colony, and two other FSB officers received lesser terms for helping him seek a buyer for the two-volume bible, spokeswoman Irina Zhirnova said. She said Vedishchev had stolen the bible from a safe at Moscow University, where he was responsible for security.   true       He and his two accomplices arranged to sell the two volumes to a collector for 40 million roubles ($1.15 million), but were arrested in May 2013 after arranging to meet him in a restaurant near Moscow, in a sting operation arranged by the FSB. Zhirnova said the rare bible was 'priceless', and experts judged it would fetch at least 15 million euros ($20.4 million), and maybe significantly m

Sao Paulo is bigger and the capital moved to Brasília 54 years ago, but Rio de Janeiro, with its white beaches, blue ocean and jungle-covered mountains, is still the place that comes to mind when people think of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Brazil . Home to samba and Carnival, bossa nova and modern architecture, imperial palaces and shantytowns, notorious drug gangs and world-renowned telenovellas, the 448-year-old harbor city is a microcosm of Latin America's largest country. Soccer fans coming to Rio for the World Cup will be too late for the city's famed Carnival bash, but they'll also miss the energy-sapping Southern Hemisphere summer heat.   true       Rio's legendary Maracana stadium will host seven World Cup games: class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Argentina vs Bosnia and Herzegovina; defending champion class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Spain vs Chile; Belgium vs Russia; Ecuador vs class="mandelbrot_refrag"> France

Seventy years ago, Reuters correspondent Doon Campbell was the first reporter to set foot on the Normandy beaches with the sea-borne forces seeking to liberate Europe from Nazi class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Germany . _0"> Campbell was 24 at the time, the youngest British war correspondent covering the invasion. He stayed with Reuters for 30 years, covering other events including the assassination of Gandhi. He died in 2003, aged 83. The following is taken from his book ‘Magic Mistress – A 30 year affair with Reuters’, published in 2000: "A smudge, brown on black in the far distance, marked our landing-area. The craft zigzagged the last mile or two, dodging the shells now coming out to meet us. There were ships everywhere, one or two smoking or even sinking, some fouling uncleared obstacles, but most of them swinging massively towards the hazy coastline that was Normandy. "For the final lap, the skipper opened the throttle, and at 09.06 we rammed Swor

They have been the kings of the British capital's roads for over a century but now the often opinionated drivers of London's iconic black taxi cabs are battling a high-technology rival that threatens their dominance. In their sights is Uber Technologies Inc., a San Francisco-based company whose application lets people summon rides at the touch of a smartphone button and uses satellite navigation to calculate the distance for fares. The drivers of black taxis say Uber, backed by investors such as Goldman Sachs and class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Google , is being used as a taximeter and thus contravenes a 1998 British law reserving the right to use a meter for licensed black taxis.   true       Uber says the application used by their drivers complies with all local regulations and that they are being targeted because of their success in winning customers. A variety of apps are available for summoning both black cabs - bulbous, purpose-built vehicles which offer a