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.
ek is visiting family. He’ll be back next week with TechSci Thursday
This Day in History
Mohandes Gandhi born; President Woodrow Wilson suffers stroke; Thurgood Marshall sworn in as US Supreme Court justice; Rock Hudson dies; Peanuts comic strip debut.
Breakfast Tunes
Breakast News
Rift valleys rewrite moon’s fiery history
The discovery of rift valleys for the first time on the moon challenges conventional wisdom about our neighbour’s evolution
A giant plain on the nearside of the moon is bordered by ancient rift valleys that acted as a “magma plumbing system” for the region’s volcanoes billions of years ago, scientists say.
Researchers had thought that a rocky ridge around the 3,200km-wide plain, named the Ocean of Storms, was the edge of an enormous impact basin created when an asteroid crashed into the moon.
But maps drawn up from measurements taken by Nasa’s Grail (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) mission orbiters found that the rocky features were lava-filled valleys that operated like a plumbing system.
Republican-backed voter ID law in North Carolina struck down by judge
• Court blocks two elements but upholds other parts of HB 589
• Law had been criticised as attack on African American votersA federal appeals court has blocked two key elements of a new law introduced by Republicans in North Carolina that civil rights groups have criticised as a brazen attack on the ability of African Americans to vote.
In a two-to-one majority ruling, the Fourth Circuit US court of appeals reinstated the right to register to vote and to cast a ballot on the same day – known as same-day registration – and the ability to vote outside a citizen’s home precinct. Those facilities had been removed under a controversial new law, HB 589, whose Republican sponsors said was necessary to ensure the integrity of the voting process and whose detractors said was a political ruse to make it more difficult for largely Democratic-voting black people to get to the polling stations.
Flights re-routed to avoid walrus stampede on Alaska beach
An estimated 35,000 of the animals were spotted as summer sea ice fell to its sixth lowest in the satellite record
The plight of thousands of walruses forced to crowd on to an Alaska beach because of disappearing sea ice has set off an all-out response from the US government to avoid a catastrophic stampede.
The Federal Aviation Authority has re-routed flights, and local communities have called on bush pilots to keep their distance in an effort to avoid setting off a panic that could see scores of walruses trampled to death, federal government scientists told reporters.
Curiosity seekers and the media have also been asked to stay away.
An estimated 35,000 walruses were spotted on the barrier island in north-western Alaska on 27 September by scientists on an aerial survey flight.
The biggest immediate risk factor for the walruses now is a stampede – especially for baby walruses – but they have been facing a growing threat from climate change, the scientists said.
US Ebola patient told staff of Liberia travel but was allowed to leave hospital
Revelation comes as Dallas witness recounts victim ‘throwing up all over the place’ as ambulance took him away
The first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola outside Africa told medical staff that he had recently travelled from west Africa, but was not admitted to hospital until he returned two days later, health officials in Texas said on Wednesday.
Thomas Eric Duncan told a nurse at a Dallas emergency room that he had recently visited Liberia, which has been ravaged by the Ebola outbreak. But an executive at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital told a news conference that the information was not widely enough shared with the medical team treating Duncan, and he was diagnosed as suffering from a “low-grade common viral disease”.
Satellite images show Aral Sea basin ‘completely dried’
An area of the Central Asian inland sea – once the fourth largest in the world – was left parched in August, according to Nasa photographs
A large section of the Aral Sea has completely dried up for the first time in modern history, according to Nasa.
Images from the US space agency’s Terra satellite released last week show that the eastern basin of the Central Asian inland sea – which stretched across Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and was once the fourth largest in the world – was totally parched in August. Images taken in 2000 show an extensive body of water covering the same area
Must Read Blog Posts
Federal Appeals Court Rules Evidence from Warrantless GPS Tracking Does Not Have to Be Suppressed Kevin Gosztola, FDL The Dissenter
Posse Comitatus and the Fourth Amendment Peter van Buren, FDL The Dissenter
US Air Strikes in Syria Proceeding as Expected: Civilian Deaths Documented, ISIS Recruitment Up Jim White. emptywheel
Eric Holder’s Near Total Lack Of Concern For Digital Rights Mike Masnick, Techdirt
White House Says Its Rules Limiting Drone Attacks To Avoid Civilians Don’t Apply In Syria Mike masnick, Techdirt
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