NEW YORK — Gov. David A. Paterson (D) and legislative leaders on Friday announced an agreement to roll back the state’s strict, 36-year-old drug laws, including eliminating tough mandatory minimum sentences for first-time, nonviolent drug offenders. The ‘Rockefeller Drug Laws,’ named after former governor Nelson Rockefeller (R), are among the strictest in the country and for critics have become a symbol of the failure of the ‘war on drugs,’ which locked up large numbers of nonviolent drug offenders while having little apparent effect on drug use. The agreement, announced in the state Capitol, follows a national shift away from criminal penalties to public health and treatment in America’s decades-old fight against illegal drug use. ‘There’s a broader trend picking up steam around the country to roll back the drug war,’ said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group for alternative drug laws. Mandatory sentences, that led to burgeoning prison populations and a spurt of building of new prisons, he said, ‘happened as a result of the drug war hysteria.’ The shift began in the late 1990s as more than a dozen states legalized marijuana for medical purposes, and California voters in […]
Men who are circumcised are less likely to get sexually transmitted infections such as genital herpes and human papillomavirus (HPV), but not syphilis, according to a study of adult African men published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The finding adds to the evidence that there are health benefits to circumcision. It was already known that circumcision can reduce the risk of penile cancer, a relatively rare disease. In a previous study, the same research team found that adult circumcision could reduce the risk of HIV infection. Efforts to increase the practice of male circumcision in areas with high rates of sexually transmitted infections, including Africa, could have a tremendous benefit, say the study’s authors. Genital herpes has been associated with an increased risk of HIV, and HPV can cause genital warts as well as a higher risk of anal, cervical (in women), and penile cancers. Health.com: Is your partner cheating? How to protect yourself In the United States, infant circumcision is declining. About 64 percent of American male infants were circumcised in 1995, down from more than 90 percent in the 1970s. Rates tend to be higher in whites (81percent) than in blacks […]
SINGAPORE — Global warming is more than a third to blame for a major drop in rainfall that includes a decade-long drought in Australia and a lengthy dry spell in the United States, a scientist said on Wednesday. Peter Baines of Melbourne University in Australia analysed global rainfall observations, sea surface temperature data as well as a reconstruction of how the atmosphere has behaved over the past 50 years to reveal rainfall winners and losers. What he found was an underlying trend where rainfall over the past 15 years or so has been steadily decreasing, with global warming 37 percent responsible for the drop. ‘The 37 percent is probably going to increase if global warming continues,’ Baines told Reuters from Perth in Western Australia, where he presented his findings at a major climate change conference. Baines’ analysis revealed four regions where rainfall has been declining. The affected areas were the continental United States, southeastern Australia, a large region of equatorial Africa and the Altiplano in South America. But there were two areas in the tropics where rainfall has been increasing — northwestern Australia and the Amazon Basin. ‘This is all part of a global […]
Last week, I shared with you an interview transcript from one of my CBS Sunday Morning stories. It reminded me of another great interview I’ve been meaning to share. This one was for my ‘Sunday Morning story about data rot, which aired a few weeks ago (http://bit.ly/oFrX). Meet Dag Spicer, curator of the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. It’s an amazing place, as you’ll see in this edited transcript of our tour and chat. David Pogue: What is data rot? Dag Spicer: Data rot refers mainly to problems with the medium on which information is stored. Over time, things like temperature, humidity, exposure to light, being stored not-very-good locations like moldy basements, make this information very difficult to read. The second aspect of data rot is actually finding the machines to read them. And that is a real problem. If you think of the 8-track tape player, for example, basically the only way you can find 8-track cartridges is in a flea market or a garage sale. The problem, strangely enough, is not so bad on the older stuff, but quite bad on the more recent stuff. So we can read tapes here at […]
PUNE, India — It is nippy, has a small turning circle and the horn works. After taking the Tata Nano for a spin, Randeep Ramesh says he would buy the world’s cheapest car Link to this video Taking the world’s cheapest car out for its first public test drive by a journalist makes for a surprisingly smooth ride. Thrifty transport is not meant to be this comfortable. Tata’s Nano purrs from zero to 40mph in eight seconds and its gearbox changes with ease. The brakes are solid, bringing the car to halt smartly. True, its 623cc engine whines a little like a blender when pushed to its top speed of 65mph and the body leans like the Tower of Pisa when cornering at speed. But the wheels will give out before you can tip the car over, the Guardian was assured by Tata engineers. Built for functional frugality, the Nano is a striking if not a beautiful car. Flashing through the dusty streets outside the Tata plant in Pune, southern India, the Nano’s distinctive look turns heads. Many people, especially those who are riding motorbikes, break into smiles and thrust thumbs into the air when its jellybean […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
