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Life is not all about the haves and have-nots. New research reveals a more nuanced approach to life: Individuals who want what they have tend to be happier than others.

The study results, detailed in the April issue of the journal Psychological Science, suggest one key to achieving greater happiness is to continue wanting the things you have. That is, keep those rosy first-time-buyer lenses in place.

The spanking-new iPhone or the latest digital all-in-one gizmo could seem like the best buy upon purchase. But over time, the greatest purchase ever can become so yesterday and, the researchers say, you will derive less happiness from that item.

“Simply having a bunch of things is not the key to happiness,” said Jeff Larsen, a psychologist at Texas Tech University. “Our data show that you also need to appreciate those things you have. It’s also important to keep your desire for things you don’t own

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Last New Year’s Eve, Jan-Jan (not his real name), a 39-year-old gay man in Cebu City, was going home after a drunken revelry. On the streets he met a male sex worker, whom he brought home. The next day, when he woke up, there was pain inside his rectum, and the sex worker was gone.

He asked his sister to bring him to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, a government-run hospital. The doctor examined him, sneered, and told him he needed surgery for a perfume canister embedded in his rectum. He was made to quickly sign papers he was not given the chance to read. He was sedated before the operation, and he did not know that while the perfume canister was being extracted from him, the doctors and the nurses and a whole menagerie of medical practitioners were recording everything with their cell phone cameras.

Anti-gay jokes

The US military’s health insurance program has been swindled out of more than $100 million over the past decade in the Philippines, where doctors, hospitals and clinics have conspired with American veterans to submit bogus claims, according to prosecutors and court records.

Seventeen people have been convicted so far — including at least a dozen US military retirees — in a little-noticed investigation that has been handled by federal prosecutors out of Wisconsin because a Madison company holds the contract to process many of the claims. It has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

At the center of the case is Tricare, a Pentagon-run program that insures 9.2 million current and former service members and dependents worldwide. The United States closed its military bases in the Philippines in 1992 and withdrew its active-duty forces, but thousands of retirees remained. Some saw an opportunity to pry easy cash from Tricare.

Health care providers in

Concerns about food security mounted on Thursday, as rice prices hit records in Asia and the United Nations warned that staples for the world’s hungry were getting much more expensive.

In the United States, Bush Administration officials downplayed notions of food shortages amid reports of worried buyers stocking up on rice in major chain stores.

“In the US, I don’t see food shortages,” US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Reuters in an interview. “We have plenty of food in the US The price of food has gone up, but again that won’t be as significant for the average American as gasoline.”

Rice prices hit record highs in Thailand and in electronic trading of Chicago Board of Trade futures during Asian trading hours. This week’s 5 percent jump in Thailand rice takes prices to $1,000 a ton, nearly triple their level at the start of the year, intensifying fears of social unrest

Wesley Snipes was sentenced to three years in prison on tax charges Thursday, a victory for prosecutors who sought to make an example of the action star by aggressively pursuing the maximum penalty.

Snipes’ lawyers had spent much of the day in court offering dozens of letters from family members, friends even fellow actors Woody Harrelson and Denzel Washington attesting to the good character of the “Blade” star and asking for leniency. They argued he should get only probation because his three convictions were all misdemeanors and the actor had no previous criminal record.

But U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges said Snipes exhibited a “history of contempt over a period of time” for U.S. tax laws, and granted prosecutors the three year sentence they requested one year for each of Snipes’ convictions of willfully failing to file a tax return.
“In my mind these are serious crimes, albeit misdemeanors,” Hodges said.

Snipes