Poor Mojo Newswire

State authorities have given a controversial special education school in Canton a one-year extension of its authority to use electric shock treatments on students, provided the center makes a series of significant changes. more stories like this

Among them, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center must prove that it uses shock treatments only for the most dangerous and self-destructive behaviors and that the aversive therapy actually led to a reduction of those harmful actions.

The center must also stop electric shocks for "seemingly minor infractions," such as getting out of a seat without approval or swearing. And it must show greater commitment to phasing out shock treatments, especially for those about to leave the school to enter mainstream society.

Past reauthorizations have been for two years, rather than the one year given this time.

One of Apple's major marketing themes is that Macs are less susceptible to viruses, Trojans, and other hacker attacks than Windows PCs. While that argument has yet to hold much sway with enterprise I.T. departments, it is causing the U.S. Army to add some Macs to its networks.

Lt. Col. C.J. Wallington, a division chief in the Army's office of enterprise information systems, told Forbes that the Army is adding Macs to make its networks harder to hack. Wallington said that making networks more heterogeneous might make it more difficult for attackers to compromise an entire group of computers.

These things don't just happen overnight. The Army's CIO, Gen. Steve Boutelle, called for more diverse computer networks back in August 2005. He said the Army should deal with a broader range of vendors to increase competition and harden I.T. defenses. But thus far, the Army has allowed only a trickle of Macs to enter military facilities. The Army buys only about 1,000 Macs during its twice-a-year buying seasons.

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

When it comes to Dubai and attracting wealthy tourists, the word "restraint" is seldom used. Perhaps that is why it is not surprising that the locals are building a $1 billion theme park that will feature over 100 animatronic dinosaurs of 40 different species. Dubbed "Restless Planet," the park will attempt to provide an educational experience amid all of the Vegas-style spectacle. This will be done using history themed rides and robots/habitats that represent an accurate portrayal (based on current knowledge) of what life was like millions of years ago.

The robots will also be capable of interacting with guests by following them with their eyes or lunging at them as the walk by. Even though you would think that keeping the wraps on a 500,000 square foot park would be difficult, further details are scarce. However, the park is scheduled to open in late 2008 in City of Arabia, Dubai.

Cynthia McKinney, a former six-term Congresswoman and an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq, today officially launched her campaign as a Green Party candidate for President.

In a video news release, McKinney says "the Republicans have deceived us; the Democrats have failed us. It is time for a new beginning: A time for hope to rise from the ashes of despair."

McKinney, a former Democrat from Georgia, was one of only three members of Congress to vote "yes" on a House Resolution in 2005 calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. One of her last acts in office was introducing Articles of Impeachment naming George Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice.

According to McKinney: "It is time to break the vicious cycle where the poor go to war and veterans come home wounded and ignored."

McKinney supports universal, single-payer health care; fair trade; and has been an unrelenting advocate for Hurricane Katrina survivors. No stranger to controversy and unafraid of speaking truth to power, McKinney has demanded that the Bush Administration tell the American people what the Administration knew about the events leading up to 9/11 and when they knew it.

Cannabis smokers beware: puff for puff, smoke from the plant contains significantly more chemicals and carcinogens than that from tobacco.

Cannabis smoke is well known to be more harmful to the lungs than tobacco, because smokers inhale cannabis one-third more deeply and hold it in their lungs for up to four times as long as cigarette smokers do. Yet while we have a list of more than 4000 chemicals and toxins present in tobacco smoke from dozens of studies, there is no comparable list for cannabis.

So David Moir of Health Canada and his colleagues set out to make a direct comparison, using machines that "smoke" the cigarettes and then collect and analyse the smoke. They found that directly inhaled cannabis smoke contained 20 times as much ammonia and five times as much hydrogen cyanide as tobacco smoke.

Listen to dolphins whistling to each other and you could be forgiven for thinking that they are having a conversation. Now we're a bit nearer to understanding what they might be saying, thanks to a project that has distinguished nearly 200 different whistles dolphins make and linked some of them to specific behaviours.

Liz Hawkins of the Whale Research Centre at Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia, eavesdropped on bottlenose dolphins living off the western coast of Australia for her three-year study.

"This communication is highly complex, and it is contextual, so in a sense, it could be termed a language," says Hawkins, who presented her work at a meeting of the Society for Marine Mammalogy in Cape Town, South Africa, this month.

School officials say the Ocala 5th grader had brought a piece of steak for her lunch, and a four and a half inch steak knife with which to cut it. According to the report, a couple of teachers took the utensil and called authorities, who arrested the girl and took her to the county’s juvenile assessment center.

Students sitting next to the girl at lunch say she didn't threaten anyone with the knife; she just used it to cut up her food.

The girl's uncle, Kenneth Thomas, told MyFOXOrlando that his niece had to ride in the back of a patrol car.

Fearing that a sneak attack by American submarine-launched missiles might take Moscow out in thirteen minutes, the Soviet leadership had authorized the construction of an automated communications network, reinforced to withstand a nuclear strike. At its heart was a computer system similar to the one in Dr Strangelove. Its codename was Perimetr. It went fully operational in January 1985. It is still in place. Its job is to monitor whether there have been nuclear detonations on Russian territory and to check whether communications channels with the Kremlin have been severed. If the answer to both questions is “yes” then the computer will conclude that the country is under attack and activate its nuclear arsenal. All that is then needed is final human approval from a command post buried deep underground. It would be a brave officer, adds Smith, who, having been cut off from his superiors in the Kremlin, could ignore the advice of such a supposedly foolproof system. [...]

We all face the prospect that, if Russia were ever attacked, its strategic nuclear warheads could be launched by a computer system designed and built in the late 1970s.