Tuesday, January 4th, 2011
From 1 January shops will have to stop supplying shoppers with plastic bags
A ban on plastic bags is coming into effect in Italy, which has one of the highest rates of consumption of the bags in Europe.
The ban begins in shops across Italy on 1 January, with only biodegradable, cloth or paper bags to be offered.
Italians use 20 billion plastic bags a year – more than 300 per person.
Supporters of the ban say plastic bags are an environmental hazard which use too much oil to produce and can take decades to break down.
The law for a gradual ban on plastic bags was introduced in 2006.
The original deadline of January 2010 for the completion of the ban was delayed because of opposition from industry.
Italian retailers have complained that the decree pushed through last week to enforce the new deadline lacks detail.
Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo said the decree marked ‘a key step forward in the fight against pollution and it makes us all more responsible in terms of recycling.’
The government has a public awareness campaign that promotes other types of bags as fashionable as well as environmentally friendly, she said.
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Tuesday, January 4th, 2011
STEPHAN A. SCHWARTZ, Editor SR/Senior Samueli Fellow - The Huffington Post
Stephan: This is the third essay of my five-part series on American Healthcare.
One of the wrong questions you will hear raised in the upcoming health care debate is this one: Aren’t the poor outcomes in health care in the United States all the fault of the bad health choices Americans make? Stated baldly: ‘It’s not our fault, it’s those irresponsible citizens who account for the bad health care outcomes.’ As it happens at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University researchers Peter A. Muennig and Sherry A. Glied, asked just this question. They compared the health care systems of 13 first world nations, including the United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland….
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Monday, January 3rd, 2011
Stephan: This is the latest on the water war trend. Let me say it again: Water is destiny.
The giggles started when the seventh journalist in a row said that his question was for Egypt’s water and irrigation minister, Mohamed Nasreddin Allam.
The non-Egyptian media gave him a bit of a hammering at last week’s talks in Addis Ababa for the nine countries that the Nile passes through.
Allam bared his teeth when a Kenyan journalist accused him of hiding behind ‘colonial-era treaties
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Monday, January 3rd, 2011
KAILI JOY GRAY, - Daily Kos
Stephan: If you've been reading SR for very long you know that I am absolutely pro-choice. Not only because in the 60s I lost one friend to a back room abortion, and another almost died for the same reason but, also, because if you don't own and control your own body, you don't own anything. At the most fundamental level you can't control anything. Also because the anti-choice position is so profoundly materialistic. As if consciousness is tied only to matter.
With the incoming Congress with its climate deniers, evolution deniers, and choice-deniers, we are going to see a flood of bills based on these delusions. We'll know how it is it going when we begin hearing of girls dying from back room abortions again. In the meantime it will eat up untold hours of Congressional time and attention, and clog up the process of rebuilding America.
A war is coming.
Congressional Republicans have already made clear that their top priority, once they take control of Congress in the next session, is to make sure President Obama is a one-term president.
But there is a second priority that many Republicans in Congress, and in state legislatures around the country, have promised to pursue: the further restriction of women’s reproductive rights.
As Mother Jones reported in December:
If you thought the abortion battle during the health care debate was fierce, just wait until Republicans take over the House in January. Strengthened by congressional victories in the midterm elections, Republican abortion foes plan to push hard in the new year. Their top goals: enshrine tough restrictions on abortion funding into federal law and defund Planned Parenthood.
The incoming Speaker of the House, John Boehner, is a staunch opponent of women’s reproductive rights, with a 100 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee. In fact, last year, he received the 2010 Henry J. Hyde Defender of Life Award for his ‘extraordinary leadership in the fight to prevent taxpayer-funded abortion and for his work to protect women’s health in his own state of Ohio.
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Monday, January 3rd, 2011
MICHELLE MAISTO, - eWEEK.com
Stephan:
Some observers have questioned whether Internet users are willing to pay for online content and many media sectors are struggling with the disruption that digital networks have created for their businesses,’ states the report, authored by Jim Jansen. ‘The issue of people’s willingness to pay for online material has enormous implications for media companies, artistic creators and others who are hoping to sustain themselves – or grow new businesses – by raising revenues through online purchases.’
When Internet users were asked whether they had ever ‘paid to access or to download any of the following types of online content,’ 33 said yes regarding digital music; 33 percent had paid for software; 21 percent paid for applications for their mobile phone or tablet; 19 percent had paid for games; 18 percent paid for online newspapers, magazines, articles or reports; 15 percent paid for videos, movies or shows; 12 paid for digital photos and 11 percent paid for members-only, premium content from a Web that also offers material for free (also known as a ‘freemium’business model).
Other content that 10 percent or fewer of those surveyed said they’d paid for included e-books, podcasts, tools or materials for video or computer games, ‘cheats or codes’ […]
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