welcome to talking news we are delighted to have you with us listening to our presentation by members of the beat street center martha jonathan and mary and we will be reading local news and happenings from the boston globe baker would give hospitals the power to hold addicts op lied at the demick brings call for treatment by david sheff and burke governor charlie baker staring down a brutal operated epidemic wants to give hospitals new power to force treatment on substance abusers who pose a danger to themselves or others administration officials say the governor fans to file legislation this week giving hospitals  to hold addicts against their will for three days evaluate them and decide whether to seek legal permission for a substantially longer commitment the proposal modeled after existing rules for normal illness commitments revived revives longstanding concerns about the ethics and i th what is known among medical specialists as coerced treatment but officials say it is an appropriate response to a deadly problem we have a crisis on our hands said mary lou satyrs baker's health and human services secretary you need all of the tools in the tool box the plan which is still in draft form and subject to revision comes amid mounting concern on beacon hill over and op i'd scourge that left more than fifteen twelve hundred dead from overdoses in massachusetts last year not makers have approved a new finding for treatment programs and are waiting a proposal to screen high school students for drug ministration is expected to file its own legislative package to the coming days including they propose chances changes to the system of forced treatment as families police officers and doctors can already go to court to see ninety day civil commitments for alcoholics or addicts who pose a serious risk of suicide homicide or physical harm to themselves or others this year as of mid september about three hundred three thousand two hundred fifty people had been committed to treatment under the state care law but conditions do not often make use of the time consuming court based process they cause plan would get them much more deeply involved evaluating substance abusers during an initial three day boat and building the case if appropriate for a long term commitment the move would in effect open up a second avenue for coerced treatment ministration officials emphasize that the process would be preserved under the new system patients would have the right to legally and and the subsequent effort to commit them for a longer period of time than the three days hold but the proposal like others put forward by the baker administration in response to the opposite crisis is designed to shift the center of gravity away from the criminal justice system and towards the health care system barbara hiebert president of the massachusetts chapter of the american society of addiction medicine calls the proposal and the extreme right in her provocative idea that might actually bring some people into care too often she said hospitals treat addicts for overdoses with antidotes like narc him only to watch them walk out the door and onto the street hours later we're having more people in massachusetts than anywhere else from death from a meat from a meat media overdose she said but we get these people they come in and then we lose them the idea that we can hold them long enough to try to figure out what would be real fear they will be held for three days and probably shuttled into longer term commitment and if there are questions about the practical impacts of the policy there are also ethical concerns about ex expending a system that confines people against their will civil committee the supreme court declared in hundred seventy two amounts to a massive debt for a vacation of liberty christine griffin executive director of the boston based that disability law center said the state too often takes that liberty without offering adequate substance abuse recovery services in exchange that's the part where we fall down she said everyone pays attention to the process yes that's important but then what out what ultimately happens to these folks jonathan knoebels human free zone teams with wildlife by sarah kaplan and nick kirk packed rick the sound was like nothing tom hinton had ever heard before a chorus of baleful wolf ho long and loud and coming from seemingly every direction in the darkness the predators yet didn't chirped and cruel to one another for what seemed like forever forever sending a shiver of all an intuitive fear down hinton spine it was a primordial experience he said something most of humanity hasn't felt for tens of thousands of years back to when humans were prey it was only possible because of where human for hinton was standing a remote area along the belarus ukraine border uninhabited for humans by decades they all left in the wake of a very different sound the massive explosion of the chernobyl nuclear power plant in one thousand nine hundred eighty six that left dozens dead and that spread a cloud of radiation driving more than one hundred thousand people from their homes across a sixteen hundred square mile swath of ukraine and belarus these days abandoned apartment complexes are crumbled concrete rex vines crawl up the decay walls of old farmhouses and break unintended skylights into their roofs no one lives in the post apple the apple apple lipstick setting no one human that is our life populations there shaggy haired wild boar long legged elk the choruses of wolves that so captivated hinton in august are flourishing that's according to a study published recently in the journal current biology which found that mammal numbers in the radiation tainted exclusion zone are as high if not higher than in even the most protected parks in belo roofs that wildlife started surprising here was the life that was able to increase even in an area that is among the most radioactively contaminated in the world in other words whatever the fallout from the disaster may have been for wildlife the absence of human humans was more than enough to compensate study by hinton and jim smith an environmental science professor at the university of portsmouth in england is the first real census of wild animals in the exclusion zone it relies on a decade's worth of helicopter observations in the years right after the disaster and three winters of scientists carefully counting animal tracks on foot from two thousand and eight to two thousand and ten in the bell rouge and section the animal numbers were low and scientists first started counting them in one thousand nine hundred seventy because no data has was taken before the disaster they can't tell what degree the populations were hurt by the explosion they rapidly rose once humans left the region brown bears in rare european links predatory cats the size of a great dane quickly appeared in the forests even though they hadn't been seen for decades before the accident wild boar moved in the abandoned buildings within ten years every animal population in the exclusion zone had at least doubled at the same time species flourishing the exclusion zone were vanishing from the other parts of the former soviet union likely due to increased hunting poor wild life management and other economic changes by twenty ten the last year of the five on foot census the populations for most species are as large as in any of the four national parks and bella ruse for one species the wolves the population was seven times bigger marion obama decides not to seek encrypted data a digital digital device users on phones on i phones and other digital devices concluding that it is not possible to give us law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to that information without creating an opening that china russia cyber criminals and terrorists could also exploit with its decision which angered the f b i and other law enforcement agencies the administration essentially agreed with apple google microsoft and a group of the nation's top cryptographers and computer scientists the companies and technical experts contended that millions of americans would be vulnerable to hacking if technology firms and smartphone manufacturers were required to provide the government with back doors or access to their source code and didn't corruption keys that would enable the government to see messages photographs and other data now routinely encrypted on smart phones current technology puts the key keys for access to information in the hands of the individual user not the companies the first indication of the root of the retreat of the retreat came thursday when the f b i director james comey told the senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee that the administration would not seek legislation to compel the companies to create such a portal but the decision made at the white house a week ago goes considerably beyond that while the administration said it would continue to try to persuade companies like apple and google to assist in criminal and national security inquiries it determined that the government should not force them to breach the security of their products in essence investigators will have to hope they find other ways to get what they need from data stored in the cloud in  or transmitted by phone lines which are covered by a law that affects telecommunications providers but not the technology companies martha wrote on and next standards for animal facilities by jennifer mcdermott rhode island has become the first new england state to adopt detailed care and housing standards for state license animal care facilities according to the state department of environmental management the regulations which took effect thursday apply to pet shops kennels uni pounds animal shelters and rescues and the most brokers which are stuart state licensed or registered i'm pretty excited about this said scott marshall the state marion to my knowledge there's not a state in the country certainly not in the northeast that has comprehensive regulations like we've just developed facilities must have cleaned clean food and water dishes and proper ventilation and sanitation among their standards there are minimum space requirements for cages mar facilities now know what is expected and the state can find violators before the department could only revoke a license or the criminal charges for sub standards care there wasn't a way to force change in less serious situations and there were no regulations to point to that described as the standard of care marshall said these are enforceable now he said they're not suggestions by inspectors these are mandates by inspectors ernest finicky o president of the rhode island society for the prevention of cruelty to animals said the regulations have been sorely needed for some time there is no longer a great area it's black and white he said the regulations also aim to give consumers more information about where pets are coming from in addition to the address growing  concerns from the public about acquiring pets from puppy mills or breeding facilities known for inhumane conditions cages must have information about where dogs and cats are from clearly displayed before that information has to be available at the facility but there wasn't a penalty and if it was not marshall said harriet jonathan sorry i think you can park better than a machine think again by much much picture this you're sixteen years old and taking your much obsessed over driver's test you perform well enough on all the other test portions but now it is time for that most dreaded of skills evaluations parallel parking you carefully maneuver your car into position bring the vehicle to stop and engage the automatic parking function then sit back confident relaxed as your car moves itself into place your instructor marks a perfect score who wouldn't want that while most people it turns out like their persistent mistrust of driverless vehicles americans just can't seem to wrap their heads around a car that parks itself according to a new survey by travel services organization aaa eighty percent of drivers are so selfish sure in their parallel parking game than a mere one out of four would trust an automated self parking system that's despised aaa tests conducted in cooperation with the automobile club of southern california's automotive research center concluding that autonomous systems routinely outperform people researchers perform their evaluations using a lincoln s u v a mercedes bentz s w hatchback and a jeep cherokee s u v all from the two thousand and fifteen model year the study determined that self parking systems had eighty one percent fewer curb strikes required nearly half as many maneuvers and as few as one performs attacks ten task ten percent faster and position the car thirty seven percent closer to the curve the systems were not perfect however in some cases they positioned the car as little as a half inch from the curb as opposed to triple a's preferred six to eight inch buffer to prevent wheel damage still researchers stated while americans report feeling confident in their parallel parking abilities this technology proves there is room for improvement our savvy drivers on the cars dot com editorial team showed far more trust in self parking systems than the general public many of us having had abundant personal experience with the technology of sixteen surveyed were only three said they would not trust the car to park itself the other eighty one percent said they would trust it but not entirely without stipulations merion chatter matter what to do when squirrels move in by diana mara selec as much as my family and i love to have suburban wildlife around our new york area home some of the cuteness wore off when we found rodents living under the roof a mama squirrel had set up a cozy little nest in our attic a wise move considering the temperature was dipping and she had a brood to care for as jack murphy co founder of denver based urban wildlife rescue puts it they can live in a tree and we can live all winter on the prairie in a tent but having a house is a lot nicer so my husband paul a do it yourself kind of guy and looking to save a grand or so and critter even if fiction sprang into action once the little tykes were old enough to go outside the nest on their own cute as can be appearing over the eaves of our roof he rigged up the trusty humane trap relocating them to places you'd think squirrels would like one got new digs creek site in a forest preserve another was a scored to a wooded college campus but it was with heavy hearts we later learned that his efforts were more misguided than magnanimous experts say most girls even once old enough to fend for themselves don't survive being moved they succumb to everything from turf wars to an inability to adapt to new habitats relocation is a feel good myth murphy said state and federal agencies discourage relocating wildlife and in some cases ban it ned who does business as the skunk whisperer in oklahoma city is another specialist in humane wildlife removal he said the wiser move would have been to let the squirrels hunker down until they were ready to leave the attic on their own and then provide them a one way door for doing so the danger of squirrels doing damage like chewing through wires is overblown he said once the animals are definitely out  is their former home and its surroundings with an industrial strength cleanser designed specifically to neutralize the odors that wildlife like squirrels leave behind next he identifies and repairs the spots that squirrels are likely to chew through old attic screens and roof vents among others martha kaspi in boston offering testimony deposition for california woman's lawsuit takes all day lawyer says by evan allen bill cosby gave a deposition in boston lasting about seven hours friday in the case of a southern california embattled entertainer of sexually assaulting her at the playboy mansion in the nineteen seventies when she was a teenager according to the woman's attorney gloria allred cost seventy five eight was compelled by court order to sit for the d position but contents of his testimony will be sealed until at least december twenty second said at that point she said she will have motions before a los angeles county superior court judge craig carry him to lift a protective order the court wants to be sure that both parties receive a fair trial but carlin also recognizes that the public has an interest in the case however it said at a boston news conference saturday judge garland will take these concerns into account when he makes a further decision regarding which portions of the transcript of the d positions should remain sealed and which portions if any should be made public  judy half was not present at the news conference and our friend decided to answer any questions about her client the contents of that d position or crosspiece larger legal problems citing the judge's protective order the attorney representing kaspi who lives in wisconsin in west sorry who lives in western massachusetts could not immediately be reached for comment half is one of dozens of women who have come forward to allege that crosby sexually assaulted them and to drugging them first over a span of several decades she is one of several women who have filed lawsuits against him  and his representatives have tonight of the accusations jonathan sea levels are influenced by the gravity of milling machines as the earth's climate warms everyone wants to know about how high the sea levels are going to rise it might seem like a simple calculation but groundbreaking research by geophysicist at harvard university has demonstrated that accurately measuring sea levels are surprisingly complicated and turns on some strange but ultimately intuitive ways in which parts of the earth are interconnected most people think incorrectly of the earth's oceans as a bath you were to add a bucket of water this isn't at all how it actually works though massive ice sheets like the one in greenland exert a gravitational pull on the surrounding water when ice from the sheet melts it adds water to the world's oceans yes but the melting also includes the massive ice sheet which reduces its gravitational pull as a result water flows away from the diminished ice sheet which actually leads to sea levels falling in the exact place where the ice melted and if an ice sheet melts water moves away from the location of the ice sheet and you pay the price for other away mitrovica says there's another even more of an expected effect ice sheets sit on the land weighing it down when ice melts there's less weight pressing down on the land which allows the land to rise slightly as  land rises it effectively pushes nearby water away from it compound ing the effects of the reduced gravitational pull to picture how this works is a bath tub picture a water bed sit on it and it sinks beneath you and bulges up around you where your weight forces water to the sides writes richard alley a geologist geologist at penn state university in an email stand up and it goes back to the original shape for people who want to know what those various effects mean for their own stretch of shoreline it's important to the find what it means for a melting ice sheet to be nearby mitrovica explains that the threshold is about twelve hundred miles places within that distance of the melting ice will see sea levels fall and places farther away will see sea levels rise in both cases affects taper as you get farther from the melting to put some numbers on this if the greenland ice sheet were to melt enough to rise average global sea levels by a meter in boston harbor which is relatively close to greenland sea levels would rise only about ten seven tenths of of a meter converse late melting from the more distant and arctic ice sheet would disproportionately affect belmont and other places in the northern hemisphere this means every locale as its own problem ice sheets to keep an eye on i was just talking to some people in holland mitrovica says and i told them that if the greenland ice sheet melts they have nothing to worry about but the antarctic melts they're in trouble the idea that gravitational forces affect sea level and not knew it was in the air in the eighteen hundreds but largely forgotten afterward metron because says he worse he reacquainted the scientific community with these factors with an article he published in nature about a decade ago today they're fully accepted allie describes i'm a troll because work modeling the forces that affect sea level is fascinating visionary reliable important martha thank you for joining us for this episode of talking news please join us next week