Djibouti has become the first country to launch a joint programme by United Nations agencies to move more quickly to eliminate female genital mutilation (FGM).
The joint programme, run by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), is to begin in a country where nine out of every ten females has undergone […]

A startup based in Cambridge, MA, says that it plans to soon begin clinical trials of a nanostructured material that stops bleeding almost instantly. A startup called Arch Therapeutics has licensed the technology from MIT and is developing manufacturing processes for making it in large amounts.
The new material can be poured over a site and […]

So I didn’t post much stuff last week, and I didn’t do a week in review. Sorry, been busy. I’ve also been meaning to write an overview of reasons to be hopeful, like this one form last year. I’ve found Fareed Zakaria’s article “The Rise of the Rest” does a pretty good job. This […]

Free and green. Those are the goals of a pilot program launched today by the U.S. Postal Service that allows customers to recycle small electronics and inkjet cartridges by mailing them free of charge.
The “Mail Back” program helps consumers make more environmentally friendly choices, making it easier for customers to discard used or obsolete small […]

The first legalised home computers have gone on sale in Cuba, but a ban remains on internet access.
This is the latest in a series of restrictions on daily life which President Raul Castro has lifted in recent weeks.
[…]
In recent weeks thousands of Cubans have snapped up mobile phones and DVD players.
Full Story: BBC
These icons link […]

Rose Colored news returns to regular operations
Crime prevention organization making a difference in Chicago
Man grows new finger thanks to ground-up pig bladder
Argentina Decriminalizes Drug Consumption
Alaska: Appeals Court Cracks Down on Coercive Searches
Low cost, small scale wind turbines to power off-grid villages
Gel-like Material Shows Promise As Oral Insulin Pill For Diabetes
Bakeries urge customers to plant wheat […]

New York Times Magazine has a lengthy piece on an interesting crime-prevention organization in Chicago, CeaseFire:
Newspaper accounts usually refer to the organization as a gang-intervention program, and Hoddenbach and most of his colleagues are indeed former gang leaders. But CeaseFire doesn’t necessarily aim to get people out of gangs — nor interrupt the drug trade. […]

The photos of his severed finger tip are pretty graphic. You can understand why doctors said he’d lost it for good.
Today though, you wouldn’t know it. Mr Spievak, who is 69 years old, shows off his finger, and it’s all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print.
‘Pixie dust’
How? Well that’s […]

This just in… A federal court in Argentina has decriminalized the personal consumption of drugs in that country. According to the court’s ruling, punishing drug users only “creates an avalanche of cases targeting consumers without climbing up in the ladder of [drug] trafficking.”
Last month at a UN meeting in Vienna, Argentina’s Minister of Justice, Aníbal […]

The Alaska Court of Appeals on Friday put law enforcement agencies on notice that it would not tolerate “implicitly coercive” search requests during traffic stops. The warning came in the form of a ruling on the case of Susan S. Brown, a driver pulled over on November 24, 2004 allegedly because of the light illuminating […]