The Senate approved a bill Friday decriminalizing possession of small quantities of drugs for personal use — including heroin, cocaine, LSD and Ecstasy.
President Vicente Fox’s office indicated that he would sign the bill, which has already passed the lower house of Congress. Mexican officials say they hope the measure will allow police to focus on […]

Premier Silvio Berlusconi indicated Saturday he was ready to resign after long denying electoral defeat, saying a Cabinet meeting expected to make his departure official was scheduled for Tuesday.
[…]
Even though Italy’s top court certified center-left former premier Romano Prodi’s razor-thin victory in the lower house of parliament after April 9-10 elections, Berlusconi, a billionaire media […]

President Vladimir V. Putin declared today that an oil pipeline being built across Siberia should be rerouted significantly further away from the northern shore of Lake Baikal, one of the world’s natural landmarks.
Mr. Putin’s decision reversed a controversial government decision last month to allow the country’s pipeline monopoly, Transneft, to build the pipeline within a […]

A hydrogen fuel cell that uses enzymes instead of expensive metal catalysts to drive chemical reactions has been developed by UK researchers.
Enzyme-powered fuel cells could be smaller, simpler and cheaper to make than conventional ones, the researchers claim. They have already powered a digital watch using their invention.
Full Story: New Scientist.
These icons link to social […]

On April 19th Brad Pitt and Global Green USA announced the Sustainable Design Competition for New Orleans Neighborhoods. The competition launched to act as a catalyst for sustainable design in the rebuilding process.
Global Green USA has teamed up with Brad Pitt to sponsor a design competition to provide an opportunity for talented architects, urban planners, […]

A small step forward:
The US government released yesterday a detailed list of detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison — the most extensive accounting of the hundreds of people held there, nearly all of them labeled ”enemy combatants.”
Full Story: the Boston Globe.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover […]

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank economists estimate almost a six percent growth for 2006 in sub-saharan Africa, the highest rate in 30 years. Speaking on the eve of the IMF and World Bank spring meetings in Washington, economists said the growth could be attributed to higher commodity prices, stronger agricultural output and […]

In a move to eliminate child labour, 80,000 working children will be integrated with mainstream education by 2007 under an Indo-US project.
The three-year-long INDUS project, launched in February, 2004, as a follow-up of a joint statement on ‘Enhanced Indo-US Cooperation on Eliminating Child Labour’, is aimed to ensure elimination of child labour from hazardous occupations, […]

In any big town you just have to look around and there will be a boy within hailing distance ready to sell you a top-up card.
Girls are less likely to be scampering about in traffic jams with strings of cards. But give them a picnic table, a red, yellow or green umbrella, and a “make […]

Eli Lilly and Co’s Evista osteoporosis drug works as well as the older tamoxifen in reducing the risk of breast cancer in high-risk women, with fewer dangerous side effects, researchers said on Monday.
The results of the 19,000-woman Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene (STAR) trial show that Evista, known generically as raloxifene, is less likely than […]