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" As the Supreme Court began a new term yesterday in which it will rule on landmark social issues , it rejected about 1,900 appeals that piled up during the summer recess.Among the cases the justices declined to hear were a challenge to a Texas law that bans the sale of sex toys , objections by parents in California to a mandatory class on Islam , and an appeal of lower-court rulings that the managers of Detroit newspapers acted improperly when they fired striking workers . " Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy that keeps America 's economy running and America 's environment clean , " Bush will tell the nation , according to speech excerpts released by the White House . " But later , Kennedy expressed worry that the federal ban might leave some women at " risk if the uterine wall is compromised by cancer or some forms of preeclampsia , " a dangerous spike in blood pressure.Such health questions are central to the most important abortion case to reach the court in half a decade.The federal law , passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in 2003 , bans the procedure known medically as " intact dilation and extraction , " which usually occurs in the second trimester of pregnancy . Ten sessions of exercises to boost reasoning skills , memory and mental processing speed staved off mental decline in middle-aged and elderly people in the first definitive study to show that honing intellectual skills can bolster the mind in the same way that physical exercise protects and strengthens the body.The researchers also showed that the benefits of the brain exercises extended well beyond the specific skills the volunteers learned . He was charged under the Texas law that bans the sale of an " obscene device " designed primarily " for the stimulation of human genital organs . The project contains a random sample of about 30 cases for each circuit for every year from 1925 to 1996 . Bacolod 's findings indicate that that would significantly increase the percentage of smart women - - and men - - who become teachers.Equal-Opportunity AfflictionMen are as likely as women to be compulsive buyers , a condition that affects about one in 20 adults in the United States , according to Lorrin M. Koran , an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University 's medical school.Koran and his colleagues surveyed 2,513 adults in 2004 and found that 6 percent of women and 5.5 percent of men exhibited symptoms of hard-core compulsive shopping : irresistible and often senseless impulses to buy that they felt largely powerless to resist .