Battle brewing between Pirate Bay, recording industry over IFPI domain coup

Straight from Ars Technica: “The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has taken up a new battle against pirates, but this one is different than previous legal pursuits. The UK-based organization acts as the worldwide arm for the music recording industry, but as widely reported, it apparently forgot to renew its .com top-level domain in time before it got snatched up by one of its top targets, The Pirate Bay. While the IFPI still retains control of ifpi.org, ifpi.com now points to a Pirate Bay page that reads: “International Federation of Pirates Interests.” The two sides are now preparing for a fight over the domain, and we talked to the parties involved…”

San Francisco Considers Nation’s First Safe Injection Site for Addicts

Straight from Fox News: “SAN FRANCISCO — City health officials took the first tentative steps toward opening America’s first legal safe-injection room, where addicts could shoot up heroin, cocaine and other drugs under the supervision of nurses.

Hoping to reduce San Francisco’s high rate of fatal drug overdoses, the public health department co-sponsored a symposium Thursday on the only such facility in North America, a 4-year-old Vancouver site where an estimated 700 intravenous users a day self-administer narcotics.

Hundreds of community activists and health workers attending the forum also discussed what it would take to get a similar service going here and heard recovering addicts talk about why they think it is a good idea.

Organizers of the daylong forum, which included a coalition of nonprofit health and social-service groups, acknowledge that it could take years to get an injection facility up and running. Along with legal hurdles at the state and federal level, such an effort would be almost sure to face political opposition.

Bertha Madras, deputy director of demand reduction for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, called San Francisco’s consideration of such a facility “disconcerting” and “poor public policy.”"

DNA Discoverer Apologizes for Racist Remarks

*Update (10-25-2007)* James Watson Retires

I knew this wouldn’t take long…

Straight from Fox News: “James Watson, the 79-year-old scientific icon made famous by his work in DNA, has apologized for his comments that black are less intelligent than whites, saying he’s “mortified.”

“I am mortified about what has happened,” Watson said Thursday through the publicist for his British publisher. “More importantly, I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said.

“I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have. To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.”"