UC Berkeley cuts price for shrinking middle class
It takes not only brains but money to attend UC Berkeley, and that means one unlikely group is increasingly unable to enroll: the middle class.
Alarmed that many qualified students from families earning incomes of between $80,000 and $140,000 can't afford to go to the public university, campus officials announced a unique price break Wednesday. UC Berkeley will become the first public campus in the nation to offer a discount to middle-class students who don't otherwise qualify for financial aid, they said.
Beginning next fall, thousands of families in that income bracket will pay just 15 percent of their earnings rather than the full, in-state price of $32,634 that one year of school now costs. That amount includes tuition, room, board, books and other fees.
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Welcome to the Overnight News Digest
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The OND is published each night around midnight, Eastern Time.
The originator of OND was Magnifico.
Current Contributors are ScottyUrb, Bentliberal, wader, Oke, rfall, JML9999 and NeonVincent who also serves as chief cat herder.
Health-Care Hearing Before U.S. Supreme Court Scheduled for March 26-28
Bloomberg - The U.S. Supreme Court said it will hear arguments on President Barack Obama’s health-care law over three days, from March 26 to March 28.
Releasing a schedule today that has few, if any, precedents in modern court history, the justices left room to expand the 5 1/2 hours they already allotted for argument. The high court generally hears arguments for a single hour in each case.
The first day will center on the Anti-Injunction Act, a law that one federal appeals court concluded prevents judges from ruling until 2015 on the requirement -- also known as the individual mandate -- that Americans either buy insurance or pay a penalty.
North Korea mourns Kim Jong Il; son is 'successor'
(12-19) 11:56 PST PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) --
North Koreans marched by the thousands Monday to their capital's landmarks to mourn Kim Jong Il, many crying uncontrollably and flailing their arms in grief over the death of their "Dear Leader."
North Korean state media proclaimed his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, a "Great Successor," while a vigilant world watched for any signs of a turbulent transition to the untested leader in an unpredictable nation known to be pursuing nuclear weapons.
South Korea's military went on high alert in the face of the North's 1.2 million-strong armed forces following news of Kim's death after 17 years in power. North Korea said Kim died of a heart attack on Saturday while carrying out official duties on a train trip. President Barack Obama agreed by phone with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to closely monitor developments
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Learning English remains a hard nut to crack
By ARAB NEWS
Published: Dec 16, 2011 23:53 Updated: Dec 16, 2011 23:56
JEDDAH: Nobody can underestimate or belittle the significance of English as a global or universal language. It is a powerful means of communication and interaction for people all over the world that helps them not only to interact with each other but also with finding a job, doing business, undertaking foreign trips, taking examination, doing research, surfing the Internet and so forth.
Despite being among the most widely spoken and understood languages, English has not yet acquired its customary omnipresent status in Saudi society, where all official work is carried out in Arabic.
Even though the Saudi government is making every effort to promote learning English as a second language at its schools and universities in addition to extending all financial and logistic support to establish this language for over 80 years ever since the Kingdom’s foundation in 1927, is it has not rooted itself yet in society.
Space elevators and smart machines: Life in the year 2100
By Michio Kaku, Special to CNN
[B]ased on interviews with over 300 of the world's top scientists, who are inventing the future in their labs.
Here are some top game-changing predictions that they make:
http://www.cnn.com/...
Nature’s medicine cabinet
December 16, 2011, 11:03 am OdeWire.com
Chris Kilham can’t get over the fact that today’s medical students are no longer required to study pharmacognosy, the science of medicinal herbs and plants. “The medicine used to treat childhood leukemia comes from a flower that grows on Madagascar,” he cries. “Another example, Taxol, is used in chemotherapy treatments and comes from Taxus trees.” Kilham’s message: Nature is full of medicines, and it is more important than ever to make use of them.
Kilham calls himself a medicine hunter. The New York Times describes him as a cross between Indiana Jones and David Attenborough. He’s an adventurer with a contagious enthusiasm for ethnobotany—the relationship between plants and people—shamans, indigenous peoples, nature preservation and yoga. For years, he has traveled to places like the Amazon, the Pacific, India, the Andes and Africa to learn from local populations about medicinal plants and herbs. Back home in Massachusetts, he examines his findings using modern equipment, makes medicines and tries to bring them to market with various business partners.
House Republicans want changes to payroll tax deal
BBC - US House Republican leaders have said they will reject a bipartisan package on a short-term tax break for workers, in Congress' latest budget stand-off.
With a House of Representatives vote due later, Speaker John Boehner said he wanted the payroll tax holiday renewed for a whole year - not just two months.
The Senate bill passed with bipartisan support on Saturday, but then rank-and-file Republicans united against it.
The White House said Mr Boehner had been swayed by a "Tea Party revolt".
AT&T ends $39bn bid for T-Mobile USA
BBC - US telecoms giant AT&T has said it will not pursue its $39bn bid to buy T-Mobile USA after running into fierce government objections.
...
If AT&T had bought T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom, it would have become the US's largest cellphone company.
Arrest warrant for Iraq Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi
BBC - An Iraqi judicial committee has issued an arrest warrant for the mainly Shia Arab country's Sunni Arab Vice-President, Tariq al-Hashemi.
The warrant was issued under anti-terrorism laws, interior ministry spokesman Adel Daham said.
The decision came after arrested bodyguards of Mr Hashemi reportedly accused him of links to terrorism.
Sun 'stops chickenpox spreading'
Exposure to sunlight may help impede the spread of chickenpox, claim researchers.
BBC - The University of London team found chickenpox less common in regions with high UV levels, reports the journal Virology.
Sunlight may inactivate viruses on the skin, making it harder to pass on.
However, other experts say that other factors, including temperature, humidity, and even living conditions are equally likely to play a role.
James Leaves ESPN to Run for U.S. Senate
NYT - Craig James left his position at ESPN as a college football analyst to run for the United States Senate in Texas. James filed the paperwork to run Monday. ESPN said that as a result, he could no longer work for the network
The Tree of Life Gets a Makeover
NYT - Darwin called it the “abominable mystery”: the reason for a sudden explosion of diverse flowering plants in the fossil record. Biologists have pondered the issue for years but were hampered by the absence of full studies of some plants and a lack of sophisticated tools for analyzing large genetic data sets. But now, thanks to a method called “functional phylogenomics,” scientists have resolved some of the enigmatic relationships of plant families, potentially opening the way for advances in agriculture.
“We looked from the macro-evolutionary scale to the single gene scale,” said Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis, an evolutionary biologist at Columbia. Collaborating with colleagues from diverse disciplines, he and others present a novel vision of plant evolution in an article in the journal PLoS Genetics.
Bryan Stow speaks on camera for first time since attack
sfgate - It’s been a long, frightening year for Bryan Stow and his family, but it looks like the new year will bring much more joy to the father of two who was brutally beaten outside Dodger Stadium on Opening Day 2011.
In a video interview with NBC, Stow spoke for the first time on camera since he was allegedly attacked by Louie Alex Sanchez and Marvin Eugene Norwood