Author: Bruce Hawsking

Nitrogen Hypoxia: What to Know About This New Method of Execution
26Jan Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
Health

Nitrogen Hypoxia: What to Know About This New Method of Execution

The planned execution of a death row inmate by the state of Alabama on Thursday evening will be carried out by a procedure that has never been used for capital punishment in the United States. The inmate, Kenneth Smith, who was convicted in a 1988 stabbing murder, will be put to death by inhaling nitrogen gas, a method known as nitrogen hypoxia.Supporters of the method say it is fast and painless. But earlier this month, the United Nations Human Rights Office urged Alabama to stop the execution, saying it could amount to torture and be in violation of human rights treaties that the United States has agreed to.Alabama would be the first state to use nitrogen hypoxia, but other states are interested in employing the method.What is nitrogen hypoxia?Hypoxia is a medical term for a state of ins...
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Why Caitlin Clark could pose a dilemma for Team USA at the Olympics
26Jan Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
Sports

Why Caitlin Clark could pose a dilemma for Team USA at the Olympics

USA Basketball will be seeking its eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal this summer with the first step coming at the Olympic qualifying tournament in Antwerp, Belgium, from Feb. 8-11. The 12-player roster for that tournament will be the first approximation of the team that will defend the Americans’ gold medal in Paris.Based on the 18 players who have been invited to the national team camp from Feb. 2-4 in Brooklyn, N.Y., the committee has a terrifically challenging task to select that final roster, a decision that will likely be further complicated by the current collegians — primarily Caitlin Clark, but USA Basketball veterans Paige Bueckers and Cameron Brink could also factor in here — who turn pro at the end of the 2023-24 season.The final roster will ultimately make a statement abou...
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Fake Explicit Taylor Swift Images Swamp Social Media
26Jan Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
Technology

Fake Explicit Taylor Swift Images Swamp Social Media

Fake, sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift likely generated by artificial intelligence spread rapidly across social media platforms this week, disturbing fans who saw them and reigniting calls from lawmakers to protect women and crack down on the platforms and technology that spread such images.One image shared by a user on X, formerly Twitter, was viewed 47 million times before the account was suspended on Thursday. X suspended several accounts that posted the faked images of Ms. Swift, but the images were shared on other social media platforms and continued to spread despite those companies’ efforts to remove them.While X said it was working to remove the images, fans of the pop superstar flooded the platform in protest. They posted related keywords, along with the sentence “Protect ...
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Airlines Hoping for More Boeing Jets Could Be Waiting Awhile
26Jan Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
Business

Airlines Hoping for More Boeing Jets Could Be Waiting Awhile

Boeing hoped 2024 would be the year it would significantly increase production of its popular Max jets. But less than a month into the year, the company is struggling to reassure airline customers that it will still be able to deliver on its promises.That’s because the Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday that it would limit the plane maker’s output until it was confident in Boeing’s quality control practices. On Jan. 5, a panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 body shortly after takeoff, terrifying passengers on an Alaska Airlines flight and forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing at Portland International Airport in Oregon. Almost immediately, the F.A.A. grounded some Max 9s.Since then, details have emerged about the jet’s production at Boeing’s facility in Renton, Wash.,...
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Haiti Threatened by Armed Environmental Group
26Jan Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
World

Haiti Threatened by Armed Environmental Group

In Haiti, as the number of murders soar and kidnappings rise, even the police are fleeing.With no elected president in office and a prime minister widely seen as illegitimate, calls for the government’s ouster are now being heard from an unlikely source: a brigade of armed officers ostensibly responsible for protecting environmentally sensitive areas.Armed uniformed members of the brigade clashed with government forces in northern Haiti this week, heightening tensions in an already volatile nation where gangs have seized control over large swaths of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and are wreaking havoc in rural areas.The environmental group, the Brigade for the Security of Protected Areas (known as B-SAP), became angry after the prime minister fired its leader. On Wednesday, the group’s offi...
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How Worcester Polytechnic Institute Weathered a Spate of Suicides
24Jan Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
Health

How Worcester Polytechnic Institute Weathered a Spate of Suicides

“Were you burned out,” I asked.Her face was flat. “I still am,” she said. “Yeah. Yes, and I still am.” Worcester is famous for the snow dumps it receives in the winter. It has something to do with where the city is in relation to the Appalachian Mountains. The clouds bear down when the temperature drops, and then the snow is relentless and the weather is brutal. All winter, it’s brutal, brutal, brutal, and then somehow, slowly, it’s not anymore. That’s kind of how the end of W.P.I.’s crisis arrived. No one I spoke to could quite explain how they knew that the emergency had subsided; the most they could be sure of was that, one moment in the spring of 2022, they felt intuitively that the last death was behind them. Between the summer 2021 and winter 2022, the faculty existed in a state of s...
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