Tot found high on coke at preschool

ASSOCIATED PRESS

JACKSONVILLE — A toddler was being treated for having cocaine in her system after workers at her church preschool noticed the girl acting unusual, authorities said Wednesday.

The unidentified girl, who is between 18 and 24 months old, was taken to the hospital by her parents after workers at Promise Land Preschool at First Baptist Church of Mandarin noticed she would not eat and was unsteady on her feet Monday, according to a report from the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office. The girl was expected to be fine.

The toddler’s parents tested negative for cocaine, authorities said. Authorities also could not link the drugs to the church, the Rev. Steve Newbill told The Florida Times-Union.

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Full story: BreakingNews(floridatoday.com)

2-year-old allegedly shoots father

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Minneapolis police are trying to find out how a 2-year-old boy allegedly ended up with a gun and shot his father. The 24-year-old man walked into Abbott Northwestern Hospital last Saturday with a gunshot wound to his arm. The man told police that his 2-year-old son had taken the gun from his mother's purse and fired it at him.

"I cannot think of the last time a 2-year-old was involved in a shooting," Lt. Amelia Huffman, a police spokeswoman, said Tuesday. "It's a pretty rare thing, thankfully."

Read more »

Court strikes down Internet porn law

POSTED: 4:10 p.m. EDT, March 22, 2007

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- A federal judge on Thursday dealt another blow to government efforts to control Internet pornography, striking down a 1998 U.S. law that makes it a crime for commercial Web site operators to let children access "harmful" material.

In the ruling, the judge said parents can protect their children through software filters and other less restrictive means that do not limit the rights of others to free speech.

"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if (free speech) protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection," wrote Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr., who presided over a four-week trial last fall.

The law would have criminalized Web sites that allow children to access material deemed "harmful to minors" by "contemporary community standards." The sites would have been expected to require a credit card number or other proof of age. Penalties included a $50,000 fine and up to six months in prison.

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Full story: CNN.com

Video Game Decency Act returns

By Brendan Sinclair Special to CNET News.com
Published: March 21, 2007, 9:31 AM PDT

The Video Game Decency Act of 2006 was one of a handful of pieces of proposed federal legislation that failed to get traction in Congress last year. But it is by no means an abandoned issue.

Much as Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., did with the recently resurrected Truth in Video Game Rating Act, the legislator behind the Video Game Decency Act is taking a second crack at the idea by resubmitting a functionally identical version of the bill to Congress.

As reported by GamePolitics.com, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., last week introduced the Video Game Decency Act of 2007 to the House of Representatives, where it was quickly referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The bill aims to criminalize any attempt to obtain a less-restrictive age-related rating on a game by failing to disclose the game's true contents to the Entertainment Software Rating Board.

... Shortly after the Oblivion re-rating, the ESRB revealed that it already has the power to fine companies as much as $1 million for not disclosing objectionable content. The board has also said it could punish repeat offenders by refusing to rate their games at all, effectively preventing their games from being carried by major U.S. retailers.

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Full story: News.com

Hackers Promise Month of MySpace Bugs

Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
Friday, March 16, 2007 06:00 PM GMT-08:00

They won't divulge their real names, they call their project a "whiny, attention-seeking ploy," and they appear to take their fashion cues from Beastie Boys music videos.

But two hackers going by the names of Mondo Armando and Müstaschio promise to begin disclosing security vulnerabilities in MySpace, News Corp.'s popular social networking site, every day next month.

"The purpose of the exercise is not so much to expose MySpace as a hive of spam and villainy (since everyone knows that already), but to highlight the monoculture-style danger of extremely popular websites," wrote Mondo Armando in an e-mail interview.

"We could have just as easily gone after Google or Yahoo or MSN or IDG or whatever. MySpace is just more fun, and is becoming notoriously [obnoxious] about responding to security issues," he said.

I found this via: neowin.net
Full story: PC World

Playing video games improves eyesight

First-person shooters helped subjects improve spatial resolution
Updated: 12:40 p.m. ET March 16, 2007

Playing "Gears of War," "Lost Planet," "Halo" and other action video games that involve firing guns can improve your eyesight, new research claims.

Sedate games like "Tetris" don't work.

People who started out as non-gamers and then received 30 hours of training on first-person action video games showed a substantial increase in their ability to see objects accurately in a cluttered space, compared to non-gamers given the same test, said Daphne Bevelier of the University of Rochester.

... First-person action games helped study subjects improve their spatial resolution, meaning their ability to clearly see small, closely packed together objects, such as letters, she said. Game-playing actually changes the way our brains process visual information.

"These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it," she said, in a prepared statement. "That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life."

I found this via: neowin.net
Full story: MSNBC

Woman weds corpse...

Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:30AM EDT

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - An Indian woman, despairing over her lover's accidental death when he fell down a well soon after their engagement, insisted on ceremonially marrying his corpse just minutes before the cremation.

"It was for just few minutes the girl was dressed as a bride and then as a widow," K.M. Kapadia, a police officer in the town of Anand in western Gujarat state, said on Saturday.

Wedding attendees sat the corpse up by a fire, the traditional center of Hindu wedding ceremonies, and chanted some marriage prayers before cremating the body, police said.

"The girl refused to give away the body of her lover for the cremation till she tied the knot with him," Kapadia said.

The bride's parents opposed the marriage but later attended the wedding ceremony and gave their 22-year-old daughter Tulsi Devipujak clothes and utensils as gifts, according to the Hindu tradition.

Source: CNN.com

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