By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Men with low levels of vitamin D have an elevated risk for a heart attack, researchers said on Monday in the latest study to identify important possible health benefits from the “sunshine vitamin.”

In the study, men classified as deficient in vitamin D were about 2 1/2 times more likely to have a heart attack than those with higher levels of the vitamin.

“Those with low vitamin D, on top of just being at higher risk for heart attack in general, were at particularly high risk to have a fatal heart attack,” study author Dr. Edward Giovannucci of the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said in a telephone interview.

The study involved 454 health professionals ages 40 to 75 who had suffered a nonfatal heart attack or died of heart disease, as well as 900 other men with no history of cardiovascular disease. They were followed for 10 years after providing blood samples to measure their vitamin D levels.

The researchers compared those who were deficient in vitamin D — no more than 15 nanograms per milliliter of blood — to men who were in at least the lower end of the normal range — at least 30 nanograms per milliliter of blood.

The body makes vitamin D when the skin is exposed to sunlight. Milk commonly is fortified with it, and it is found in fatty fish like salmon.

Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium and is considered important for bone health. In adults, vitamin D deficiency can lead to osteoporosis, and it can lead to rickets in children.

A number of recent studies have indicated vitamin D also may offer a variety of other health benefits, including protecting against types of cancer including colon and breast cancer, peripheral artery disease and tuberculosis.

In January, researchers led by Dr. Thomas Wang of Harvard Medical School reported findings that fit with the new study, showing that people with low vitamin D levels have a higher risk for heart attack, heart failure and stroke.

Giovannucci said there is enough evidence about the value of vitamin D to encourage people to ensure they have normal levels. He said people can learn their vitamin D levels by having their doctor give them a blood test. Those whose levels are too low can take vitamin D supplements, he said.

“Many people have low vitamin levels,” Giovannucci said.

“Traditionally, physicians have only been concerned about the bone effects. But perhaps having these chronically low levels of vitamin D may be having these subtle physiological changes in a lot of tissues,” Giovannucci added.

Giovannucci said there could be a number of ways in which vitamin D may protect against heart attack. He said it might lower blood pressure, regulate inflammation, reduce calcification of coronary arteries, affect the heart muscle or reduce respiratory infections in winter.

The study was published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

(Editing by Maggie Fox)

By JOHN WILEN, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK - Retail gas prices fell slightly Friday — the first time in 18 days they haven’t risen to a new record — and analysts say pump prices may be peaking for the year. Oil futures, meanwhile, soared after Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish rebel bases in Iraq injected some supply concerns into the market and the Labor Department’s employment report gave investors reason to be optimistic about the economy.

The national average price of a gallon of regular gas fell 0.1 cent overnight to $3.622, according to a survey of gas stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. That’s the first time since April 14 that retail prices have fallen. Diesel prices fell 0.2 cent to a national average of $4.249 a gallon.

“It could go up just a little bit more,” said Fred Rozell, retail pricing director at the Oil Price Information Service, in Wall, N.J., but, “I think it’s running out of steam.”

Prices could reach $3.70 a gallon, “at the most,” Rozell said, but are highly unlikely to rise to $4 on a national basis. Still, motorists in parts of states such as California and Hawaii are paying $4 right now.

Soaring gas prices are cutting demand for gasoline, and analysts have long theorized that falling demand will eventually force prices lower. However, gas prices bucked those forecasts for most of the spring and followed oil’s sharp gains.

On Friday, light, sweet crude for June delivery rose $3.80 to $116.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel bases inside Iraq for three hours overnight, a rebel spokesman said Friday. When conflict breaks out in the Middle East, investors often buy on concerns that supplies will be disrupted.

Some investors were also buying crude on a view that the economy is improving, analysts said. The Labor Department said employers cut far fewer jobs in April than expected.

“If the jobs (situation) isn’t as bad, maybe we’d see a snap back in demand,” said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago.

For a change, investors shrugged off the dollar, which rose on a theory that the employment data means the Federal Reserve is less likely to cut interest rates further this year; falling rates tend to weaken the dollar.

A rising dollar undercuts the appeal of commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation, and makes oil more expensive to investors overseas. The rising greenback helped pull oil prices back to nearly $110 a barrel on Thursday. Oil’s climb to almost $120 on Monday from about $64 a year ago was largely due to a protracted decline by the dollar, analysts say.

However, oil’s connection to the dollar can be broken when other factors predominate, as they did Friday.

“It’s not a perfect relationship, and on any given day, oil will choose to go its own way,” said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill.

Still, analysts think the market’s decision to shrug off Friday’s stronger dollar will be short lived, particularly if the Fed holds interest rates steady and the dollar continues to gain.

“It will be difficult to sustain (oil price) rallies in the face of any further strength in the dollar,” Ritterbusch said.

And that means retail gas prices will likely rise no higher than $3.65 to $3.70 a gallon, before falling back toward $3 a gallon over the summer, he said.

In other Nymex trading Friday, June gasoline futures rose 7.65 cents to $2.9547 a gallon, and June heating oil futures rose 9.61 cents to $3.2138 a gallon. June natural gas futures rose 21.8 cents to $10.779 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, June Brent crude futures gained $3.65 to $114.15 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

___

Associated Press writer C. Onur Ant in Istanbul, Turkey, contributed to this report.

Of all life’s ironies, this may be among the most unusual, the most awkward and the most significant.
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For much of his life, Albert Gore Jr. was prepared, or was preparing, for the presidency. The first time he ran, in 1988, he seemed almost too young. The second time he ran, in 2000, he seemed almost too old.

Now that he realizes that the great gold ring is beyond his powers, he finds himself with the power to determine who might grasp that ring, or at least the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Because it may be true that the only person in the United States who can bring the 2008 primary campaign to a halt is Al Gore — and he knows it.

A decade ago, Gore seemed the stiffest of the stiff. Today, as an advocate for the environment with a Nobel and an Oscar on his resume, he is the coolest of the cool. His sermons sometimes won blank stares in the Senate and in the vice presidency. They win rapt attention now.

When Gore — who once skewered himself by being carted around a stage on a mover’s dolly as if he were a plank of wood — spoke, millions yawned. Today when he speaks, millions listen.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York can still win the Democratic nomination; Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois hasn’t clinched it yet, and indeed remains far from what the sportswriters call the “magic number” that ends a pennant race. Mrs. Clinton fights fiercely, and her life story shows that she doesn’t possess the genes to quit. But if New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Mr. Obama dealt a serious blow to Clinton’s electoral credibility, then Gore’s could be fatal.

As the drumbeat to push Mrs. Clinton out of the race increases, Mr. Gore is weighing whether to speak out — one way or the other.

But first a few words about the essential Gore, who, like Mrs. Clinton, has been transformed into a cartoon and is rarely understood as a human being. For someone so often regarded as having been bred for the presidency, he is a breed apart: more a dreamer and a seeker than a planner and a schemer, and yet always — always — dutiful and disciplined.

He is at once rebellious (only a rebel would have endorsed Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont for president in 2004) and deeply loyal (only a loyalist would have stood by President Bill Clinton so prominently during the impeachment crisis at the end of the last century).

He is at once obsessed with the past (nothing moves him quite so deeply as tales of courage from the civil-rights movement) and obsessed with the future (which explains his crusade against global warming). He is at once a traditionalist (he and his wife fought smut in popular culture) and an early adopter (he had a computer long before most politicians, and was the first mainstream pol with a Blackberry).

Mr. Gore — deeply serious in public, wickedly funny in private — is at once deeply cerebral (he once held a dinner party to discuss the metaphor) and deeply emotional (talk to him sometime about the canoe ride he took with his father after the elder Gore lost his Senate re-election battle in 1970). He is at once a team player (he described President Bush as “my commander in chief” less than a year after Mr. Bush lost the popular vote to him but was awarded the presidency) and an individual (he was a lone wolf in taking on the chemical companies after the Love Canal and Times Beach environmental catastrophes).

He fought to be on Bill Clinton’s national ticket in 1992 after watching the Arkansas governor take his 1988 profile (Southern moderate) and his 1988 strategy (play down Iowa, make a stand in New Hampshire, clean up on Super Tuesday) and take it to the nomination. He fought Mrs. Clinton for influence in the White House. He was deeply offended by President Clinton’s conduct in the Oval Office, but willingly endured the catcalls and the criticism when he didn’t invite Mr. Clinton to take part in the 2000 campaign and then, convinced that Mr. Clinton’s behavior had doomed his presidential hopes, stoically endured the quadrennial Democratic spectacle of an angry party turning on the nominee it had selected with confetti-and-balloons enthusiasm only four months earlier.

Now, insert this deeply complex, deeply conflicted but somehow liberated symbol of the baby boom generation — remember that politicians seek the presidency so as to win a Nobel Prize, not the other way around — into the deeply complex, deeply conflicted political situation the Democrats face today.

Some people who know Mr. Gore believe he will intercede, tell Mrs. Clinton that she cannot win and must, for the good of the party she seeks to lead, stand down. Some believe he will hold his tongue, knowing that such an intercession might diminish him by appearing to settle a score.

No other American of modern times has made a comeback quite as dramatic as Gore’s, with the possible exception of Richard Nixon, who was denied the presidency in 1960 and awarded it in 1968 and again in 1972. No other American of modern times has proved the point so clearly as Gore that policy is more important than politics.

Mr. Gore’s greatest moments of political joy came during those heady days of the 1992 campaign when he and his wife bused through the countryside with the Clintons. Those who know Gore say that Mr. Obama’s insurgency, designed to sweep away the old politics, is just the sort of movement that Gore applauds. Read his recent book, “The Assault on Reason,” and you will see why.

Five of the last seven presidents, presented with a similar chance to influence the choice of a party nominee, would have waded in, delighting in the opportunity to get even and regain the limelight. Lyndon B. Johnson (who lived by the shiv), Richard M. Nixon (the trickster), Gerald R. Ford (wilier than his Wolverine reputation), Jimmy Carter (not so saintly after all) and Bill Clinton (winning is everything) would have done it. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, believing that silence in such matters was eloquence, would not.

The voters still have a lot to say. Before it is over, Mr. Gore may have something to say as well.
[Source: Yahoo news]

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
SEATTLE - Hoping to solve at least part of a 36-year-old mystery, the FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled parachute found in southwest Washington to determine if it belonged to famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper.

Children playing outside their home near Amboy found the chute’s fabric sticking up from the ground in an area where their father had been grading a road, agent Larry Carr said Tuesday. They pulled it out as far as they could, then cut the parachute’s ropes with scissors.

The children had seen recent media coverage of the case — the FBI launched a publicity campaign last fall, hoping to generate tips on the unsolved highjacking — and they urged their dad to call the agency.

“When we went to the public, the whole idea was that the public is going to bring the answers to us,” Carr said. “This is exactly what we were hoping for.”

In November 1971, a man identifying himself as Dan Cooper — later mistakenly but enduringly identified as D.B. Cooper — hijacked a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle, claiming he had a bomb.

When the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and asked to be flown to Mexico. On the flight to Mexico City, he apparently took the cash and parachuted from the plane’s back stairs somewhere near the Oregon border.

Agents doubt he survived because conditions were poor and the terrain was rough, but few signs of his fate have been found. The parachute was discovered about 160 miles south of Seattle, near the border.

Carr spoke with the children’s father, whom he declined to identify, early this month and learned the chute was white, the same color as Cooper’s.

And when Carr overlaid the family’s address onto a map investigators made in the early days of the investigation, he learned another encouraging fact: They lived right in Cooper’s most probable landing zone, between Green and Bald mountains.

Carr hopped in his car and drove down. He dug around the property for about 45 minutes, unsuccessfully looking for a harness or other remains from the parachute, but the children weren’t home, and the father wasn’t sure exactly where they found it.

There are no obvious markings on the parachute to indicate whether it’s the type Cooper used, a Navy Backpack 6 with a 26-foot canopy, Carr said. He’s hoping a member of the public who has expertise in the parachutes will come forward and confirm whether it’s the right kind before the FBI bothers to excavate the property. Barring that, the agency could turn to scientific analysis of the fabric.

“We’ve got to be pretty darn sure we’re not wasting time and money here,” he said.

If it is Cooper’s parachute, that will solve one mystery — where he apparently landed — but it will raise another, Carr said.

In 1980, a family on a picnic found $5,880 of Cooper’s money in a bag on a Columbia River beach, near Vancouver. Some investigators believed it might have been washed down to the beach by the Washougal River. But if Cooper landed near Amboy and stashed the money bag there, there’s no way it could have naturally reached the Washougal.

“If this is D.B. Cooper’s parachute, the money could not have arrived at its discovery location by natural means,” Carr said. “That whole theory is out the window.”

By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN, Associated Press Writer
LANSING, Mich. - Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign accused Barack Obama on Tuesday of standing in the way of a second presidential primary in Michigan, as several state lawmakers expressed concerns over suggested rules governing any revote.
The former first lady planned a hastily arranged appearance in Detroit on Wednesday. Aides said she would argue for going ahead despite the obstacles.

Mo Elleithee, a spokesman, said Clinton would “make the case for counting the people of Michigan, that every vote must count and that Senator Obama is standing in the way of a revote, and that snubbing Michigan would hurt the Democratic party in November.”

Even before Clinton announced her travel plans, Obama’s spokesman accused her of merely looking out for her own political interests.

“As others in Michigan have pointed out, there are valid concerns about the proposal currently being discussed, including severe restrictions on voter eligibility and the reliance on private funding,” said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. “We have raised these concerns, as legislators in Michigan did today, and we’re waiting to see if these issues can be resolved by the Legislature.”

Michigan is one of two states that violated Democratic Party rules by holding primaries too early in the year. As punishment, the party stripped both states of their delegates to the national nominating convention.

Plans for a revote in the other state, Florida, collapsed over the weekend, leaving the future of its delegation unclear.

Originally, Michigan was to have 156 delegates; Florida’s total was 210.

Clinton trails Obama in convention delegates after primaries and caucuses in more than 40 states, and her chances of catching up are remote.

Lopsided victories in second primaries in Florida and Michigan would help, and also would strengthen her argument that party leaders who attend the convention as superdelegates should consider a candidate’s ability to win in the fall, rather than merely support the contender with the most delegates.

She won the earlier primaries in both states, although all the candidates had pledged not to campaign in either and Obama removed his name from Michigan’s ballot.

One of the sticking points holding up a possible do-over election in Michigan is a rule that would ban anyone who voted in the Republican presidential primary from voting again in the Democratic one.

That ban would apply even to Democrats or independents who asked for a GOP ballot because Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the only major candidate left on the Jan. 15 Democratic ballot.

To cast a ballot in a do-over election, voters would have to sign a statement saying they hadn’t voted in the GOP primary.

That could hurt Obama more, since his supporters were more likely than Clinton’s to have crossed over to vote in the GOP primary. Obama has had more success than Clinton attracting the votes of independents and Republicans in states where they could vote in Democratic contests.

A group of Democratic leaders from Michigan is trying to set up a June 3 do-over primary so the state can get its delegates seated at the Democratic National Convention, but that looked less likely on Tuesday.

Seventeen Democratic state House members said Tuesday they have concerns about holding another election, including disenfranchising Democrats who voted in the Republican primary.

“These people that chose to vote in that Republican primary in January did so after being told by the DNC that the Democratic primary did not count. They weren’t told that if they participated in a Republican primary they wouldn’t be eligible to participate in a redo that was going to happen in June,” said state Rep. Matt Gillard, an Obama supporter.

Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer said he supports proposed legislation that would authorize a second primary, saying none of the legal objections “have any merit” and that in his opinion the legislation meets all national Democratic Party and legal requirements.

U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and the three Democratic leaders working on the proposal planned to lobby lawmakers on Wednesday.

Brewer said the party has the right, and the responsibility, to prevent non-Democrats from having a say in who becomes the party’s nominee.

Michigan doesn’t require voters to register by party to vote, so the parties have to use other tools to stop crossover voting. Both parties are due to get a list of who voted in the Jan. 15 primary and which ballot — Democratic or Republican — they chose. It’s unclear whether those lists would be used to challenge anyone who had voted in the GOP primary.

Brewer said he’s sorry some Democrats won’t be able to vote again.

“I regret that that might be the case, but it’s a national party rule and we have no choice but to follow it,” he said.