watch and listen to the talking news every day at twelve noon and six pm on channel ninety six comcast six finity and channel thirty verizon fi os it can also be heard mondays and tuesdays at four thirty pm and wednesdays at twelve thirty pm on channel nine expanded he and channel twenty nine fi os listen any time on the v m c podcast network on sound cloud and i tunes just search for the belmont media podcast network and now on to the talking news white sharks aren't the issue gray seals are by peta whole less summer's white shark attacks off cape cod beaches one resulting in the st human fatality in the state in over eighty years highlight the fact that the times change and our acronym and our marine eco system is evolving and laws need to adjust to these changing realities however tragic those shock attacks for the victims and their families the white sharks are not the issue they simply dramatize it the ever increasing population of grey seals is the issue grease seals obviously have a legitimate place in the natural system which should be protected at the time the marine mammal protection act was passed forty six years ago that law was needed and appropriate and appropriate to protect marine mammals including grey seals that that have been a extirpated but in contrast to the endangered species act that passed just a year earlier the m m p a does not provide for delisting recovered species hence grey seals are in effect legally protected in perpetuity regardless of stock status which is to say regardless of how many there are this indefinite legal protection irrespective of numbers is arguably inconsistent with two of the principal metrics cited in the act which are to achieve an optimum sustainable population consistent with the carrying capacity of the habitat furthermore the absence of a delisting provision is implicitly inconsistent with other of the x principle goals which is the health and balance the ecosystem at luggage to wit does not does not to not the continued indefinite legal protection of a dominant predator or with a few natural controls over  population raise questions about the impact on the health and balance of a marine ecosystem a realistic stot to addressing this issue would be to amend the one thousand nine hundred and seventy two marine mammal protection act to provide for a delisting recovered species such as the greece seal it mr dooley well delisting would not resolve the issues of controlling seal population growth or related white shark attacks it would be reasonable a reasonable st step for the following reasons it would require the national oceanic and atmospheric administration the agency charge within minutes during and in forcing the marine mammal protection act to address the question of when to delist and twelve and toward that end to finally assess the grey seal population stock in terms of the aforementioned criteria listed in the act namely optimum sustainable population and carrying capacity of the habitat it it would shift nose focus from restoration of particular species to the health and balance of the marine ecosystem as a whole taking into account the status of other marine species such as a beleaguered caught fishery with which grey seals co exist and compete for survival it has been argued that amending the marine mammal protection act to provide for delisting would somehow weaken the act on the contrary it would strengthen law by recognizing and better aligning it with the ecosystem based management a scientific concept that has then greatly evolved since the would be listed opposed delisting monitoring plan could be prepared as in the case with the endangered species act to ensure that the grey seal population remains viable and recovered noah should publicly acknowledge the success of the marine mammal protection act in restoring a viable gray seal population in the northwest in atlanta and congress should amend the law to to permit noah to celebrate the success of delisting gray seals and allowing noah to focus henceforth on ensuring a balanced and healthy marine ecosystem and want to my colleague claire thank you bob chinese scientist says he edited the genes of twin girls d n a altered to boost resistance to hiv infection by marilyn m hong kong a chinese researcher claims that he helped make the world's st genetically attitude babies twin girls whose d n a he said all he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life if true it would be a profoundly post science and ethics are u s scientists said he took part in the work in china but this kind of gene editing is being and in the s because the d n a changes can pass to future generations and it risks harming other genes many mainstream scientists thinks it's too unsafe to try and sundry nouns to chinese report as human experimentation the researcher hey jiang cui of shenzhen said he altered embryos for seven couples during fertility treatments with one pregnancy resulted thus far he said his goal was not to cure or prevent an inherited disease but to try to be stoic trait that few people naturally have an ability to resist possible future infection with h the aids virus he said the parents involved declined to be identified or interviewed and he would not say where they live or where the work was done there is no independent confirmation of his claim and it has not been published in a journal where it would be vetted by other experts he revealed it monday in hong kong to one of the organizers of an international conference on genius getting that is set to begin tuesday and earlier an exclusive interviews with the associated press i feel a strong responsibility that it's not just to make a st but also make it an example he told the a p so sorry will decide what to do forbidding such science some scientists were astounded to hear of the claim and strongly condemned it it's unconscionable an experiment on human beings that's not morally or premature so dr eric topol who heads the scripps research trance lation will instituting california we're dealing with the operating instructions of a human being it's a big deal however one frame generalises harvard university is george shortage defended attempting gene auditing for hiv which he called a major and growing public health threat i think this is justifiable c a s nine makes it possible to operate on d n a to supply a needed gene or disable one that's causing problems it's only recently been tried in adults to treat deadly diseases and the changes are confined to that person editing sperm eggs or embryos is different the changes can be inherited in the u s it's not allowed except for lab researchers china outlaws human cloning but not specifically gene editing now over to max thank you claire from canada ideas to help addicts see stay safe by felice jay frey or the state harm reduction commission recently held its st meeting to study the controversial proposal to open a place or places where people could inject illicit drugs under medical supervision the commission created by the opioid legislation signed into law in august has until february to report to the legislature on the risks and benefits of establishing a squat supervised injection facilities or safe injection sites the sites provide a clean safe place for people to inject illicit drugs obtained elsewhere with medical staff on hand to rescue them if they overdose as well as opportunities for health care and links to a dish addiction treatment more than one hundred such sites operate around the world including dozens  canada but so far none has opened in the united states despite interest in several cities the st such facility in north america insight opened in vancouver british columbia in two thousand and three the globe recently sat down with a canadian health official who helped found insight and has published extensive research about safe injection sites here are edited excerpts of the conversation is there strong evidence about the effectiveness of supervised injection sites when we were setting up in site i was obviously looking for evidence from safe injection sites in europe but you talk to people running these sites in europe and they were oh we just did it why would you do it it was a common sense thing when insight opened crime went down in the area overall drug use intensity went down so did overdose deaths in that neighborhood in the years after inside open people were less likely to access emergency departments or to be admitted to hospitals the number of needles discarded went down over a three year period inside clients were more likely to go into treatment than people not using the site we've had over three million five thousand visits in site and no one has ever died there today there are thirty one safe injection sites in british columbia and several others in other provinces but no matter how much evidence you have from one site or one city it's never going to be enough to satisfy the scientific approach will never be enough for the naysayers so i'm really going to the common sense think people have the idea if we don't a low them allow them to inject at supervised sites then they won't inject but we know what they're doing right now taking their needles into public washrooms or children's parks or abandoned buildings any alternative to that has to be better why is the overdose rate gone up in british columbia in recent fenton a lot of the equation the number of people dying would be steady people who are using heroin often have long careers of heroin use if they get the amount of the drug they're used to overdoses are pretty unlikely the drugs people are buying on the street they basically have no idea of the toxicity do safe injection sites become a route to recovery many people given the opportunity to stabilize will choose a better route for themselves i don't think we should judge that that they have to stop using drugs and recover and get a job and move to the suburbs that's just an impractical explanation or expectation for a lot of people by stabilizing people tend to make the best decisions for themselves and get as far as they can it's not for me to judge where that ends but i do see a lot of healthier people because they've got harm reduction services and to me that's important the current debate now is how we get people a safe supply of drugs a safe supply of drugs all the harm reduction in the world doesn't stop people from buying street drugs in the alley and using them and dying we can intercept them unsupervised injection sites we can find people who've overdose and give them the chemical name for nor can but that's a very late intervention i've given so many tours through insight in the st question is well don't you give drugs here oh no people go perform sex acts and break into cars that's how they get their drugs isn't that ridiculous if people are using these things i think we should give them a safer supply and then we can start engaging them down the road we're starting hoping to start a pilot study in the next three or four months we give people a secure supply of drugs from a dispensing machine it would give you vote hydromorphone pills using biometrics to ensure only those authorized commute the pills it would give them time to interrupt their dinners were will be interrupted this season by buzzing phones bearing the recorded messages from telemarketers promising wealth and threatening financial ruin but he has something to be thankful for but next year the national plague of robo calls could be in retreat that's the there's a new resolve in congress to crack down on attempted phone scams with the support of phone companies which are independently implementing new technologies to stop them in a rare moment of bipartisanship this month united states senator edward j markey of massachusetts joined john  self dakota republican to sponsor a bill that would make it easier for the federal communications commission to levy ten thousand dollars fines against people caught making unwanted robo calls the measure would also order phone companies to take steps to contain the activity maki as a member of the house played a leading role in the passage of the telephone communicator consumer protection act which in and ninety one banned unsolicited robo calls but the law has not aged well as cell phones have proliferated and the nation's telephone infrastructure has undergone dramatic changes we need to make sure that we are keeping pace with the fraudsters keeping pace with those who are not abiding by the law markey said in an interview there were an estimated five billion one hundred million robo calls placed nationwide in october according to human ale a company that offers automated robo call blocking you mails of the number was the largest it had ever tallied in massachusetts the organization calculated fifty three million calls last month alex silly chief executive you may view mail said as many as sixty percent of the calls are either scams or unwanted telemarketing offers the scale of the problem is putting increasing pressure on both policymakers and telecommunications companies to take action maki and  proposal has gotten a warm reception from industry interests including verisign as well as advocates such as consumer reports all of whom say they believe it would make a difference c chairman jay pie as also praised the measure it's high time that the phone companies take action now said morey mony a policy analyst following the robo call issue for consumer reports i think this legislation will help push phone companies to move forward by fighting robo calls has provided a difficult technical challenge available for both customers and phone companies to block calls from unwanted numbers and organizations but many robo call is have found ways to spoof calls making it hard for the receiver to know where the call truly originated the problem emerged f or after phone companies broadly adopted voice over internet protocol systems whose design makes it eas for callers to conceal their true numbers that's why many of the unwanted calls that come to your phone often appear on your caller id with a phone number that looks like it's from your neighborhood sometimes even sharing the st three digits of your number phone companies have been working on a way to put a stop to spoofing concerned that the proliferation of robo calls is undermining confidence in the phone system and i want to my colleague claire thank you knowingly shrimp won't be available at all this year associated press a small amount of new england shrimp has been available in recent years but that will not be the case this winter the next few years of a shutdown of the new england shrimp industry will extend to a limited research based fishery that has helped provide a small amount of room to retailers regulators recently decided to extend a moratorium on northern shrimp fishing until two thousand and twenty one in  population of this ramp is so low that even the research program can't be continued canadian fishermen how obvious the same species but their product is difficult to find in the united states rendering the shrimp essentially off the market for u s consumers the shrimp population is falling as the gulf of maine has warmed the fishery was st shut down in two thousand and thirteen fishermen from massachusetts new boston company is taking the concept of retail my health care to a new level offering mental health treatment at you know wal mart beacon health options which manages mental health care for forty million people has opened a small clinic in the discount carrollton texas the company plans to roll out the program and other retail locations nationwide with the goal of increasing access to mental health care beacon has no immediate plans for a massachusetts location local providers told of the plans for retail clinics expressed skepticism asserting that beacon could accomplish the same goal by working more effectively with its current network of providers but beacon officials portray the retail clinic program as an effort to bring mental health services to under served areas in a way that will make it easy and comfortable to seek help staffed for now with one licensed clinical social worker the clinic offers treatment for anxiety depression grief relationship issues and the stress of everyday living patients can walk in to request an appointment or sign up online or over the phone the goal is to fight stigma and simplify the process of finding help while also  quality said russell c patricia beacon health's president and c e o people don't know how to find a behavioral health or mental health professional paternalist said people don't know where to go and what to do the retail clinics will promise access customers and belmont signing up for a black earth helping to reduce the price of weekly curbside service to ninety nine dollars per year all residents that have pre registered should now go to black earth compos dot com and sign up for a weekly service once you have completed the sign up form black earth will does the delivery of green been within ten days and your pick ups begin the week after the bin delivery pick ups in east belmont that's common street and east are monday pickups west of common street or tuesdays bins should be curbside easily visible for the driver by seven am black birth compost is also offering free weekly pickup and compostable bags to customers while willing to store about twenty five dollars curbside bins and home and give the most to new belmont subscribers this will save black earth from needing to take an extra trip out to belmont to deliver the bins and prevent them from burning up that and over claire thanks bob franklin park a newly spiffed up by katie camaro renovations to the four hundred and eighty five acre franklin park are near completion after six years of improvements to it the park was placed in the heart of boston so city dwellers could enjoy a rural scenery the park used to be five hundred and twenty seven dollars acres but the allotted space lost forty two dollars acres after the construction of the and fifty s the website said the most significant change included the relocation of the franklin park maintenance yard the entrance from circuit drive which is adjacent to the mule shattuck hospital to canterbury street the statement said the move was intended to move traffic to and from the maintenance yard away from the main interior pathways that are frequented by cyclists and pedestrians the statement sa complete include inaccessible pathways picnic tables the statement said the franklin park coalition was one of the st groups to enjoy the improved pathways the statement said other improvements include accessible pathways along walnut and paved pathways on the seaver street it's of the park along with two new entrances along seaver street and improved jimmy stewart entrance is an accessibility at the exports amid the u s china tensions india will focus on boosting its exports to the united states and other global markets as chinese shipments become unattractive amid a trade war between the world's biggest economies the country's trade minister said new delhi is focusing on items like auto parts chemicals and electrical equipment after the united states and china slapped reciprocal duties on each other's goods minister sudesh prabhu said india's share of global merchandise exports is one point seven percent compared with china's twelve eight percent the ongoing trade tensions between the u s and china may have positive impact prabhu said the long term strategy is to focus on  enhancing manufacturing capabilities with president trump expected to go ahead with another round of tariffs on two hundred billion dollars of imports from china in january india looks to gain southeast asia is already seeing a boom this is not a welcome development for sustaining a free and fair trade back to you bob along with my colleagues claire and max we thank you for listening to the talking news and hope you'll enjoy the show we return next week for another edition of local news happenings around belmont