Word: harsher
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Still, it's not clear if spanking causes lower cognitive ability or if lower cognitive ability might somehow lead to more spanking. It's quite possible that kids with poor reasoning skills misbehave more often and therefore elicit harsher punishment. "It could be that lower IQ causes parents to get exasperated and hit more," Straus says, although he notes that a recent Duke University study of low-income families found that toddlers' low mental ability did not predict an increase in spanking. (The study did find, however, that kids who were spanked at age 1 displayed more aggressive behavior...
...Echols serves his 20 years, reformers of drug sentencing laws are closing in on a goal that was unthinkable even a few years ago: scrapping the federal sentencing structure established in 1986 that gives far harsher penalties for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine, resulting in prisons packed with low-level, predominantly African American offenders. The mechanism is known as the "100-to-1 drug ratio," which gives crack cocaine 100 times the weight of powder cocaine. Under the ratio, a person convicted of selling five grams of crack - about the weight of a teaspoon of salt - triggers the same...
...these market reforms without cost skyrocketing," says Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for Ignagni's group, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). Put another way, says Kahn, "Insurance isn't free, and you have to have groups with many more healthy people than sick." As a result, insurers are pushing for harsher financial penalties on Americans who would forgo insurance even in the face of a government mandate. The HELP Committee bill would charge the uninsured a minimum annual penalty of $750 for individuals, a figure that is far below the annual expenses of full-cost premiums, which insurers think the penalty...
Pakistan's blasphemy laws date back to the colonial era. The late military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq introduced a further, harsher clause as part of his sweeping "Islamization" program. Human-rights groups have long appealed to successive governments to repeal or amend the laws. The current ruling party, the Pakistan People's Party, vowed to do so in its election manifesto. As yet, nothing has been done. But presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar says the Gojra tragedy "has increased the urgency of revisiting these laws...
...Health Ministry has trained a 5,000-person task force to patrol establishments and dole out fines to anyone caught lighting up. For now, smokers who defy the ban will face a paltry $45 fine, but that's due to go up in 2010. The law is harsher on establishments - they face an initial $500 fine, which increases exponentially with every repeat offense...