A $30,000 price tag for cancer drug therapy that extends life only a few weeks is understandably alarming. But a $2,000 price tag for all childhood vaccines — credited with eradicating smallpox, preventing a million or more cases of other diseases and averting thousands of deaths each year — is a bargain. In fact, the price of childhood vaccines may be too low for our own good because it contributes to shortages.   read more

Police in the German town of Minden say a 25-year-old man who arrived last year as a refugee is their "hero of the day" after he found some 150,000 euros ($166,095) — and handed it to authorities. The unidentified Syrian man discovered the money in a cupboard he had been given by a charitable organization.   read more

Rap Back is a service of the FBI that provides continuous criminal-record monitoring for law-enforcement. When a Hawaii firearm owner is arrested for a criminal offense anywhere in the country, the service alerts county police departments in Hawaii. Law enforcement then will be able to evaluate whether that gun owner may continue to legally possess firearms. "This system will better enable our law enforcement agencies to ensure the security of all Hawaii residents and visitors," said Gov. Ige.   read more

The incongruity of the increasing numbers of executions and the plummeting numbers of death sentences took both prosecutors and defense attorneys by surprise. "Wow," defense attorney Akil Secret said. "Maybe the times are changing." The precipitous declines raise the question of whether prior capital sentences were justified, Secret said. "If a life-without-parole sentence is sufficient for today's worst crimes, why isn't it sufficient for those crimes from the past where death was imposed?"   read more

A new study indicates that what people really want to ride in is an autonomous vehicle that puts its passengers first. If its machine brain has to choose between slamming into a wall or running someone over, well, sorry, pedestrian. Should manufacturers create vehicles with various degrees of morality programmed into them, depending on what a consumer wants? Should the government mandate that all self-driving cars share the same values, even if that’s not so good for a car’s passengers?   read more

Currie can’t be sure what precise factors have led to the reductions in death rates for poor young Americans, but she has some theories. Public health insurance expanded to cover more children and pregnant women. Research has shown measurable benefits to the children with access to the program: There was less infant mortality; they were hospitalized less often as they grew older; they were more likely to finish high school and attend college; and they earned more money in early adulthood.   read more

Advocates say the measure would make the free sanitary supplies more readily available by putting them in restrooms, instead of nurses' offices, in schools with female students in sixth grade and up. Girls who need pads or tampons now have to scramble to try to get to the nurse and then the restroom in breaks between classes. Rather than do that and risk being late, girls learn to "know the friend in that class who has extra pads," Mitchell, 17, said at a rally before the vote.   read more

The hackers were turned loose on five public Pentagon internet pages and were offered various bounties if they could find unique vulnerabilities. The Pentagon says 1,410 hackers participated in the challenge and the first gap was identified just 13 minutes after the hunt began. One of the hackers was David Dworken, who just graduated from high school. He said he worked on the program during his free time, logging in between homework assignments.   read more

Mayor Kenney took a different tack from that of politicians who have tried and failed to pass sugary-drink taxes. He didn’t talk about the tax as a measure designed to discourage sugar-saturated soft drinks. And he didn’t promise to earmark the proceeds for health programs. Instead, he cast the soft drink industry as a revenue source that could be tapped to fund popular city programs. “This is the beginning of a process of changing the narrative of poverty in our city,” he said.   read more

Federal law does not protect the right of two ministers of the Hawaii Cannabis Ministry to distribute large amounts of marijuana for their religious practices, the Ninth Circuit ruled (pdf) Tuesday. A three-judge panel upheld the ministers’ drug-related convictions, rejecting their argument that the convictions violate their rights to exercise their religion under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.   read more

In what appears to be the first such ruling ever, an Oregon judge granted a transgender person’s petition to be legally considered “non-binary,” rather than male or female. Jamie Shupe of Portland filed a petition for change of sex in April. Shupe, who was born male, used the honorific “Mx” in court filings.   read more

Federal recordkeeping measures to ensure porn stars are of legal age are unconstitutional because they allow impromptu warrantless searches, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled June 8. In its 65-page split ruling, the Third Circuit said the warrantless searches permitted by two federal statutes violate the First and Fourth amendments because the porn industry is not as heavily regulated as other industries that are subjected to such searches, such as firearms dealers or junkyards.   read more

Retired football players on Thursday fought to revive claims that National Football League teams pumped them with painkillers to get them back on the field, disregarding long-term effects on their health. The former players allege the clubs conspired since at least 1964 to have trainers dole out pills and inject players with painkillers, sometimes mixing them with other drugs in dangerous cocktails, to get them back on the field to drive profits for the league.   read more

Microsoft scientists have demonstrated that by analyzing large samples of search engine queries they may in some cases be able to identify internet users who are suffering from pancreatic cancer, even before they have received a diagnosis of the disease. The study suggests that early screening can increase the five-year survival rate of pancreatic patients to 5% to 7% from just 3%.   read more

A Texan who paid $350,000 to kill an endangered black rhino in Africa cannot sue Delta Airlines for refusing to ship his trophy home because it can ship whatever it chooses, a federal judge ruled. Corey Knowlton made headlines in January 2014 when the Dallas Safari Club accepted his bid for a hunt. Despite criticism from animal rights groups and several death threats, Knowlton killed the rhino four months later.   read more

The wide-ranging bill was more than three years in the making and had support from a broad coalition. It would set new safety standards for asbestos and other dangerous chemicals that have gone unregulated for decades. The rules will impact an $800-billion-a-year industry. Some environmental groups opposed the bill, saying it did too little to protect consumers from dangerous chemicals that have been linked to serious illnesses, including cancer, infertility, diabetes and Parkinson's disease.   read more