By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN, Sacramento Bee

Dogs may have a keen sense of smell, but their powers of observation could be just as highly developed -- causing specially trained canines to poke their noses in all the wrong places because of unintentional cues from their handlers.

Three improvised bombs exploded last Easter outside a Baghdad government building, and Sgt. 1st Class Malcolm Russell, a California Army reservist deployed in Iraq, was on high alert, his adrenaline pumping.

Arlene Becker had little reason to pay attention, until the notices from Blue Shield began arriving one after another. On the first of the year, her premiums shot up, on top of the increase just a few months ago and the one a few months before that.

Keep those grimy, germ-infested hands off that iPhone. Who knows where those fingers have been?

Personal touch-screen devices -- iPads, BlackBerrys and Droids -- are now seemingly everywhere, potentially harboring the germs and viruses that turn voices raspy and send noses running.

Consumer advocates and hundreds of representatives from the health insurance industry are in Seattle this week to influence how a key part of the national health care overhaul is enforced.

Starting in January, health insurance companies will be required to spend at least 80 percent of every premium dollar they collect on medical care for their subscribers.

Cigarette sales in California plunged to their lowest level in a decade last year as smokers were squeezed by new taxes and restrictions on where they could light up.

While tobacco use has been steadily declining, the 8.1 percent sales drop was the largest year-over-year decline since 2000, according to the state Board of Equalization.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - There was no question Marc Masterson is dead.

He was rushed to Methodist Hospital in Sacramento after suffering a heart attack June 13, his 46th birthday.

Three days later, his grieving sisters watched a doctor disconnect him from life-support tubes and equipment.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - At Marysville, Calif.'s Rideout Memorial Hospital, 17 security guards rifled through the personal health data of 33 patients, using computers to peer into what should have been private and protected electronic health records, state investigators said.

Pioneers rushed to the Sierra Nevada foothills generations ago to strike it rich. But the region has hardly been a gold mine for Dr. Bob Hartmann, a rural practitioner whose livelihood partly depends on serving the aged, poor and uninsured in Amador County, Calif.

With Tiger Woods and Pittsburgh Steeler Hines Ward providing star-powered proof, demand boomed in recent years for injections of "concentrated" blood rich in platelets to relieve hard-to-heal joint and tendon injuries.