WASHINGTON — The number of people in U.S. prisons has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to taxpayers and society, researchers said in a report calling for a major justice-system overhaul. The report on Monday cites examples ranging from former vice-presidential aide Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby to a Florida woman’s two-year sentence for throwing a cup of coffee to make its case for reducing the U.S. prison population of 2.2 million — nearly one-fourth of the world’s total. It recommends shorter sentences and parole terms, alternative punishments, more help for released inmates and decriminalizing recreational drugs. It said the steps would cut the prison population in half, save $20 billion a year and ease social inequality without endangering the public. But the recommendations run counter to decades of broad U.S. public and political support for getting tough on criminals through longer, harsher prison terms and to the Bush administration’s anti-drug and strict-sentencing policies. ‘President (George W.) Bush was right,’ in commuting Libby’s perjury sentence this year as excessive, the report said. But he should also have commuted the sentences of hundreds of thousands of other Americans, it said. ‘Our […]
China has accused Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of violating the religious rituals and historical conventions of Tibetan Buddhism by suggesting he might appoint a successor before his death instead of relying on reincarnation. Beijing’s latest broadside against the Dalai Lama is a sign of heightening tensions between the central government and the man Tibetans see as a god-king. While reincarnation sounds like an esoteric concept to those of other belief systems, it is a deeply political issue in the isolated Himalayan enclave. The Dalai Lama said Tibetans would not accept a successor who was selected by China after his death, prompting an angry response from Beijing. ‘The reincarnation of the living Buddha is a unique way of succession of Tibetan Buddhism and follows relatively complete religious rituals and historical conventions,’ said Liu Jianchao, a Foreign Ministry spokesman . ‘Dalai’s remarks obviously violated the religious rituals and historical conventions.’ The Chinese see the Dalai Lama, 72, as a dangerous separatist. They accuse him of continuing to inspire demands for independence among the 2.7 million Tibetans living in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and refuse to allow him back inside its borders. The Tibetan leader, who won […]
ROME — Italian archaeologists have inched closer to unearthing the secrets behind one of Western civilisation’s most enduring legends. On Tuesday the Italian Government released the first images of a deep cavern where some archaeologists believe that ancient Romans honoured Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. The cavern, buried 16 metres under the ruins of the palace of Emperor Augustus I on the Palatine Hill, is about eight metres high and seven metres wide. Photographs taken by a camera probe show a domed cavern decorated with well-preserved mosaics and seashells. At its centre is a painted white eagle, a symbol of the Roman Empire. Italy’s Culture Minister, Francesco Rutelli, said: ‘This could reasonably be the place bearing witness to the myth of Rome.’ The legend concerns Lupercal, the mythical cave where Romulus and Remus – the sons of the god Mars who were abandoned by the banks of the Tiber – were discovered by a female wolf that suckled them until they were found and reared by a shepherd named Faustulus. The brothers are said to have founded Rome in 753BC. The cave later became a sacred location where the priests of Lupercus, […]
Long before the dentists and the doctors got there, before the nurses, the hygienists and X-ray techs came, before anyone had flicked on the portable mammography unit or sterilized the day’s first set of surgical instruments, the people who needed them showed up to wait. It was 3 a.m. at the Wise County Fairgrounds in Virginia - Friday, July 20, 2007 - the start of a rainy Appalachian morning. Outside the gates, people lay in their trucks or in tents pitched along the grassy parking lot, waiting for their chance to have their medical needs treated at no charge - part of an annual three-day ‘expedition’ led by a volunteer medical relief corps called Remote Area Medical. The group, most often referred to as RAM, has sent health expeditions to countries like Guyana, India, Tanzania and Haiti, but increasingly its work is in the United States, where 47 million people - more than 15 percent of the population - live without health insurance. Residents of remote rural areas are less likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to have health insurance and more likely to be in fair or poor health. According to the Department of Health and Human […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
