Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, August 26, 2014.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: My Funny Valentine by Chet Baker
News below Aunt Flossie's hairdo . . .
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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Green must diversify or die
By Brentin Mock
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The newly launched Diverse Environmental Leaders National Speakers Bureau, or “DEL,” convened yesterday on the 98th birthday of the National Park Service to convey chiefly two things: That environmentalists of color are plentiful and available as employees and leaders, and that environmental groups and government agencies have no legitimate excuses for having predominantly white workforces.
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Many of these people have decades of experience working with a range of major institutions, from the corporate America to the president’s cabinet. Peterman, one of DEL’s “visionaries,” has won an Environmental Hero Award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and serves on quite a few major organization boards, including the National Parks Conservation Association. Along with her husband, Frank, who co-hosted the event, she’s co-authored two books on nature discovery and runs the environmental firm Earthwise Productions, Inc., which they started 20 years ago.
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A glaring irony at the event was that despite the many academics discussed and represented in the crowd, some of the speakers said that the conservation movement had grown too … academic. One of the barriers to achieving ideal diversity is that employers place too much value in university degrees. African-American and Latinos are underrepresented in higher education, due to failures in the education system, economic inequality, and structural racism.
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But what if visibility isn’t the only problem? It is possible that employers know where people of color are, but the reason they’re not hiring them is just plain-Jane racism — discrimination of either the conscious or subconscious variety? Frank had a smile and answer for that too.
“We have to challenge that mentality,” he said. “When it comes to racial issues, the only way we’ve ever made progress is to call it what it is, and then challenge it.”
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US schools to have non-white majority
By Sean Coughlan
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According to official forecasts, enrolments for the 2014-15 school year will mark the threshold when ethnic minorities become the majority.
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The figures show a steady decline in the numbers of white pupils since the mid-1990s and a broadly stable number of black pupils, but a sharply rising number of pupils identified as Hispanic.
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But the Pew Research Center, which analyses public policy and social trends, has highlighted how there is a very different pattern in private schools, with a high proportion of white pupils. About one in 10 pupils attends a private school.
There have also been questions raised about the use in education of the term ethnic "minority", when there is no longer a majority ethnic group within the school population.
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Fewer prescription pill overdoses in medical marijuana states
By Brooks Hays
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Residents of states where medical marijuana is legalized suffer fewer overdoses from prescription pain medication than elsewhere, says a new study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Additionally, overdose deaths involving opioid analgesics have more than quadrupled over the last decade. But according to new research, states where medical marijuana is still strictly forbidden are bearing the brunt of that increase.
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"In addition, people already taking opioids for pain may supplement with medical marijuana and be able to lower their painkiller dose, thus lowering their risk of overdose."
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International |
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Libya: The escalation of a proxy war?
By (Al Jazeera)
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The political turmoil in Libya is exposing a growing gulf between rival Arab states. It is also defining a proxy war over the threat to the region's old order since the start of the Arab Spring.
The United Arab Emirates is accused of carrying out air strikes on militias in Libya with support from Egypt. Two bombings in eight days are said to have caught the US completely by surprise.
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Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt are viewed as having a common goal in trying to contain or eradicate political Islam, while Qatar and Turkey are seen as more sympathetic to these causes.
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Zimbabwe economy: Investments plunging, says bank governor
By (BBC)
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Foreign investment in Zimbabwe more than halved in the first six months of the year, the country's central bank chief John Mangudya has said.
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The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor also said exports, mostly minerals and tobacco, were down 13% in the first half of 2014, compared with the first six months of last year.
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As part of measures to promote the use of "plastic money" and to deal the liquidity crisis, the governor also announced that the amount an individual can take out of the country at any one time has been reduced from $10,000 to $5,000.
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UAE: National service prompts 'surge' in tattoo removal
By (BBC)
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Doctors in the United Arab Emirates are expecting to see a surge in numbers of young men getting tattoos removed, as the body art won't be permitted under a new law introducing national service, it's been reported.
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Nearly 10,000 Emiratis are being considered for the first batch of conscripts - including all 2014 high school graduates, apart from academic high-achievers. But only 7,000 recruits will begin training in January because of limited capacity at the training camps, the National said last month. The penalty for avoiding national service is 50,000 dirhams ($13,600; £8,200) and up to a year in prison, with the maximum fine doubled if the recruit injures himself on purpose or fakes illness to try to escape, the UAE government says.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Intelligence Gap:
How a Chinese National Gained Access to Arizona’s Terror Center
By Ryan Gabrielson, ProPublica and Andrew Becker, Center for Investigative Reporting
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Lizhong Fan’s desk was among a crowd of cubicles at the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center in Phoenix. For five months in 2007, the Chinese national and computer programmer opened his laptop and enjoyed access to a wide range of sensitive information, including the Arizona driver’s license database, other law enforcement databases, and potentially a roster of intelligence analysts and investigators.
The facility had been set up by state and local authorities in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, and so, out of concerns about security, Fan had been assigned a team of minders to watch him nearly every moment inside the center. Fan, hired as a contract employee specializing in facial recognition technology, was even accompanied to the bathroom.
However, no one stood in Fan’s way when he packed his equipment one day in early June 2007, then returned home to Beijing.
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Fan, who had a diploma showing he’d earned degrees in computer engineering from the elite Tsinghua University in Beijing, had done some work for Chen and Li in China, and Greschner said he accepted his lover’s idea that Fan would be a good man for getting the facial recognition program up and running at the intelligence center.
As a result, Hummingbird, without vetting Fan further, sought his work visa, Greschner said, adding that he assumed law enforcement or other government officials took a closer look at the Chinese national. Greschner said he was asked by an official with the sheriff’s department in 2006 to provide a numeric code for Fan’s name, often used in investigations to pinpoint Chinese identity, which he did. In the application, Greschner said that Fan possessed skills not readily available in the U.S.
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Over the years, there has been an array of breaches involving government agencies and people’s personal information. Typically, they have resulted in substantive investigations and notification of the public. Recently, for instance, The Washington Post reported that a “major U.S. contractor that conducts background checks for the Department of Homeland Security has suffered a computer breach that probably resulted in the theft of employees' personal information.” The company, U.S. Investigations Services, said in a statement that the intrusion “has all the markings of a state-sponsored attack.”
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Poll: 26 percent of Americans believe they will get Ebola
By Aileen Graef
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Ebola has remained in West Africa, but Americans are fearing it will hit closer to home. Thirty-nine percent of Americans fear there will be a large outbreak in the United States and 26 percent are concerned they or an immediate family member will contract the virus.
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The disease can only be transmitted through an exchange of bodily fluids and only those showing symptoms are contagious. Some of the factors contributing to the rapid outbreak in Africa are poor medical facilities and lack of infrastructure.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has said the Ebola virus poses a very low risk to the U.S. The CDC attributes this to its quarantine procedures, the advanced health care system in the U.S. and the procedures in place to respond to any sign of infection.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
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The song might as well have been written for another tragic figure. Renowned jazz trumpeter and singer, Chet Baker’s slow, smooth, sad style lends the song an extra level of gravitas. Described as “James Dean, Sinatra and Bix (Beiderbecke) rolled into one”. Baker was also a heroin addict. He came to fame and notoriety in the early 50´s, and spent his time in and out of prison.
Having already played with Vido Musso and Stan Getz, he was selected by Charlie Parker in 1951 to play with him on a series of West Coast gigs. He joined Gerry Mulligan´s Quartet in 1952, and the group became an overnight phenomenon. What made the group special was the interplay between Mulligan´s baritone sax and Baker´s trumpet. Rather than playing identical melody lines in unison like jazz giants Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the two would complement each other´s playing with contrapuntal touches, effortlessly anticipating which direction the other would go.
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The song, however would go on to be intimately associated with the Baker. In 1956, Pacific Jazz released Chet Baker Sings, a record that increased his profile, but alienated traditional jazz fans. Baker would continue singing throughout his career, fronting various jazz combos. He made his acting debut in the film Hell´s Horizon, in 1955. He declined an offer of a studio contract that year, preferring life and the road as a touring musician. He became an icon of the West Coast “cool school” of jazz, due to his good looks and distinctive singing style.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Europe’s power plants are going the way of the dinosaurs
By Amelia Urry
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. . . By the end of this decade, the average solar system installed in Europe, with a prospective 20-year life span, will pay for itself in six to eight years, according to Renew Economy’s coverage. In other words: buy eight, get 12 free. (Right now, payback time is around 12 years; by 2030 it could be as low as three.)
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Perhaps the key change will be a 50 percent drop in battery prices by 2020. Better, cheaper batteries mean more people will see the value of home solar and electric vehicles, which means more people will buy them, which means the costs of production will likely drop further. There’s a technical term for this, and one we don’t get to use often here: It’s a virtuous cycle.
Of course, traditional utilities will not go quietly. But this shift means that any plants retiring after 2025 will probably not be replaced, according to UBS. Utilities can keep some skin in the game by providing smart-grid infrastructure and covering the gaps in the distributed system with small-scale backup power generation. But gone, or going, are the days of traditional utilities’ reign.
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Rich People Are Trucking Their Own Water Into Drought-Ridden California
By Alissa Walker
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. . . the most famous Montecito resident of all is Oprah. Ms. Winfrey owns at least two homes here, and last year her water bill almost topped $125,000. This year, it's about half of that, thanks to the dramatic measures she's taken to curb her use of the city water supply. But that doesn't means she's cutting back on water consumption. Noooo. She and many other celebs are now having their water imported:
These days, tankers can be seen barreling down Montecito's narrow country roads day and night, ferrying up to 5,000 gallons of H20 to some of the world's richest and thirstiest folks...
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In May, 837 defiant—or careless—residents coughed up $532,000 in penalties, or a collective overage of about 13 million gallons of town water. The beachfront Biltmore Four Seasons was whacked with a penalty of $48,000 for using about one million gallons over its allotment in April, while a nearby private home sucked up a $30,000 fine for the month for guzzling an extra 750,000 gallons. The district receives about 30 appeals a week. Those who do not pay their bills receive shut off notices— and about 400 were sent out in the last year. The Montecito Water District, which is particularly discreet about its patrons, admits it will rake in close to $4 million in fines this year.
I see the same thing happening here in L.A. The city is under similar water restrictions as Montecito, and you can report anyone for breaking the rules. Yet as you drive west through the neighborhoods of Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, and Brentwood, the lawns miraculously grow greener. I actually tried in vain the other day to find at least one lawn which had been sacrificed for the greater good and could not. If you see one, please send me a photo.
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Science and Health |
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Study finds less domestic violence among married couples who smoke pot
By (ScienceDaily)
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. . . The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to Leonard and a grant to Smith from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
"These findings suggest that marijuana use is predictive of lower levels of aggression towards one's partner in the following year." Leonard says. "As in other survey studies of marijuana and partner violence, our study examines patterns of marijuana use and the occurrence of violence within a year period. It does not examine whether using marijuana on a given day reduces the likelihood of violence at that time.
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"Although this study supports the perspective that marijuana does not increase, and may decrease, aggressive conflict," he says, "we would like to see research replicating these findings, and research examining day-to-day marijuana and alcohol use and the likelihood to IPV on the same day before drawing stronger conclusions."
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Respected medical journal changes hands, starts publishing junk science for hire
By Cory Doctorow
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Experimental & Clinical Cardiology published for 17 years out of Oshawa, ON, but is now owned by shadowy figures in Switzerland, whose payments are processed through Turks and Caicos, and they'll publish anything under the journal's banner, provided it's accompanied by a payment of $1200.
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The result is sloppy, or worse. Some articles are called “Enter Paper Title” — the layout instructions instead of the intended title. One is filled with visible paragraph markers (¶). Some authors’ names are missing.
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Technology |
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China plans to oust Microsoft, Apple and Android with own software
By Samuel Gibbs
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Chinese authorities hope to displace Google’s Android software, and the many modified open-source versions of Android, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology reported via the state-run People’s Post.
Computer technology became an area of mutual suspicion between China and the US after the NSA revelations and a number of cyber security rows, including allegations of state-sponsored hacking and the creation of espionage backdoors in both hardware and software.
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“At present, China’s mobile operating system developers include more than a dozen companies, but they can not be said to be based on independent intellectual property rights, using Android customisation,” Ni Guangnan said. “You must change the past approach, instead of copying the previous model integrate the resources accumulated in the past with a state-run unified operating system.”
This is not the first time China has tried to create its own operating system (OS) software. The Chinese Academy of Sciences released a Linux-based OS in 2000 called Red Flag, with desktop, server and productivity software in use in schools and government.
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Police called on video game developer over 'Global Thermonuclear War' plans
By Alex Hern
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Henry Smith is a software engineer from Bristol working on a game called “Global Thermonuclear War”, which uses Google Maps to simulate an atomic conflict between nations. Smith was planning out the game using whiteboards in his home when his letting agent made a pre-arranged visit.
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Although Smith believed he assuaged the agents’ fears by explaining that the sketches were plans for a game, he received a follow-up email the next week informing him that the matter had been referred to the local police.
“At first I was ridiculously frightened by the whole thing,” he told the Guardian. “When they said they’d told the police I absolutely bricked it. I ran home to check if the police had raided the house or something. It was definitely very frightening to think that the police had a report in their system alleging that I was up to something suspicious involving nuclear warheads. Knowing how the police here deal with suspected terrorists, I was worried they’d do a dawn raid or worse. It was genuinely scary for a while.”
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Copyright troll abuses DMCA in bid to censor his previous life as a troll-fighter
By Cory Doctorow
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DC attorney Mike Meier once worked with EFF to fight copyright trolls, whom he called "bill collectors for the movie industry...extorting money" -- now he's joined the trolls as a professional "bill collector," and now he wants evidence of his past life censored and is prepared to send outrageously bogus copyright threats to get his way.
Two anti-troll websites, FightCopyrightTrolls and ExtortionLetter, both put up posts documenting Meier's road-to-Damascus conversion. In response, Meier sent letters to the sites' domain registrars, claiming that they had a duty to confiscate his critics' domains under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- the DMCA requires that such letters be signed under penalty of perjury. He claimed that the excerpts that his critics had posted from his old and new practices' websites, along with their commentary, infringed his copyright. He also claimed that they were defamatory and libelous.
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Also, allow me to remind Mr Meier that he practices in DC, which has a strong anti-SLAPP statute, and also that Boing Boing has a history of not backing down on attempts to intimidate us with frivolous legal threats; and we have a well-deserved reputation for publicizing these threats to a global audience of millions. Also, our fearless Canadian host, Priority Colo, is not subject to the DMCA, and only gives credence complaints under its Canadian equivalent if they pass the giggle test.
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Cultural |
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The rehab centres that lock up addicts against their will
By Linda Pressly
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In Guatemala, behind barred and locked doors, thousands of drug addicts are offered treatment by Protestant churches. Christianity offers salvation for some but many are held against their will, and some are swept off the street by "hunting" parties.
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They are not structured, there is no psychologist or doctor involved, and no one is allowed to leave the room without permission. While listening to the testimony, the residents sit in shadow - the barred windows of the meeting room are covered with thick yellow corrugated plastic.
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. . . this is legal in Guatemala. A ministerial accord of 2006 states that an addict can be interned when they are not in a fit state, but once they have recovered sufficiently, they must give consent. By all accounts, this rarely happens.
At the Ministry of Health, the regulation and co-ordination of the centres comes in the shape of just one man - Hector Hernandez has worked for the last 14 years to try to improve the centres and make them more humane. He has closed some, but he says forced detention has never been proven.
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Many experts believe addicts can never be forced to change - they have to want to stop. And in Guatemala there are many Christian establishments that will only take addicts on a voluntary basis.
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Meet the head of cafes at Crisis
By Dale Berning
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Crisis is the national charity for single homeless people, and we have years of experience in helping people get back into work. One of the ways we do this is through offering on-the-job training at our three Crisis Sunlight training cafes, which I head up. There is one in Newcastle, one in Oxford and one at the Crisis headquarters in Spitalfields, London.
The latter has been running for 10 years. During this time we have helped 200 people back into work. Trainees have either been homeless in the past three years or spent time in prison. Some are referred by key workers, some refer themselves, and others are sent by Switchback, a charity that works with young offenders. At any given time, there are up to 14 trainees on the rota, doing two to three shifts each week, either in the kitchen or front-of-house. The programme lasts four months and is a stepping stone towards secure employment in the catering industry.
There are usually four paid members of staff working alongside the trainees on any given day: we have a manager, a cafe training manager, a head training chef and a front-of-house/barista training person. The passion, knowledge and commitment of the staff are key to keeping the trainees interested. Another thing that helps keep the momentum going is that the programme works on a rolling basis – there are always new trainees starting, with older trainees working with them and showing them the ropes. We also gain a lot from the trainees – if they suggest a dish that is new to us, we’ll put it on the menu, which brings them a huge amount of pride.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |