For decades, the USO has been lifting the spirits of troops stations around the world. Entertainers from Bob Hope to Kid Rock travel to remote areas to entertain our service men and women during times of war. Bob Kirtchen, Executive Director of the L.A. branch of the USO tells KFWB’s Money 101 what the group is all about in this report with Maggie McKay and Michael Shappee:

(CNS) – The City Council voted today to ban plastic bags and impose a fee for paper bags at grocery stores, a move that backers said would improve the region’s environment, save taxpayers money on trash cleanup and promote sustainability.

The council’s 13-1 vote orders the Bureau of Sanitation to complete an environmental review of the ban and an ordinance to enact it in four months. Once in effect, Los Angeles will be the largest city in the nation to ban plastic bags.

The council approved a slightly watered-down version of the ban first proposed by Councilman Paul Koretz and approved by the Board of Public Works, a plan that would have included a ban on paper bags.

Council members Jose Huizar and Eric Garcetti offered the compromise proposal to model the city’s program after bag bans in Long Beach, Calabasas, Santa Monica, unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County and Pasadena.

The ban will be phased in for about 7,500 grocery stores in the city. more

Better check your dog’s treats.  Nearly 1,000 dogs reportedly have been sickened by chicken jerky pet treats from China.  This is according to a new tally of complaints from worried owners and vets submitted to federal health officials.  The FDA has logged 900 reports of illnesses and deaths since November, when it warned owners about continued problems with the products known variously as chicken jerky strips, treats and nuggets.

The agency sent inspectors earlier this year to Chinese plants that make the jerky treats, but no results of those reviews are yet available.  No one’s been able to find any toxins responsible for the doggy illnesses and deaths.  The suspect brands include  Waggin’ Train and Canyon Creek Ranch brands produced by Nestle Purina PetCare Co., and Milo’s Kitchen Home-style Dog Treats, produced by the Del Monte Corp. Two of the manufacturers say their products are fine and are not behind any illnesses

Citadel Outlets is displaying photographs of 100 missing children from the state of California or believed to be in California, on eight high-definition LED billboard signs along Interstate 5 to help bring the children home and to bring attention to the thousands of children who are still missing.

Friday, May 25 is Missing Children’s Day but because of the long holiday weekend, Citadel got a jump on it earlier in the week. Director of Marketing Traci Markel explained to KFWB’s Maggie McKay and Michael Shappee. Click the play button to listen.

You can also view all of the photos here.

A former high-ranking CNN executive is accused of leaving dog feces in his neighbor’s mailbox. Covington, Georgia police say the victims of the incident, Benjamin Dameron and Ralph Miller, have video of Bob Furnad walking with his dog up to the mailbox and placing a bag filled with the feces in their mailbox.

“Mr. Furnad stated that he did place a bag containing dog feces in the victim’s mail box,” Covington Police Capt. Ken Malcom told WGCL-TV.

Furnad told the Covington News that he pulled the prank due to a long-standing feud with the two. “This was an immature act in response to years of malicious rumor mongering that I consider defamation of character,” Furnad told the paper.more

Contrary to recent scholarship and popular belief, parents experience greater levels of happiness and meaning in life than people without children, according to researchers from the University of California, Riverside, the University of British Columbia and Stanford University. Parents also are happier during the day when they are caring for their children than during their other daily activities, the researchers found in a series of studies conducted in the United States and Canada.

These findings appear in a paper — “In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated With More Joy Than Misery” — which will be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

“We are not saying that parenting makes people happy, but that parenthood is associated with happiness and meaning,” explained Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of psychology at UC Riverside and a leading scholar in positive psychology. “Contrary to repeated scholarly and media pronouncements, people may find solace that parenthood and child care may actually be linked to feelings of happiness and meaning in life.”

Click on the “More” tab for the rest of the story.

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Are these strawberries organic? Is this omelette made with free-range eggs? Can you swap out the rice for quinoa? Is this kale locally sourced? Pesticide-free? Fair trade? Are the hazelnuts local?

The onslaught of questions from an enlightened eater can test the patience of even the calmest restaurant server. And a new study shows that organic foodies’ humane regard for the well-being of animals makes some people rather snobbish. The report, published last week in the Journal of Social Psychological & Personality Science, notes that exposure to organic foods can “harshen moral judgments.”

Which sounds like a nice way of saying that organic-food seekers are arrogant. Note the paradox: organic eaters are more likely to seek benevolence in their food, so why don’t they seek it in their relationships? Well, according to the study, they tend to congratulate themselves for their moral and environmental choices, affording them the tendency to look down on others who don’t share their desire for pesticide-free living.

Read more at Time Magazine.

“See something, say something” — there’s an app for that.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Transit Police Department today is launching what it said will be the nation’s first smartphone app used by a transit police force to let riders easily and instantly report suspicious activity.

The new iPhone app — a Droid app will be available in July — will offer fast two-way communication, letting riders send photos and reports to police, while dispatchers can write back for more details.

“The police cannot do this alone. We are relying on our customers to be our eyes and ears out there. This is just the latest tool we want to give our customers to let us know what’s going on out there,” MBTA police Chief Paul MacMillan said.more

An Indian woman is divorcing her husband because he neglected to change his relationship status to married on Facebook, the Deccan Chronicle reported on Tuesday.

Her husband, a 31-year-old businessman, reportedly told the court that updating his status had simply slipped his mind, as the pair wed only two months ago. But his 28-year-old IT professional wife pressed on with the divorce because she “couldn’t trust him”, high court advocate P. Subhash told the paper.

The judge reportedly told the newlyweds to undergo six months of counseling.

Usually Facebook causes marital strife when a spouse uses it to reconnect with an old flame. Eighty-one percent of lawyers surveyed by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers in February 2010 said they’d seen an overwhelming increase in the number of divorce cases that used evidence gleaned from social networking sites like Facebook.

A 60-year-old man fell into New York’s Long Island Sound, pulled himself out — and then died several hours later, apparently of drowning.  Emergency doctors today called it a case of secondary drowning, something very unusual.

The man, Tommy Mollo fell off the back of a friend’s boat Saturday morning while helping move it between slips at a marina. Mollo returned to his apartment and told his wife he felt ill. She called 911 and emergency workers took Mollo to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

An ER doctor says that water got into Mollo’s lungs when he fell overboard, which led to subsequent breathing difficulties that could have been exacerbated by medical issues he already had. Lung damage from secondary drowning occurs when water comes into direct contact with the cells lining the lungs, interfering with their ability to supply needed oxygen to the body and to take away carbon dioxide, a gaseous waste product.