The number of felons walking back through the state’s prison doors for another stay dropped to an alltime low since 2004, Gov. Rod Blagojevich said recently. Blagojevich said the repeat cycle of crimes by formers offenders was halted by statewide reforms that translated into an estimated $64 million in prison costs savings for taxpayers.
Convictions among […]

Urban agriculture taking off
Fewer Conflicts Involve Child Soldiers, Report Finds
Court: Texas had no right to take polygamists’ children
Pacific humpback whale population rises
New site on creative reuses
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For years, New Yorkers have grown basil, tomatoes and greens in window boxes, backyard plots and community gardens. But more and more New Yorkers like the Wilkses are raising fruits and vegetables, and not just to feed their families but to sell to people on their block.
This urban agriculture movement has grown even more […]

The number of conflicts in which children are used as soldiers has dropped sharply in the past four years, to 17 from 27, according to a research report released this week by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.
The report, the first since 2004, in some ways reflects the now nearly universal consensus […]

The state of Texas should not have removed children from a polygamist sect’s ranch because it didn’t prove that they were in “imminent danger,” an appeals court ruled Thursday.
In the ruling, a three-judge panel did not order that the children be returned to their families on the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas.
Instead, […]

Once hunted to the brink of extinction, humpback whales have made a dramatic comeback in the North Pacific Ocean over the past four decades, a new study says.
The study released Thursday by SPLASH, an international organization of more than 400 whale watchers, estimates there were between 18,000 and 20,000 of the majestic mammals in the […]

How can you reuse fiber glass? Birth control pill boxes? Find out at ReadyMade’s new site:
How can I recycle this?
(UpdateThis is not a ReadyMade site, I just misread the WorldChanging article that I found the site through)
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Junk Computers Could Fuel Cars
Tribes buying back land at a rapid pace
Djibouti to work with UN to eliminate female genital mutilation
Nanohealing substance stops bleeding in seconds
Rise of the rest
USPS starts its own free small electronics recycling program
Computers, cell phones come to Cuba
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Researchers in Romania have created a way to transform bits and pieces of printed circuit boards from jettisoned computers into clean raw materials for consumer products, such as fuel and plastics.
[…]
The researchers collected printed circuit boards from discarded computers. They employed a special combination of catalysts, high temperatures and chemical filtration to destroy flame-retardant additives […]

they wonder if the tribe is engaged in a shrewd chess game to block Shakopee’s development plans, then move out into open countryside to start reacquiring vast stretches of ancestral land. It’s a question emerging from New York to California as tribes riding high on casino profits have begun spending that wealth to reassert […]