A 19-year-old freshman from the University of Oklahoma became this city's youngest mayor after winning the mayoral election on Tuesday. John Tyler Hammons, who is majoring in political science and public administration, beat three-time former mayor Hershel McBride, 70, by garnering 3,703 votes over his rival's 1,616 votes based on unofficial results.

Two residents of Hawaii have asked a district court in Honolulu to stop the Department of Energy and its partners from constructing a particle accelerator facility on the border between France and Switzerland. Walter F. Wagner and Luis Sancho's federal lawsuit filed Monday also seeks to delay the opening of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) pending its safety inspection on grounds that the gigantic atom smasher that physicists will use to study the origin of the universe could accidentally create "strangelet," an unknown matter, or an expanding black hole that both could destroy the Earth.

Two new planets similar to Jupiter and Saturn, were discovered by scientists, revealing an entirely new solar system 5,000 light years away from our own. The scientists, led by astronomy professor Andrzej Udalski, of the Warsaw University observatory, discovered the solar system by first detecting the presence of the star, which they identified to be smaller and much cooler than our own. An overlapping of the star and another much farther one visible from Earth resulted in the 500x magnification of the farther star. Discovered by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), the phenomenon was dubbed OGLE-2006-BLG-109.

A bill proposing to put a 1-percent excise tax on TV sets, video games and video game equipment sold in New Mexico will be submitted to the state legislature on Monday to fund programs preventing childhood obesity and improving school performance. State legislator Gail Chasey, an educator and sponsor of the bill, expects to raise $4 million from the tax each year.

Loneliness is painful and potentially deadly, according to new research at the University of Chicago that found animals, gadgets and spiritual beliefs - not just friends - ease the sense of being alone. "It's actually a greater risk for morbidity or mortality than cigarette smoking is," says Nicholas Epley, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at the university's Graduate School of Business and lead author of an article on the subject in the February issue of the journal Psychological Science.