Featured Articles From the Los Angeles Times

Before John Lennon imagined "living life in peace," he conjured "no heaven … / no hell below us …/ and no religion too. " No religion: What was Lennon summoning? For starters, a world without "divine" messengers, like Osama bin Laden, sparking violence. A world where mistakes, like the avoidable loss of life in Hurricane Katrina, would be rectified rather than chalked up to "God's will. " Where politicians no longer compete to prove who believes more strongly in the irrational and untenable.

Even as health costs continue to rise, Medicare beneficiaries will see the average price of a Part D drug plan decline slightly next year, the Obama administration announced Thursday, offering some relief amid pressure to cut the federal health insurance program for the elderly. The Part D drug benefit, created under the George W. Bush administration, allows seniors and others on Medicare to sign up for a privately administered, government-subsidized health plan to get their prescriptions.

The kid in the back wants me to define "logic. " The girl next to him looks bewildered. The boy in front of me dutifully takes notes even though he has severe auditory processing issues and doesn't understand a word I'm saying. Eight kids forgot their essays, but one has a good excuse because she had another epileptic seizure last night. The shy, quiet girl next to me hasn't done homework for weeks, ever since she was jumped by a knife-wielding gangbanger as she walked to school. The boy next to her is asleep with his head on the desk because he works nights at a factory to support his family.

Ford Motor Co. is sharply expanding a recall of its popular F-150 pickup truck to about 1.2 million vehicles because front-seat airbags could inflate without the vehicle being involved in a collision. Federal safety regulators said there have been at least 269 incidents — more than a third of which resulted in injuries — making it the most "ever recorded in any inadvertent airbag deployment investigation or recall" in the history of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Most people can count calories. Many have a clue about where fat lurks in their diets. However, fewer give carbohydrates much thought, or know why they should. But a growing number of top nutritional scientists blame excessive carbohydrates ? not fat ? for America's ills. They say cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. "Fat is not the problem," says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday cautioned consumers against using quinine for leg cramps, warning that the drug could cause severe side effects, including death. Quinine, sold in this country under the brand name Qualaquin, is approved for treatment of uncomplicated malaria, but has a long history of use as a remedy for leg cramps, especially at night. In many countries, it is sold over the counter. Studies have shown that it can reduce the incidence of cramps by one-third to one-half but that as many as one in every 25 users can suffer serious side effects.

The debate surrounding gun control laws has reignited following the Fast and Furious investigation, and the latest volley was launched Friday. Two House Democrats introduced a bill that would make the trafficking of firearms to known felons or someone intending to commit a felony a federal offense. The bill, put forth by Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), was drafted in response to testimony from law enforcement agents, who have said current law leaves gaps in enforcement against straw purchasers who often supply drug cartels with weapons.

Midway through a 1979 Christmas cruise on their way to Hawaii, Dorothy and John Henry Peckham of Whittier drifted away from their bridge game and joined in another shipboard activity: tossing bottles into the Pacific with their names inside in the hope that someone would find them someday and write back.

Scientists at a meeting in Grenoble, France, stoked speculation last week that physicists at the world's biggest particle accelerator may soon provide a first look at the elusive Higgs boson — the final piece of evidence needed to prove that the Standard Model of particle physics, which explains the behavior of subatomic particles, is correct. The $10-billion Large Hadron Collider was built near Geneva by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, to create exotic particles that physicists believe existed in the moments after the Big Bang.

People may disagree about the value of the pending debt-ceiling compromise, but the one thing that seems to unite just about everyone, regardless of their political leanings, is that the recent negotiations were a low point in the political process, according to a poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the Washington Post. While the Washington political world seemed sharply divided in the partisan deadlock of democracy, the rest of the country found unity in seeing the misery.

Times are tough enough for Californians; they're even tougher for Californians' teeth. "One-quarter of all adults and 28% of children in California have untreated dental caries [cavities]," says Len Finocchio, a senior program officer at the California Healthcare Foundation, a health advocacy group. "Our research tells us that many people in California have been avoiding routine care that might have cost about $100 for a checkup and cleaning, and then find themselves in the emergency room, where they get only an antibiotic, a bill that can average over $600 and instructions to see a dentist."

More than 36 million pounds of fresh and frozen ground turkey are being voluntarily recalled by food giant Cargill Inc. because of the possibility of salmonella contamination. Health authorities say the poultry could be contaminated with Salmonella Heidelberg, a strain of salmonella that killed a California man and caused the illness of 79 others. Cargill said the ground turkey was produced at the company's Springdale, Ark., facility between Feb. 20 and Aug. 2. Production at the plant has been suspended.