The Exercise Pill

Ever feel lethargic, lazy or listless? Are you overweight? Are you a couch potato? Does taking the garbage out leave you breathless? Well, you know that a good exercise regime, 2 or 3 times a week, could give you back that pep in your step and get you feeling young and energetic again......or you could just take a pill and forget about all that sweat and exertion.

Scientists have developed a drug that gives you all the benefits of exercise without getting all sweaty.....if you are a mouse!

Sedentary mice that took the drug for four weeks burned more calories and had less fat than untreated mice. And when tested on a treadmill, they could run about 44 percent farther and 23 percent longer than untreated mice.

"We have exercise in a pill," said Ron Evans of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and an author of the study. "With no exercise, you can take a drug and chemically mimic it."

Scientists are also looking at another drug that has similar benefits for mice who exercised. This second drug made their workout much more effective at boosting endurance.

After a month of taking that drug and exercising, mice could run 68 percent longer and 70 percent farther than other mice that exercised but didn't get the drug.

The first, no-exercise, drug is is called AICAR and is in advanced human testing to see if it can prevent a complication of heart bypass surgery. But, noting that this drug might be used by athletes looking for an unfair advantage, Evans said his team has developed detection tests for use by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Nevertheless, experts who study muscles agree that a drug like AICAR may prove useful someday in treating obesity and diabetes. AICAR stimulates muscles to remove sugar from the blood. People who can't exercise because of a medical condition like joint pain or heart failure might also benefit from such a drug.

This drug is still in the experimental stage and scientists are amazed that it even works. According to Ron Evans who performed the experiments on the mice at the suggestion of another scientist:

"Honestly, I just don't know how that happens. Whether it would happen in a person, I don't know. I think it's a small miracle it happened at all."

Even if the pill proved to be safe for people to take, it may not provide the same benefits as in mice. Laurie Goodyear of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston said exercise has such widespread benefits in the body that she doubts any one pill will ever be able to supply all of them.

"For the majority of people," she said, "it would be better to do exercise than to take a pill."

God Gets Arrested Near Church

It may surprise you to hear that God got arrested near a church on cocaine charges! Its true, God Lucky Howard, 39, a self-employed mortgage broker, living at 3812 N. Avon Ave., Tampa was arrested. He was charged with one count each of delivery of cocaine within 1,000 feet of a church, a school and public housing; one count each of delivery of cocaine with intent to sell within 1,000 feet of a church, a school and public housing; and two counts of possession of cocaine.

According to the police report, on April 28th police bought 3.4 grams of cocaine from him at his home. A month later, police served a search warrant on that same address and found a safe in the bedroom closet containing three plastic bags with 22.5 grams of cocaine. They also found a digital scale with cocaine residue.

This was not God's first offense. In 1995 had pleaded guilty to a similar charge and in 2003 he spent 18 months in state prison, again on a cocaine charge. He is currently held in the Orient Road jail on an $86,500 bail.

Just in case you didn't know, God Lucky Howard is not the only God in Florida, nor is he even the only God in trouble. There are other Gods in the Florida penal system:

• Glory of God Cummings of Pensacola


• God Fearing Philippe of Lakeland


• None God of Jupiter


• God Medeiros of New Port Richey


• God Goldman of Dade County


• God V. Torres of Dade County and


• Allahzar God Allah, 62, has been in a Lake County prison for almost a quarter century serving a life sentence for first-degree murder.

God has also been spotted elsewhere. An Illinois judge gave a man named Steve Kreuscher permission to legally change his name to "In God We Trust". The 57-year-old artist and bus driver said the name grew from his devotion to God......and in his own words:

"There are billions of artists out there. If you don't do something to stand out in the crowd, the world won't recognize you."

This got me to thinking about Jesus Christ. Where can the son of God be found? Well the closest I got was a cocaine drug dealer named Spider who was waiting for Jesus in Dallas:

Drug traffickers in Mexico mixed as much as six pounds of the illicit white powder into a paste and used it to make a regal statue of the Christian savior, complete with painted-on flowing hair and a gold cape. They were hoping that it would not attract the attention of border guards in Laredo....wrong. Drug-sniffing dogs at the border exposed Jesus as nothing but a mixture of cocaine and paste.

"These people will use anything, including religious icons to smuggle their drugs," said Steven Robertson, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, in Washington. "It is sacrilegious."

The plot quietly began to unfold when the woman who was a passenger in a car driving into the United States said a man told her he had too many things to carry, and would pay her $80 if she'd drop the statue at the Laredo bus station, according to a court document filed.

While trying to enter the United States, Customs and Border Patrol inspectors grew suspicious and checked her out. The woman later said she was unaware the statue was cocaine and took federal agents along for her rendezvous. After being arrested, the man, 61-year-old Bernardino Garcia-Cordova, admitted the statue was his property. Garcia-Cordova, who now faces cocaine importation and possession charges, told investigators a man he knows only by a Spanish nickname, La Araña, or The Spider, told him to take it to Dallas.

Hopefully the Spider has not put too much faith in the coming of Jesus, because it is not going to happen!!

Where's the Weed?

Japanese Customs officials at Tokyo-Narita airport made the embarrassing admission that they lost 142g (5 ounces) of the marijuana derivative hashish. In an unauthorized test involving drug-sniffing dogs, the hash was stored in a metal container stuffed into the pocket of a soft, black suitcase belonging to one of 283 passengers traveling on Cathay Pacific Flight 520 from Hong Kong to Narita, which arrived at 3:31 p.m. on Sunday. The 142g of hash had a reported street value of $10,000 (about 1 million yen)

The customs agent who hid the hash could not remember which suitcase he had put it in, and the drug-sniffing dogs were unable to locate the container. The agent had conducted the test on a passenger's bag against regulations. Normally a training suitcase is used. Customs regulations require customs officials to prepare luggage for training exercises like the one carried out on Sunday and specifically ban travelers' baggage from being used. Customs officials said four customs officials had two sniffer dogs working a luggage conveyor at Narita, but neither was able to find the drugs. Manpei Tanaka, head of Customs’ Narita branch, apologized for the incident.

“It’s extremely regrettable that we have invited this sort of situation on ourselves. We will investigate the facts behind the case, provide thorough training and deal strictly with those involved,” Tanaka said.

The 38-year-old officer responsible for the incident was quoted by the spokeswoman as saying:

"I knew that using passengers' bags is prohibited, but I did it because I wanted to improve the sniffer dog's ability," the officer was quoted as saying. "The dogs have always been able to find it before... I became overconfident that it would work," he said.

Police began to contact passengers who were on the flight and issued an appeal to the public:

"If by some chance passengers find it in their suitcase, we're asking them to return it."

Fortunately, a shocked passenger found the drugs. Japan Today reports that the passenger discovered a small metal box containing the hashish tucked in a side compartment of his suitcase when he got to his hotel. "The man called police who returned the cannabis to Narita airport", Japan Today said.