Midday Magazine on WAMC

In 2012 communities across Massachusetts have taken strides to limit tobacco use in public places and businesses. WAMC’s Berkshire Bureau Chief Lucas Willard takes a look at what some communities are doing to reduce smoking, and what some hope to achieve in the new year…

You talk, we listen.  And now you can listen again.  Here are highlights of this week's WAMC Listener Comment Line.  

For the second time in 18 months the city of Springfield Massachusetts was hit by a major disaster in 2012.  A natural gas explosion rocked downtown on the Friday after Thanksgiving. As with the June 2011 tornado, the city went through a recovery period and is now looking to rebuild.  WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill reports.

A newspaper and online publication in the Hudson Valley has made headlines coast-to-coast for an interactive map it published online. That map indicates the names and addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties, with Putnam County to come. The publication of the map has elicited outcry, and started a national discourse on many topics, ranging from privacy to safety to the public’s right to know.  

In Great Britain, where much of my family is from and still lives, there is an annual tradition known as the Royal Christmas Message. Begun in 1932 by then King George V as a radio broadcast, the tradition has evolved into an annual event in which the sovereign head of the British Empire delivers a speech on that year's events, as well as personal and national triumphs and tragedies.

A group is working to download a gun's design and build it on a 3-D printer. And 3-D printing is positioned to become the next consumer craze - Capital Region Bureau Chief Dave Lucas reports.

It's the nearest thing to those old teleporters you've seen in science fiction movies and television shows for the past 50 years - push a few buttons and a three-dimensional object emerges from a microwave oven-sized appliance.

WAMC’s Berkshire Bureau Chief Lucas Willard spoke with Rosalynn Frederick, a teacher from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, who is planning to run from California to New York in order to raise money for a fund that will allow middle and high school students to travel outside the country.

New York State will have some new laws that take effect January first. One is a multi-layered legislative package that provides new protections for domestic violence victims. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill package October 25th.  One piece of the legislation increases the penalty for repeat offenders to a felony by creating a Class E felony, Aggravated Family Offense. Manhattan District Attorney and President of the New York District Attorneys Association of the State of New York Cyrus Vance, Jr., said this addresses an underlying issue: the ability of offenders to abuse their victims again and again without serious consequences.

Just as people in places like the Maldives, Bangladesh and Japan shook their heads at the cluelessness of Americans who suddenly woke up to climate change when Sandy came to town, people living in hot spots of violence around the world now have every right to be shaking their heads at the collective American refusal to see and understand how, in the wake of the Newtown massacre, we are the cause of our own misery.

Schenectady joins Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Utica on the list of most impoverished school districts in New York State... Capital Region Bureau Chief Dave Lucas reports.