The Breakfast Club (Summer in the City)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Breakfast Tunes

Breakfast News

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Second German government worker suspected of spying for US

Accused reportedly works ‘in military’, as Berlin still reels after intelligence agent was accused of working for CIA last week

German authorities are investigating the second case of a government employee suspected of spying on confidential government affairs for US secret services within a week.

Public prosecutors confirmed that the home and office of a defence ministry employee in the greater Berlin area had been searched on Wednesday morning.

They told the Guardian that a search had been conducted “under suspicion of secret agent activity” and that evidence – including computers and several data storage devices – had been seized for analysis. The federal prosecutor’s office confirmed that no arrest had yet been made.

According to Die Welt newspaper, the staffer being investigated is a soldier who had caught the attention of the German military counter-intelligence service after establishing regular contact with people thought to be working for a US secret agency.

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Chinese Hackers Pursue Key Data on U.S. Workers

Chinese hackers in March broke into the computer networks of the United States government agency that houses the personal information of all federal employees, according to senior American officials. They appeared to be targeting the files on tens of thousands of employees who have applied for top-secret security clearances.

The hackers gained access to some of the databases of the Office of Personnel Management before the federal authorities detected the threat and blocked them from the network, according to the officials. It is not yet clear how far the hackers penetrated the agency’s systems, in which applicants for security clearances list their foreign contacts, previous jobs and personal information like past drug use.

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Civilian Death Toll In Afghanistan Up 17 Percent

Insurgent suicide bombers and gunmen staged a deadly assault on government compounds Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, even as the U.N. warned that such fighting in populated areas was a major cause for a 17 percent uptick in the civilian death toll so far this year.

The worrying trend comes as the Taliban and other militants grow bolder with their attacks on Afghan security forces in the fight for control of key routes and other territory ahead of the withdrawal of U.S. and allied combat troops by the end of 2014.

Afghans have frequently been caught up in the violence, but the 85-page biannual U.N. report said that so far this year clashes, rockets and mortar strikes in populated areas killed more civilians than roadside bombs and suicide attacks.

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Typhoon Neoguri batters Japan

Typhoon Neoguri headed for the Japanese mainland on Wednesday after crossing to the southern Okinawa island chain, killing two people and leaving a trail of damage.

With gusts of up to 110 miles an hour (180km/h) the typhoon was forecast to hit the southern main island of Kyushu as early as Thursday before moving east along the Japanese archipelago, the national weather agency said.

Officials said Neoguri would bring heavy rainfall and warned of the risk of flooding and landslides after the storm – which has weakened from a super typhoon – forced half a million people to seek shelter in Okinawa on Tuesday.

Kyushu – next to the biggest island of Honshu, where major cities including Tokyo and Osaka are located – experienced heavy rain and strong winds. Authorities were considering an emergency alert for residents to seek shelter ahead of Neoguri’s landfall.

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Co-author of Bull-Running Guide Is Gored in Pamplona

My own final introductory words of advice are simple: if you want to guarantee you’ll survive running the bulls, stay off the street and watch it from a balcony.

– Alexander Fiske-Harrison, co-author of “Fiesta: How to Survive the Bulls of Pamplona”

MADRID – Ernest Hemingway followed Mr. Fiske-Harrison’s advice, preferring to write about the traditional running of the bulls, an annual event that these days attracts tens of thousands of tourists from all over the world. So did another devotee, Orson Welles, though it’s hard to resist the thought of the rotund director chugging along with the rampaging animals.

Unfortunately, perhaps, one of Mr. Fiske-Harrison’s co-authors, an American named Bill Hillmann, did not, and was gored in the leg on Wednesday when he tripped during the charge through the streets.

Mr. Hillmann suffered serious muscle tissue damage, but none to the bone or arteries, said Mr. Fiske-Harrison, a British writer and amateur bullfighter who ran behind Mr. Hillmann on Wednesday and later visited him in the hospital.

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Must Read Blog Posts

Garden Of Earthy Delights by Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics Blog

Americans Have Spent Enough Money On A Broken Plane To Buy Every Homeless Person A Mansion by Hayes Brown, Think Progress

Keurig Begins Demonstrating Its Coffee DRM System; As Expected, It Has Nothing To Do With ‘Safety’ by Mike Masnick, Techdirt

Taxes, Walgreens, the TPP, TTIP & TISA by Synoia, MyFDL

Abdullah Supporters Reject Preliminary Results, Urge Parallel Government by Jim White, emptywheel

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Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Lewis Carroll

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Stupid Shit by LaEscapee

People Are Idiots

Cross posted at Docudharma and Voices on the Square