Rapes and attempted rapes have declined in the United States, and sharply, in the past 30 years, according to the government’s most painstaking crime survey. A second big government tally finds the same trend but a gentler decline.
The decline, in the view of one top criminologist, James Alan Fox of Northeastern University in Boston, […]

Texas officials announced plans Thursday for the nation’s largest offshore wind farm, consisting of as many as 500 windmills out in the Gulf of Mexico.
Houston-based Superior Renewable Energy will build and operate the project, which will be situated within about 10 miles of Padre Island. It is expected to cost $1 billion to $2 billion […]

Scientists have learned more details of the process which turns human cells into factories for viruses such as HIV.
It is known that viruses are able to hijack the genetic machinery of cells for their own ends.
Teams from Cambridge and Oxford Universities have witnessed the process in action, and have identified the crucial role of key […]

A Federal district court in New York has ruled that a Bush administration requirement that any international agencies receiving funding for programs to combat AIDS must sign an anti-prostitution pledge is unconstitutional. See the ruling here. Two international groups filed suit against the US Agency for International Development (USAID), arguing that the restriction violates their […]

ContextPlus, an adware company implicated in a large number of stealth rootkit infections, has stopped distributing its software, citing concerns over the practices of some distribution partners.
In a brief note posted on its home page, ContextPlus said it is “no longer able to ensure the highest standards of quality and customer care” and will stop […]

Remarkably, the number of people calling for LEGAL immigration to be decreased is at a historical low. Just last year and for most of the last decades, roughly a majority of the public called for decreasing immigration below its present levels.
Today, just 34% call for decreasing legal immigration, with 39% calling for INCREASED levels of […]

The UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization has abandoned its plans to create a podcast-killing treaty — for now. This is the Broadcast Treaty, which will create a new group of rightsholders, the people who transmit information (broadcasters, satellite casters, cablecasters, but for now, not webcasters). These people get a “broadcast right” to the works they […]

U.S. hybrid vehicle sales more than doubled last year, according to new data released Thursday, although they still only comprise slightly more than 1 percent of U.S. vehicle sales.

Full Story: CBS News.
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One-third of the world’s population lives in countries with insufficient freshwater to support the population, according to the UN Environment Programme. For that reason, desalination plants that extract drinking water from seawater are increasingly popular across the world. But many water-poor countries cannot afford the conventional desalination technology—reverse osmosis—because of its relatively high cost. Menachem […]

UNICEF officials, parents, and local and military leaders celebrated the demobilization of 250 youngsters from armed forces and groups in Southern Sudan last week. The release was the largest of its kind since a peace accord ended two decades of civil war in January 2005, and committed the two sides to child demobilization throughout the […]