Baby Dies After Allegedly Being Infected With Herpes During Circumcision

just fucked up news from NYC
City health officials are trying to stop a Rockland County rabbi from performing circumcisions, after a baby boy died from herpes he allegedly contracted from the rabbi during a circumcision.

The city Department of Health said Wednesday it is seeking a permanent injunction against Rabbi Yitzhok Fischer. The DOH says Fischer uses an ancient religious custom of using his mouth to suck the infant's blood after cutting the foreskin.

According to court papers filed in Manhattan this week, a 3-week-old boy died from herpes 10 days after he and his twin brother were circumcised by Fischer in October. The boy?s twin was also infected with the virus.

In addition, a Staten Island boy was also reportedly infected with herpes after a circumcision performed by Fischer in 2003.

DOH officials say Fischer did not comply with an order given in November to stop performing circumcisions and to have his blood tested.

?Infants, particularly under the age of six months, are highly susceptible to infections. They do not have a functioning immune system," said Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden.

Fischer's attorney says his client is cooperating with the city in an effort to determine what he says it ?the true source? of the infection.

Microsoft downplayed the significance of a reported flaw in its latest update to Windows XP.
source: CNET news.com
Responding to a Russian security company's claim that it found a way to beat a protective element of Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2, the software giant on Tuesday said it does not believe the issue represents a vulnerability. In fact, the company said the technology highlighted by Moscow-based Positive Technologies was never meant to be "foolproof" and added that the reported flaw does not, by itself, put consumers at risk.

"An attacker cannot use this method by itself to attempt to run malicious code on a user's system," Microsoft said in a statement. "There is no attack that utilizes this, and customers are not at risk from the situation."

Last week, Positive reported that the Data Execution Protection tools included in Service Pack 2--code intended to prevent would-be attackers from inserting malicious programs into a PC's memory--opened Windows XP systems up to additional threats. The security company said that two minor mistakes in the implementation of the technology could allow a knowledgeable programmer to sidestep the measures, known as the Data Execution Protection and the Heap Overflow Protection.

But Microsoft representatives disagreed with Positive's interpretation of Data Execution Protection, saying the technology was not created to necessarily foil existing threats but to make developing attacks against Service Pack 2 harder.

In an e-mail message to CNET News.com, Microsoft representatives said the company would continue to modify the technology and would evaluate ways to mitigate the reported method of bypass.

Those "security technologies in Windows XP Service Pack 2 are meant to help make it more difficult for an attacker to run malicious software on the computer as the result of a buffer-overrun vulnerability," the representatives said in the statement. "Our early analysis indicates that this attempt to bypass these features is not security vulnerability."

Positive said that attack programs that use the exploit to get around Windows XP Service Pack 2 protections work reliably, allowing intruders to introduce malicious code onto machines using a second vulnerability that would otherwise not work on Service Pack 2 because of the protection mechanisms.

Yury Maksimov, chief technology officer at the security company, said Positive only publicized the issue after Microsoft refused to act on previous warnings of the flaw that it sent to the software giant. He said he believes the Data Execution Protection does open up potential vulnerabilities.

"In this situation, we decided it would be much safer for the industry to be aware of the new, existing threat," Maksimov wrote in an e-mail. "Such a vulnerability cannot cause a new worm or virus (to appear). But that's exactly the situation when it is much better to know about the problem, than not."

However, at least one industry expert said that Positive's report of the threat may not be completely fair to Microsoft. Peter Lindstrom, a research director at Spire Security, observed that the Data Execution Protection vulnerability is unlikely to be seized upon by hackers. It relates more to core security issues with the design of many different kinds of software, not just tools made by Microsoft, he said.

"Maybe you could classify this problem as a lost opportunity on Microsoft's part to protect Windows better, but that doesn't make it a vulnerability," Lindstrom said.
Microsoft: SP2 shimmy's not a flaw | CNET News.com

First Amendment no big deal, students say
I saw this and I thought it was a joke, you have to read this.
Source: AP

The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag burning is hardly protected free speech.

It turns out the First Amendment is a second-rate issue to many of those nearing their own adult independence, according to a study of high school attitudes released Monday.

The original amendment to the Constitution is the cornerstone of the way of life in the United States, promising citizens the freedoms of religion, speech, press and assembly.

Yet, when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

"These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous," said Hodding Carter III, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which sponsored the $1 million study. "Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation's future."

The students are even more restrictive in their views than their elders, the study says.

When asked whether people should be allowed to express unpopular views, 97 percent of teachers and 99 percent of school principals said yes. Only 83 percent of students did.

The results reflected indifference, with almost three in four students saying they took the First Amendment for granted or didn't know how they felt about it. It was also clear that many students do not understand what is protected by the bedrock of the Bill of Rights.

Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It's not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't.

"Schools don't do enough to teach the First Amendment. Students often don't know the rights it protects," Linda Puntney, executive director of the Journalism Education Association, said in the report. "This all comes at a time when there is decreasing passion for much of anything. And, you have to be passionate about the First Amendment."

The partners in the project, including organizations of newspaper editors and radio and television news directors, share a clear advocacy for First Amendment issues.

Federal and state officials, meanwhile, have bemoaned a lack of knowledge of U.S. civics and history among young people. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, has even pushed through a mandate that schools must teach about the Constitution on September 17, the date it was signed in 1787.

The survey, conducted by researchers at the University of Connecticut, is billed as the largest of its kind. More than 100,000 students, nearly 8,000 teachers and more than 500 administrators at 544 public and private high schools took part in early 2004.

The study suggests that students embrace First Amendment freedoms if they are taught about them and given a chance to practice them, but schools don't make the matter a priority.

Students who take part in school media activities, such as student newspapers or TV production, are much more likely to support expression of unpopular views, for example.

About nine in 10 principals said it is important for all students to learn some journalism skills, but most administrators say a lack of money limits their media offerings.

More than one in five schools offer no student media opportunities; of the high schools that do not offer student newspapers, 40 percent have eliminated them in the last five years.

"The last 15 years have not been a golden era for student media," said Warren Watson, director of the J-Ideas project at Ball State University in Indiana. "Programs are under siege or dying from neglect. Many students do not get the opportunity to practice our basic freedoms."

CNN.com - Freedom of what? - Jan 31, 2005