Teenage girls who smoke cigarettes are at an increased risk for developing not only lung cancer later in life, but thicker waistlines as well, researchers say.

While girls who smoke 10 cigarettes or more a day as teens have an increased risk of developing a wide waistline later in life teenage boys don't appear to have the same risk, said lead study author Suoma Saarni, a researcher with the Department of Public Health in Helsinki. But she said scientists don't know why that is true.

Aside from changing the commuting habits of Canadian employees and students, high gas prices also has one positive health side for Canadian motorists. It had reduced the number of road deaths by 30 percent compared to 2007 in Ontario.

Similar double-digit declines in deaths caused by vehicular accidents were registered in British Columbia and Manitoba.

Because the model for health insurance in America has been to have employers provide the coverage, when people lose their job along with losing their paycheck they often lose access to medical care.

Even before the current economic recession began, more than 45 million Americans had no health insurance in 2007. Those numbers are rising as people with employer-sponsored health care insurance lose their jobs.

Technology has been put to good use with the use of a Facebook site as a search tool for transplant organs for ailing children.

With a global audience, the search for organ donors has became easier for families of sick children like those in need of bone marrow and blood. The wide number of readers of the social networking site, one of the top in the cyber world, also increased the chances of finding a match.

The rural areas may be in danger of losing their doctors and other health care providers under a revision in the 13-year old labor mobility agreement among Canadian provinces.

The warning was aired by groups which license, certify and regulate physicians because the amendment, to take effect April 1, 2009, will permit various types of regulated workers to be employed in other Canadian provinces and territories without going through the process of requalification.