Good for community, bad for emergency services

A quarter of Londoner's living in the boroughs of Hackney, Lambeth and Haringey regularly tune into pirate radio stations, according to new research.

It is perhaps an unlikely combination -- an international team of scientists stationed in Svalbard, Norway and two polar explorers crossing the North Pole on foot. Both teams, however, are currently part of a common effort to collect vital data on the ground and from the air in support of ESA's ice mission CryoSat-2.

A new study to evaluate treatments for addiction to prescription painkillers is being launched in California. This is the first large-scale study to assess whether addiction to opioid painkillers, such as Vicodin and OxyContin, can effectively be treated with drug treatments currently used for heroin addiction.

Fresh off of getting a beating from a TV talk show host, Jack Thompson has reached a settlement with his favorite target, Take-Two Interactive, publishers of the Grand Theft Auto games. You might remember Thompson's suit in question here, which was pretty ridiculous, even for him. In response to a Take-Two suit trying to stop Thompson's repeated (and repeatedly unsuccessful) attempts to block the release of their new games, Thompson alleged the company was at the head of a vast conspiracy to somehow deprive him of his civil rights. For added amusement, he alleged that a number of video-game news sites were in on things, and alleged some racketeering violations, though he soon quietly dropped them. Thompson and Take-Two were due in court Thursday morning, where Thompson could have been tossed in jail for contempt of court, but the settlement precluded that. It's hard to see this as anything other than a win for Take-Two: Thompson has agreed to stop trying to block the sale of Take-Two's games, and will stop telling people that the company is breaking the law by selling games. However, he won't be prevented from representing third parties in their suits against the company, nor will he stop criticizing them and their games. But between this case and his potential disbarment, Thompson's doing a pretty good job of marginalizing himself.