Melissa Healy

Nearly 6 in 10 Americans say that if they were to buy a new gun, they would willingly buy one equipped with technology preventing it from being fired by an unauthorized user, a new national survey has found.

Although we profess to hate it, lying is common, useful and pretty much universal. It is one of the most durable threads in our social fabric and an important bulwark of our self-esteem.

As public health leaders step up their efforts to temper Americans' thirst for sugar-sweetened beverages, a new set of published studies has found that removing sugary drinks from kids' diets slows weight gain in heavy teens and reduces the odds that normal-weight children will become obese.

As American health authorities prosecute an all-out war against obesity, a small cadre of researchers is warning that the nation's 78 million obese adults and 12.5 million obese children are already suffering collateral damage.