Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker took to Twitter on Wednesday, calling the government's war on drugs a failure that unfairly targets the black population. His pointed criticism comes one day after New Jersey advanced a bill to decriminalize marijuana. If it passes, a person caught with 15 grams of pot or less would only face a $150 fine. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has not said whether he will support the bill. While Booker did not directly address the legislation, the outspoken Democratic mayor set off a lively discussion when he tweeted a Patch article about a program that lets nonviolent drug offenders choose treatment over jail time. Booker extolled the benefits of addiction treatment over incarceration, saying the drug war was costing billions ... Continue reading →
eXiled Alert! We're launching a new project to identify and expose corrupt shills and corporate trolls among political journalists and bloggers in the US. Support us, and help strike fear into the hearts of corporate trolls. Contribute using PayPal or WePay… Continue reading →
A woman withdraws money from a bank in Athens. Photograph: John Kolesidis/Reuters Police are urging Greeks to keep their money in bank accounts rather than putting it at risk of theft, amid further uncertainty about whether the austerity-struck country will remain in the eurozone.Greece's banks are likely to be shored up on Friday or Monday with €18bn (£14bn) of bailout funds they have been due to receive for weeks but which were held up by political uncertainty caused by inconclusive elections. Greece goes to the polls again on June 17, further stoking fears about its future within the euro.The scale of withdrawals from Greek banks – almost 25% of deposits have been taken out in the past two years – and fears that other countries ... Continue reading →
Homeowners who were underwater on their mortgages rose in the latest quarter, even though home prices have slowly started recovering.NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Despite rising home prices, more than 30% of borrowers, or close to 16 million homeowners, were underwater on their mortgage during the first quarter, according to Zillow. The percentage of borrowers who owed more on their home than it was worth increased to 31.4% during the quarter, up slightly from 31.1% three months earlier, according to Zillow. In the year-ago period, 32.4% of all borrowers had negative equity on their loan. The uptick in underwater homeowners occurred even though home prices have slowly started recovering. On Wednesday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that national home prices rose a modest 0.6% during ... Continue reading →
Detail from Jan Vermeer's Girl With A Pearl Earring. Can forensic science help us find out who she was? Photograph: Corbis A Californian university has won funding to use advanced facial recognition technology to try to solve the mysteries of some of the world's most famous works of art.Professor Conrad Rudolph said the idea for the experiment came from watching news and detective shows such as CSI which had a constant theme of using advanced computers to recognise unknown faces from murder victims to wanted criminals.Rudolph, professor of medieval art history at the University of California at Riverside, realised he might be able to apply that cutting-edge forensic science to some of the oldest mysteries in art: identifying the real people in paintings such as ... Continue reading →
Google received 3.3m requests for removals on copyright grounds last year, and is on course to quadruple that number this year. Photograph: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Google is receiving more than a million requests a month from copyright owners seeking to pull their content from the company's search results, the web giant has revealed. The number requests has grown so fast that it now often tops 250,000 a week, more than Google received for all of 2009.The figures, disclosed in Google's transparency report, reveal that in the past month alone Google received 1.2m requests on behalf of 1,000 copyright owners targeting 23,000 websites.Fred von Lohmann, Google's senior copyright counsel, said copyright infringement was the main reason Google had removed links from search terms. He said company ... Continue reading →
A new digitally focused media company — the Alabama Media Group, which will include The Birmingham News, the Press-Register of Mobile, The Huntsville Times and al.com — will launch this fall to serve readers and advertisers across the state, according to Cindy Martin, who will become president of the new organization.The change is designed to reshape how Alabama's leading media companies deliver award-winning local news, sports and entertainment coverage in an increasingly digital age. The Alabama Media Group will dramatically expand its news-gathering efforts around the clock, seven days a week, while offering enhanced printed newspapers on a schedule of three days a week. The newspapers will be home-delivered and sold in stores on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays only.A second company, Advance Central Services Alabama, ... Continue reading →
Crossroads GPS' 'Basketball'. Video: YouTube WhoOnce again, it is an ad from the new "masters of the universe" when it comes to the 2012 election cycle: a gigantic pro-Romney Super Pac. After last week's anti-Obama attack ad focused on the concept of "broken promises", Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS lashes out with a new commercial squarely aimed at blasting Obama where it hurts (his likeability numbers).WhatThis ad is the prime attraction in a vast $25m ad buy by Crossroads GPS, and it comes in at a whopping one minute and two seconds long. By TV ad standards, that is virtually Ben Hur. It also has snazzy special effects, tells a story using actors (not just news clips) and avoids a frenetic sense of panic that so ... Continue reading →
