iNPLACENEWS

Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved Sunday a move to make permanent the country’s pioneering program to give addicts government-authorized heroin.
At the same time, voters rejected a proposal to decriminalize marijuana.
Sixty-eight percent of the 2,264,968 voters casting ballots approved making the heroin program permanent. It has been credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily [...]

People late for school or work because of New York City subway delays can get notes from the transit agency to give to their teachers or bosses.
The New York City Transit division says it gives passengers the notes so they can prove they’re not lying about being delayed while riding the subway.
Passengers request the delay [...]

California authorities got a shock of their own when they discovered that a drunken driving suspect they had just stunned with a Taser was completely naked.
Santa Ana police say the naked man was pulled over by police Wednesday night after his van hit a car.
Police Commander Stephen Colon says a driver alerted officers to the [...]

A church official says the clergyman credited with helping to push Congress to insert the phrase “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance has died in Alexandria, Pa. The Rev. George M. Docherty was 97.
Nancy Taylor, historian for the Huntingdon Presbyterian Church, says Docherty died on Thanksgiving at his home in Alexandria, with his wife, [...]

Some 15,000 soldiers are heading home to this sprawling base after spending more than a year at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and military health officials are bracing for a surge in brain injuries and psychological problems among those troops.
Facing prospects that one in five of the 101st Airborne Division soldiers will suffer from stress-related [...]

A new kind of silent hero has joined the fight against climate change.
Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a gritty, working-class town outside Barcelona, has placed a sea of solar panels atop mausoleums at its cemetery, transforming a place of perpetual rest into one buzzing with renewable energy.
Flat, open and sun-drenched land is so scarce in Santa [...]

Here’s some food for thought: If you have nude photos of your wife on your cell phone, hang onto it.
Phillip Sherman of Arkansas learned that lesson after he left his phone behind at a McDonald’s restaurant and the photos ended up online. Now he and his wife, Tina, are suing the McDonald’s Corp., the franchise [...]

Tennis great Jimmy Connors was arrested outside the campus arena where UC Santa Barbara and top-ranked North Carolina were playing a basketball game.
The eight-time Grand Slam champion was taken into custody Friday night after refusing to comply with an order to leave an area near the entrance of the Thunderdome following a confrontation, police Sgt. [...]

Zimbabwe has refused to let Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and a South African human rights advocate visit the impoverished country for a humanitarian mission, the three said Saturday.
The former U.N. secretary-general, the ex-U.S. president and rights advocate Graca Machel had planned to assess the southern African country’s needs. They are members of The Elders, a [...]

The White House said Saturday representatives of the nations trying to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program have agreed to meet next month.
White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters after President George W. Bush’s meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak that there was [...]