Welcome to Sunday OND, tonight's edition of the daily feature. The Overnight News Digest crew consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors jlms qkw, Bentliberal, wader, Oke, rfall, and JML9999, alumni editors palantir and ScottyUrb, guest editors maggiejean and annetteboardman, and current editor-in-chief Neon Vincent.
You are all welcome to read and comment, share links and news, and spend some time winding down this evening with the day's news.
Last week's news: Egypt has a president, Greece has a government, and the Euro is stabilizing.. Rio+20 was not overly useful. The US House is Fast & Furious but not interesting in employing Transportation workers or saving college students interest money. The Senate is mucking up the Farm bill. Fortunately the House is only scheduled to be in session 30 more days before November 6.
News To Look For In the Week Ahead
SCOTUS: ACA, AZ, and 3 other big decisions. Monday and Thursday.
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, & THE LIKE
Genome test slammed for assessing ‘racial purity’ @mem_somerville
The MP in question is a member of the far-right Jobbik party, which won 17% of the votes in the general election of April 2010. He apparently requested the certificate from the firm Nagy Gén Diagnostic and Research, which rents office space at the prestigious Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. The company produced the document in September 2010, a few weeks before local elections.
The certificate — with the MP’s name blacked out — emerged on the web last month and was seized on by the Hungarian media. One of Nagy Gén’s financial partners, Tibor Benedek — a three-time Olympic water-polo gold medallist and a member of a prominent Jewish family — immediately pulled out of the company.
The ETT’s secretary, József Mandl, chair of medical chemistry at the Semmelweis University in Budapest, says that the certificate is “professionally wrong, ethically unacceptable — and illegal”. The council discussed the issue on 7 June and concluded that the genetic test violates the 2008 Law on Genetics, which allows such testing only for health purposes.
The 2012 European Genetics Conferences in Nuremberg, Germany (June 23-26) will provide a further opportunity for the ESHG to denounce such an unethical perversion of genetic science, and insist, at the same time, on the importance of genetic testing in the medical or scientific context of good practice.
Potential Toxicity Issues with Tifton 85 Bermudagrass @mem_somerville
A little background is in order. Tifton 85 bermudagrass was released from the USDA-ARS station at Tifton, GA in 1992 by Dr. Glenn Burton, the same gentleman who gave us Coastal bermudagrass in 1943. One of the parents of Tifton 85, Tifton 68, is a stargrass. Stargrass is in the same genus as bermudagrass (Cynodon) but is a different species (nlemfuensis versus dactylon) than bermudagrass. Stargrass has a pretty high potential for prussic acid formation, depending on variety, but even with that being said, University of Florida researchers at the Ona, FL station have grazed stargrass since 1972 without a prussic acid incident.
The pasture where the cattle died had been severely drought stressed from last year’s unprecedented drought, and had Prowl H2O applied during the dormant season, a small amount of fertilizer applied in mid to late April, received approximately 5” of precipitation within the previous 30 days, and was at a hay harvest stage of growth. Thus, the pasture did not fit the typical young flush of growth following a drought-ending rain or young growth following a frost we typically associate with prussic acid formation.
A comprehensive review of the cows that died after eating GM grass.
America’s Plan to Cut Carbon: Frack Now via @jfleck
The secret isn’t laws, green activism or regulations (although these do have roles to play). Innovation is the force that is enabling the cut in US carbon emissions. Specifically, the new ways of extracting natural gas that make have driven a natural gas boom in this country and dramatically cut the cost of the cleanest hydrocarbon energy source of them all.
What’s interesting is to compare the US performance with Europe. Europe has done many of the things greens want the US to do, but despite their “virtue” and our “sin”, the US is doing better than Europe at meeting key environmental goals. As CNN puts it:
Europe, by contrast, has seen its energy-sector carbon emissions remain basically flat. This despite the fact that most of Europe operates under a market-based cap-and-trade scheme where emissions are capped at a certain level and companies get tradable credits to emit pollution.
Plus, Europe has significantly higher taxes on energy.
Ignore the greens and innovate, and you will cut carbon. Pay a lot of attention to them, spend a lot of money — and you will keep carbon emissions unchanged.
We'll save the climate by destroying the environment ????
Last Pinta giant tortoise Lonesome George dies
Staff at the Galapagos National Park in Ecuador say Lonesome George, a giant tortoise believed to be the last of its subspecies, has died.
Scientists estimate he was about 100 years old.
Park officials said they would carry out a post-mortem to determine the cause of his death.
With no offspring and no known individuals from his subspecies left, Lonesome George became known as the rarest creature in the world.
WORLD EVENTS
Joyce Banda: 'Malawians deserve better'
The leader of Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries, recounts how she fought to protect her country's democracy.
Joyce Banda is Malawi's first female president, and only the second woman to lead an African country.
She took over when President Bingu wa Mutharika died in office in April 2012.
But even though she was vice president, there were some who challenged her right to the top job leading to a tense 48 hours, where the country teetered on the edge of violence.
Her elevation was only secured when the army agreed it would back the constitution.
Born in 1950, near the southern town of Zomba, by the age of 25 she was living with her husband in Kenya. But took the decision to leave with her three children to escape what she describes as an abusive marriage.
Video interview at link.
London 2012 Olympics: Saudis allow women to compete
Saudi Arabia is to allow its women athletes to compete in the Olympics for the first time.
Officials say the country's Olympic Committee will "oversee participation of women athletes who can qualify".
The decision will end recent speculation as to whether the entire Saudi team could have been disqualified on grounds of gender discrimination.
The public participation of women in sport is still fiercely opposed by many Saudi religious conservatives.
AROUND THE COUNTRY
This Week in Poverty: Ms. Vasquez Goes to Washington
She stood before Dimon and asked: “Despite making billions last year, why do you deny the people cleaning your buildings a living wage?”
Vasquez says Dimon’s entourage reacted “as if I had a weapon on me,” quickly surrounding him.
“Call my office,” Dimon replied, before being ushered toward the exit.
Vasquez had wanted to add “walk a day in my shoes,” but didn’t get a chance. That’s exactly what Vasquez and over 3,000 of her colleagues in Houston are asking building owners and cleaning contractors to do as they consider the janitor’s demand for a raise to $10 an hour over the next three years.
The janitors are currently paid an hourly wage of $8.35 and earn an average of $8,684 annually, despite cleaning the offices of some of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world—Chevron, ExxonMobil, Wells Fargo, Shell, JPMorgan Chase and others in the “City of Millionaires.” The cleaning contractors have countered with an offer of a $0.50 pay raise phased in over five years.
Jamie Dimon had a visitor after his congressional testimony. Plus, Farm bill and Nuns on the Bus.
A hard lesson: change can come too fast
Now, Narcisse himself is leaving for a new job amid questions about the wisdom of letting someone so inexperienced carry out drastic changes. Standardized test scores rose slightly under Narcisse, but so did the dropout rate, the course failure rate, and the absentee rate — while the experience level and morale of his teachers plummeted.
State education officials are so concerned about the lack of improvement under Narcisse that they are withholding more than $900,000 in federal funds until the school comes up with a better plan to fix its problems. If that fails, one of the oldest public high schools in the United States could face state takeover as early as next year.
“The progress we are seeing there is not what I would hope for,” said Mitchell Chester, the state commissioner of elementary and secondary education whose agency reported in January that teachers were confused and distrustful of Narcisse’s plans and fearful that if they complained they would be viewed as disloyal.
A less hard lesson: Maybe, just maybe, there is value in training and experience, and some labor tasks can't be commmodotized.
Corporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High, Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low
Graphs, not very pretty.
The Sacramento Delta: “an intricacy of endless legal troubles”
When the US government’s Board of Commissioners on the Irrigation of the San Joaquin, Tulare, and Sacramento Valleys of the State of California duly reported to Congress in 1874, its members issued a warning. If a plan for irrigating the rich but arid lands of California’s great Central Valley is not worked out with care
the result will be a partial and temporary good for only a part of the valley, and will lead to an intricacy of endless legal troubles.
Gen. B.S. Alexander of the Army Corps of Engineers and his fellow commissioners had something fairly specific in mind with their criticism – that water development shouldn’t be done helter-skelter, but should be planned. First, the tools of science should be used to survey the place and determine where best irrigation might be accomplished. After which
the laws under which a proper system of irrigation for the great valley can then be decided upon intelligently.
We haven’t entirely worked out that first part, and we seem to have bollixed up the second part, the development of governance structures, completely.
I got sidetracked by Gen. B.S. Alexander’s report as I was trying this weekend to dig through reactions to last week’s vague rollout of the latest aspects of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, the infrastructure and accompanying governance being contemplated as part of the latest iteration of Alexander’s ideas.
UTAH NEWS
Living History: Mormons exceptional in belief in American exceptionalism
The Saints saw themselves as a link in a chain beginning with the Pilgrims, continuing through the Founding Fathers, and leading up to the establishment of Christ’s righteous government. Early Mormons were dedicated journal-keepers because they were conscious of being on the ground floor of Something Big. Firsthand accounts from the victors as the Kingdom of God rolled forth to crush the wicked would one day be as important as the journals of Washington and Jefferson.
Which is why the Latter-day Saints often made such irritating neighbors. No one likes to be told that, unless you throw in and join our religion, God is going to be redistributing your wealth. In part, it explains the troubles Mormons had in New York, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois and later Utah.
The government denied Utah statehood for decades and hounded and imprisoned Mormon leaders until the church promised two things: to abandon polygamy and swear fealty to the United States and its elected leaders.
Romney a sure thing, but other races in question Tuesday
It’s about the safest bet around: Mitt Romney will win Utah’s Republican presidential primary Tuesday with the kind of dominant victory rarely seen outside of elections held in North Korea.
But while Utah’s last-in-the-nation presidential contest provides an inconsequential punctuation mark on the story of Romney’s nomination, down the ticket expensive and bitterly fought races will be decided.
Chief among them is Sen. Orrin Hatch’s bid to win his party’s nomination for a seventh term against challenger Dan Liljenquist. Hatch, already Utah’s longest-serving senator, has spent more than $10 million to retain his party’s nomination, obliterating every spending record for any Utah political race.
Yay! The Presidential primaries are over!
Pat Bagley - Salt Lake Tribune Firestarter, or, "Will the West Burn All Summer?"
