As your faithful scribe, I welcome you all to another edition of Overnight News Digest.
I am most pleased to share this platform with jlms qkw, maggiejean, wader, rfall, JLM9999 and side pocket. Additionally, I wish to recognize our alumni editors palantir, Bentliberal, Oke, Interceptor7, and ScottyUrb along with annetteboardman as our guest editor.
Neon Vincent is our editor-in-chief.
Special thanks go to Magnifico for starting this venerable series.
Lead Off Story
The Pope Takes On Economics’ Pro-rich Bias
The leading theories of economics and finance are usually produced for the rich. Pope Francis deserves praise for suggesting an economics for the poor.
The typical criteria of economic success – such as efficient pricing, fully competitive markets and rapid GDP growth – sound uncaring. And they often are. One problem is that most of the leading theories have an implicit pro-rich bias. For example, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, a basic tool in finance, assumes that the rich investors who can afford to take big bets deserve extra-large rewards when things go well. Or consider how most governments’ economic policy aims first and foremost at GDP growth, basically ignoring the uncomfortable truth that the already rich typically take a disproportionate share of additional production.
By contrast, pro-poor concepts receive almost no attention. Mainstream thinkers rarely say that the rich people who have gained from the economy have an obligation of solidarity with the poor who have lost out. Most of them have never heard of the idea (common in Catholic circles) that private property comes with a “social mortgage”, a debt to the society which makes that property valuable.
I am not accusing the academics, or Wall Street for that matter, of intentional callousness. There are no plots to defend the ruling classes or to ignore suffering. Many economists have used the theories to justify anti-poverty programs. Still, standard economics has a pro-rich bias. I felt it acutely last month at a financial firm’s presentation of its latest investment thinking. A speaker explained that many of the firm’s billionaire clients thought emerging markets would underperform, so they were shifting funds out of them.
reuters
World News
UN, Mexico: Truck With Radioactive Load Stolen
A cargo truck hauling extremely dangerous radioactive material from used medical equipment was stolen from a gas station in central Mexico, and authorities sent out an alert in six central states and the capital to find it, Mexican officials said Wednesday.
The truck was carrying a metal container of cobalt-60 headed to a nuclear waste facility in the state of Mexico, said Juan Eibenschutz, director general of the National Commission of Nuclear Safety and Safeguards. Though the container is heavily sealed in lead, designed to be difficult to break and to survive accidents intact, he said it contains an amount of radioactive material that could do serious damage if opened.
[...]
The material was used for obsolete radiation therapy equipment that is being replaced throughout Mexico's public health system. It was coming from the general hospital in the northern border city of Tijuana, Eibenshutz said. The thieves most likely wanted the white 2007 Volkswagen cargo vehicle with a moveable platform and crane.
[...]
"If someone finds a big chunk of metal with radiation symbols all over it, they should notify us immediately and don't open it," Eibenschutz said.
ap.org
.
O---O---O
.
Hezbollah Suffers Heaviest Blow In Years As Commander Is Shot Dead In Beirut
A senior Hezbollah commander has been shot dead outside his south Beirut apartment in the biggest blow to the secretive Shia militia since its then military commander was assassinated by a car bomb in the city six years ago.
Hezbollah blamed Israel for the killing, saying it had twice before tried and failed to target Hassan Howlo al-Laqqis, who is understood to have been the group's overall logistics and procurement chief.
But a previously unknown Sunni group claimed responsibility for the brazen attack on Hezbollah's home turf, underlining the Shia militia's deepening entanglement in a regional sectarian conflict.
[...]
Israeli officials denied any involvement. "Unequivocally no. We had nothing to do with it," said Israel's energy minister, Silvan Shalom. "The Salafists over there did it," he added, referring to a fundamentalist Sunni insurgency in Syria and Lebanon that has in recent months vowed to take the fight to the Shia Hezbollah.
guardian
U.S. News
Obama: Income Inequality Is 'Defining Challenge Of Our Time'
President Barack Obama turned his focus Wednesday to the pocketbook issues that Americans consistently rank as a top concern, arguing that the dream of upward economic mobility is breaking down and the growing income gap is
a "defining challenge of our time."
"The basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed," the president said in remarks at a nonprofit community center a short drive from the White House in one of Washington's most impoverished neighborhoods.
The president vowed to focus the last three years of his presidency on addressing the discrepancy and a rapidly growing deficit of opportunity that he said is
a bigger threat than the fiscal deficit.
Obama's remarks on the economy come as he seeks to move past the health care woes that have consumed his presidency in recent months. He acknowledged his administration's "poor execution" in rolling out the flawed website that was supposed to be an easy portal for purchasing insurance, while blaming Republicans for a "reckless" shutdown of the government.
huffpo
.
O---O---O
.
ALEC Calls For Penalties On 'Freerider' Homeowners In Assault On Clean Energy
An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels – casting them as "freeriders" – in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy, the Guardian has learned.
Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama's main channel for climate action.
[...]
For 2014, Alec plans to promote a suite of model bills and resolutions aimed at blocking Barack Obama from cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and state governments from promoting the expansion of wind and solar power through regulations known as Renewable Portfolio Standards.
Documents obtained by the Guardian show the core elements of its strategy began to take shape at the previous board meeting in Chicago in August, with meetings of its energy, environment and agriculture subcommittees.
guardian
Science and Technology
Remastered Masterpiece
Monoceros is a constellation of faint stars not far from Orion and Sirius, visible in the winter sky. I’d expect it to have a better rep than it does, given the Internet’s obsession with what it represents: a unicorn.
Still and all, there’s another reason you should know about it. Lurking in its borders is an astronomical mystery, an object of incredible beauty, terrifying power, and bizarre origin. Best of all, it’s a puzzle, since we don’t really understand what it is or what it’s doing.
It goes by the cryptic name V838 Monocerotis (which sounds like a horrible disease). It’s been observed by Hubble many times, and those data are available to the public. Telecommunication engineer Roberto Colombari took his hand to those observations, and created the best image of V8238 Mon I’ve ever seen:
slate
.
O---O---O
.
Studies Warn Of Abrupt Environmental Effects Of Warming
Scientists sounded alarms Tuesday with a pair of studies challenging the idea that climate change is occurring gradually over the century and that its worst effects can be avoided by keeping emissions below a critical threshold.
A National Research Council report says the planet is warming so quickly that the world should expect abrupt and unpredictable consequences in a matter of years or a few decades. Among the changes already underway are the sudden decline in Arctic sea ice and climbing extinction rates, the report found.
Scientists based their findings, in part, on the study of climate history as recorded in tree rings, ocean sediment and ice cores. They found the timeline punctuated by big, sudden changes, including ocean circulation shifts and mass extinctions.
As a result of the burning of fossil fuels, industrial activity and deforestation, the amount of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has soared to levels not seen in millions of years, with global temperatures rising by about 1.5 degrees. The scientists say the accelerating gas levels increase the risk of reaching various "tipping points," leaving nature and society little time to react.
latimes
Society and Culture
U.S. Military Lingo: The (Almost) Definitive Guide
It's painful for U.S. soldiers to hear discussions and watch movies about modern wars when the dialogue is full of obsolete slang, like "chopper" and "GI."
Slang changes with the times, and the military is no different. Soldiers fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have developed an expansive new military vocabulary, taking elements from popular culture as well as the doublespeak of the military industrial complex.
The U.S. military drawdown in Afghanistan — which is underway but still awaiting the outcome of a proposed bilateral security agreement — is often referred to by soldiers as "the retrograde," which is an old military euphemism for retreat. Of course the U.S. military never "retreats" — rather it conducts a "tactical retrograde."
This list is by no means exhaustive (a few phrases were too salty for publishing). And some of the terms originated prior to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But these terms are critical to speaking the current language of soldiers, and understanding it when they speak to others.
npr
.
O---O---O
.
'Our Industry Follows Poverty': Success Threatens A T-Shirt Business
The Planet Money men's T-shirt was made in Bangladesh, by workers who make about $3 a day, with overtime. The Planet Money women's T-shirt was made in Colombia, by workers who make roughly $13 a day, without overtime.
The wages in both places are remarkably low by U.S. standards. But the gap between them is huge. Workers in Colombia make more than four times what their counterparts make in Bangladesh. In our reporting, we saw that the workers in Colombia have a much higher standard of living than the workers in Bangladesh.
Noreli Morales, a Colombian worker who helped make our women's T-shirt, lives with her mom and her daughter in an apartment that has a kitchen and a bathroom. Shumi and Minu, Bangladeshi sisters who worked on our men's T-shirt, share a single room with Minu's husband. There's no running water, no kitchen. Noreli sends her daughter to day care; Minu can't afford day care, so her daughter lives back in the village, with her parents.
The workers in both places are doing essentially the same thing: sewing T-shirts together. So why the big difference in their wages?
npr
Well, that's different...
Sights to Behold
When Franco Scaramuzza witnessed two men pepper-spraying a couple in a shopping center parking lot in Nashville, Tenn., in September, he bravely responded in the only way he knew. Scaramuzza, who teaches the art of fencing, drew his fencing sword ("epee") and challenged the men. With his epee held high and aimed, and chanting fencing-type yells, he charged at the men. As he said later, "They completely panicked and dropped everything ... and really took off." Michael Butt and Zachary Johnson were arrested nearby and charged with robbery.
newsoftheweird
Bill Moyers and Company:
Encore: Wendell Berry, Poet & Prophet