Melissa Healy

WASHINGTON -- Compared with uncaffeinated women, those who drank the equivalent of four or more cups of coffee a day are more likely to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes and less likely to volunteer their time in church or community groups. But a new study finds that well-caffeinated women have a key health advantage over their more abstemious sisters: They're less likely to become depressed.

America continues to get fatter, according to a comprehensive new report on the nation's weight crisis. Statistics from 2008-2010 show that 16 of the nation's states are experiencing steep hikes in adult obesity, and none has seen a notable downturn in the last four years.

Meanwhile, cases of Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure that health experts have long warned would result from the nation's broadening girth and sedentary ways are becoming increasingly widespread, according to the report, titled "F as in Fat," released Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday unveiled a group of graphic images and messages that will cover the top half of every cigarette package in the United States starting this fall.

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said her agency estimated that the new campaign could induce as many as 213,000 established smokers in the United States to quit in its first year.

The spectral images, reproduced in neurosurgery journals and textbooks, could be captioned "Beauty and the Beast."

Captured by X-ray and CT scan, the human brain is pierced by a bullet, nail, pool cue or chunk of razor-sharp debris. The intruding object has ripped a jagged vortex of destruction through the brain's gelatinous lobes and forged an even wider path of quivering shock.

If the projectile came in hard and fast, shards of broken skull will be scattered through the delicate tissue. The bullet might have ricocheted off bone and tumbled wildly in the cavity, bursting blood vessels and carving uneven holes where, only moments before, healthy brain cells had hummed.