Newly elected Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo named a former slave as his Minister for Indigenous Affair. Margarita Mbywangi, 46, an Ache tribal chief, was captured in the jungle when she was four and sold several times as a slave to owners of large lands. Fortunately, her masters send her to school which enabled her to learn to read and write.

Chewing gum after colon surgery can help shorten your hospital stay, a new British study suggests. The latest work published in Archives of Surgery says that chewing three sticks of sugarless gum a day helps improve recovery of intestinal function after all or part of the colon has been surgically removed may speed up the return of normal bowel function.

The mother of a missing Orlando toddler is likely to be released from jail Sunday when a California bounty hunter and his nephew, a bail bondsman, post the $500,000 bond. Leonard Padilla and his nephew, Tony Padilla are on National Geographic's reality series, "Bounty Hunters," and they told reporters they think they can help find the missing child by spending time with the mother, Casey Anthony, and getting her to tell them more than she has told police.

An Angel Flight New England (AFNE) plane crashed in a supermarket parking lot here Tuesday morning killing the pilot, a cancer patient and his wife. There were no casualties on the ground. Witnesses saw the single-engine plane stalling before nose-diving at the Hannaford's parking lot on Robert Drive near Route 106 at 10:25 a. m. The plane exploded into a fireball.

For some people the first puff of smoke they tried felt repulsive while for others those puffs came with a rush of pleasure. Researchers have identified a gene variant that may help explain why some smokers get addicted from their first cigarette while others seem immune to the addictive properties of tobacco. The paper published online in the journal Addiction reports an association between a variant in the nicotine receptor gene CHRNA5, initial smoking experiences and current smoking patterns. This gene is far more common among smokers than in those who have the occasional cigarette.