BRUSSELS — Half of Europeans are obese or overweight, but citizens do not see obesity as a major health threat, a food industry report said on Tuesday. According to the report, commissioned by Kraft, the world’s second-largest food and beverage company, Europeans view obesity as a problem that affects others, but not themselves. Of 15 health concerns listed in the report, obesity and being overweight ranked fifth and ninth respectively. Cancer and heart disease topped the poll. The report, ‘Understanding the Health Gap’, was carried out in partnership with the market research company GfK NOP. Despite growing child obesity rates, the problem is not a top concern for European mothers. From a list of 14 health concerns regarding their children, ‘being overweight’ and ‘obesity’ ranked equally in sixth place. On Tuesday, a report by Britain’s National Audit Office and others said the government could miss a target to halt the rise of obesity in children by 2010. Britain has the highest levels of self-reported obese or overweight people in Europe and obesity costs the British taxpayer 1 billion pounds ($1.75 billion) per year. In 2003, 13.7 percent of youngsters were obese. These latest […]

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court dealt a setback Tuesday to abortion clinics in a two-decade-old legal fight over abortion protests, ruling that federal extortion and racketeering laws cannot be used to ban demonstrations. The 8-0 decision ends a case that the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had kept alive despite a 2003 ruling by the high court that lifted a nationwide injunction on anti-abortion groups led by Joseph Scheidler and others. Anti-abortion groups brought the appeal after the appellate court sought to determine whether the injunction could be supported by charges that protesters had made threats of violence. In Tuesday’s ruling, Justice Stephen Breyer said Congress did not intend to create “a freestanding physical violence offense” in the federal extortion law known as the Hobbs Act. Instead, Breyer wrote, Congress chose to address violence outside abortion clinics in 1994 by passing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which set parameters for such protests. Social activists and the AFL-CIO had sided with abortion demonstrators in arguing that lawsuits and injunctions based on the federal extortion law could be used to thwart their efforts to change public policy or agitate for better wages and […]

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