STOCKHOLM — The Swedish Parliament has approved a law which will regulate the growing, usage and trade of cannabis. This is according to the Health and Social Services of Sweden, Jonas Grönhög, who was quoted, ‘We don’t want to make the same mistakes which the USA has done, we do not want to be prohibitionists because the war on drugs has been lost long ago. It is better to prevent marginalization of young people than jail them for soft drugs usage which are comparatively harmless. If we allow the sale of alcohol, there is no reason to ban the soft drugs no longer.’

Cannabis products are going to be available in the pharmacies in Sweden as non-prescription medicine since April 20 in 2012 and customers more than 18-year-old can buy 10 grams at once. Growing for personal usage will be tolerated up to 200 grams of dried marijuana and larger amounts stay illegal. It is likely that this will target the Police resources on more serious crime, especially on organized crime, drug trafficking and trafficking in human beings which have been increased for lack of the Police resources in recent years

No Comments

Software developers have already found a way around the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which the House Judiciary Committee will not markup until sometime early next year.

Most critics say the bill would create an Internet ‘blacklist

No Comments

Forests are among the most long-established habitats on the planet, forming their delicately balanced ecosystems over centuries — and a new study in light of Texas’s ongoing drought proves how quickly they can be decimated. According to the Texas Forest Service, as many as 500 million trees in the state — roughly 10 percent of the forests there — have been killed within the last year alone as a result of 2011’s bizarre lack of rainfall. To make matters worse, the massive die-off may just be the first in a long line as climatologists predict more severe drought to come as climate change worsens over the next century.

Forestry officials recently surveyed trees throughout 63 million acres of drought-riddled Texas and say what they found that months of record heat and stiflingly arid conditioned have left anywhere between 100 million to as many as half-a-billion trees dead. Texas Forestry Service directory Tom Boggus calls the findings ‘very shocking’, adding that they’ve witnessed ‘a significant change in the landscape.’

According to the American-Statesmen, the loss of plant-life in Texas due to the drought may be worse yet. The study did not factor in the millions of trees that perished due to drought-related wildfires, […]

No Comments

The largest remaining source of uncontrolled toxic air pollution in the United States, the nation’s coal- and oil-fired power plants, will be forced to reduce their emissions or shut down, under a federal regulation released Wednesday.

The long-overdue national standards for mercury and other toxic pollutants are the first to be applied to nation’s oldest and dirtiest power plants.

About half of the 1,300 coal- and oil-fired units nationwide still lack modern pollution controls, despite the Environmental Protection Agency in 1990 getting the authority from Congress to control toxic air pollution from power plant smokestacks. A decade later, in 2000, the agency concluded it was necessary to clamp down on the emissions to protect public health.

Decades of litigation and changing political winds have allowed power plants to keep running without addressing their full environmental and public health costs.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement that the standards ‘will protect millions of families and children from harmful and costly air pollution and provide the American people with health benefits that far outweigh the costs.’

The rule ranks as one of the most expensive in the EPA’s history, with an estimated $9.6 billion price tag.

Its release comes after intense lobbying from power producers and […]

No Comments

Inductive charging devices are already making their way into the home as a cable-free option to keep the batteries of everything from mice and keyboards to mobile phones and toothbrushes juiced up. The increasing availability of practical electric vehicles has also seen the technology attract the attention of those looking for for a cable-free way to charge EV batteries. German automakers are taking the opportunity to put inductive charging of EVs to a real-world test as part of the ‘Effizienzhaus-Plus mit Elektromobilität’ project.

The ‘Effizienzhaus-Plus mit Elektromobilität’ (Google translation: House-Plus efficiency with electric mobility) project is a German government-backed initiative to build an energy-efficient house that generates more electricity than it consumes. It will see a family of four living in the house located in Berlin for fifteen months, starting in March 2012. The house has been specifically designed along energy-efficient lines and is intended to demonstrate how energy-efficient building and electric mobility can be combined in real-life conditions. Equipped with photovoltaics and energy management technology, surplus electricity generated will either be fed back into the grid or stored in batteries ready to recharge the batteries of the occupants’ electric vehicles.

Audi, BMW, Daimler, Opel and VW will each get a chance […]

No Comments