Eideard

The United States leads the world in rates of experimenting with marijuana and cocaine despite strict drug laws, say World Health Organization researchers.

Countries with looser drug laws have lower rates of abuse, the researchers report in the Public Library of Science journal, PLoS Medicine.

The survey of 54,000 people in 17 countries found that 16 percent of people in the United States had used cocaine in their lifetimes — far higher than the next highest rate, found in New Zealand, where 4.3 percent of people reported having used cocaine.

More than 42 percent of Americans admitted to having tried cannabis, closely followed by 41 percent in New Zealand.

Americans were also the most likely to have smoked, with 74 percent saying they used tobacco at some time in their lives, although current smoking rates are far lower at 21 percent.

Feels great to be in first place, doesn’t it?

The search teams comb through the backyards of the half-million-dollar homes with metal detectors, placing red flags on the manicured lawns every time they get a hit. To the shock of residents, they sometimes find live bombs.

The bombs are left over from a 12,000-acre World War II bombing range. The area has become an Orlando neighborhood with thousands of homes.

The Army Corps of Engineers has launched a $10 million cleanup of what used to be the PineCastle Jeep Range, but it said bombs could remain there once they’re done.

“Chances are, it’s not a problem,” said Mike Ornella, the man leading the Army Corps cleanup.

“It’s incomprehensible,” said Frank Kruppenbacher, the general counsel of the Orange County school board. “It starts with my wondering why the U.S. military ever allowed any of these properties [to] be developed without first saying you have to go through a checklist.”

Want to buy a really nice home – cheap?

AP Photo by Petros Giannakouris

Capt. David N. Simms wanted the tribal sheiks to have no doubts — the $500,000 his unit spends every month to pay and equip local tribesmen to keep peace here will soon run out and they had better be ready when it’s gone.

Simms handed the sheiks 600 applications for a vocational school in nearby Baghdad. It’s one option, he said, to prepare the men for life after he stops giving them salaries.

The “Sons of Iraq” are the estimated 80,000 fighters — mostly Sunni tribesmen and former insurgents — recruited and paid by the U.S. military to help fight al-Qaida and maintain security in neighborhoods, including this Sunni farming community west of Baghdad.

The program has been a remarkable success, helping reduce violence across the country by 80 percent since early 2007 at the cost of $216 million to date.

Nearly two years into the program, however, the U.S. is gradually handing over responsibility for the Sons of Iraq to the Shiite-led government. By January, the military hopes to turn the entire program over to the Iraqis.

We’re handing over enough dollars to provide continuing jobs for about 5 to 20% of the Sons of Iraq, depending on local kickbacks.

Who do you think they will hunt?

An A-grade student from one of the poorest areas in the country has had an offer of a place on a prestigious medical course withdrawn after admissions officers ruled that a spent criminal conviction meant he could not be trusted to become a doctor.

Majid Ahmed, 18, from Little Horton in Bradford, lost an appeal against the decision by Imperial College London to bar him from its medicine degree, a move that youth justice charities labelled discriminatory and MPs called unfair.

Ahmed was convicted of burglary in 2005 and ordered to serve a four-month referral order for community service. His conviction is spent and he has moved schools, volunteered with disability charities and won four A grades at A-level.

Imperial offered him a place for study this academic year, an offer which was withdrawn after he wrote to tell the college of his conviction. The university said the decision had been made to uphold trust in the medical profession.

I hope you didn’t expect school administrators in Britain to be in touch with reality? The function has devolved into a beancounter specialty, grounded in devotion to bureacracy.

AP Photo by Ding Xiaochun

The Suzhou-Nantong Yangtze Road Bridge, the world’s largest cable-stayed bridge, has formally opened in east China’s Jiangsu Province after five years of construction.

The bridge, linking the two prosperous cities of Nantong and Suzhou, runs 32.4 kilometers, with 8,146 meters spanning the Yangtze, China’s longest waterway. It has three lanes each way…

It has the world’s longest span of 1,088 meters, usurping the previous record holder, the Tatara Bridge in Japan, which has a main span of 890 meters…

Its steel and concrete towers, the tallest bridge towers in the world, stand at 300.4 meters.

How soon will it be before we learn the name of the first numbnut to commit suicide by jumping?

A British high school student was awarded marks for writing nothing but a two-word obscenity on an exam paper because the phrase expressed meaning and was spelled correctly.

The Times newspaper on Monday quoted examiner Peter Buckroyd as saying he gave the student — who wrote “Fuck off” — two points out of a possible 27 for the English paper.

“It would be wicked to give it zero because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for, like conveying some meaning and some spelling,” Buckroyd was quoted as saying.

He would have received a slightly higher grade with punctuation.

Air Force Amy at Moonlite BunnyRanch

Nevada brothels that cater to long-haul truckers are offering gas cards and other promotions after seeing business decline as much as 25 percent from a year ago.

Geoffrey Arnold, president of the Nevada Brothel Owners’ Association, said truckers account for up to 75 percent of business at the state’s rural brothels along Interstate 80 and U.S. Highway 95…

Under a promotion under way at the Moonlite BunnyRanch near Carson City, the first 100 customers who arrive with government stimulus checks receive twice the services for the same regular price.

“We’re calling it double your stimulus,” said BunnyRanch owner Dennis Hof. “The brothel industry is having to get more creative just like all consumer products in America. Everybody has got to deal, and we’re doing the same thing.”

Hey, if Wal-Mart and Best Buy are doing it. Why not the rest of the pimps business community?

Thanks, K B