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
Soviet coup against Mikhail Gorbachev fails; Exiled revolutionary Leon Trotsky murdered in Mexico; Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion; U.S. flag gets 50th star; Count Basie and singer Kenny Rogers born
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Courage is knowing what not to fear.
Breakfast News
Britain to reopen embassy in Tehran this weekend after four years
Britain’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, will formally reopen the UK embassy in Tehran on Sunday, nearly four years after it was shut down as a result of a mob attack.
The Iranian embassy in London will be reopened at the same time, as part of a rapid warming of relations between Iran and the west following the agreement reached on 14 July on the future of the Iranian nuclear programme. Hammond’s Tehran trip, the first by a British foreign secretary in nearly 12 years, comes soon after visits from the French and Italian foreign ministers, Germany’s vice-chancellor, and the EU’s foreign policy chief.
Greek PM Tsipras Resigns, Calls Early Elections
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resigned on Thursday, hoping to strengthen his hold on power in snap elections after seven months in office in which he fought Greece’s creditors for a better bailout deal but had to cave in.
Tsipras submitted his resignation to President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and asked for the earliest possible election date.
Government officials said the aim was to hold the election on Sept. 20, with Tsipras seeking to crush a rebellion in his leftist Syriza party and seal public support for the bailout program, Greece’s third since 2010, that he negotiated.
Jimmy Carter announces cancer has spread to his brain
Jimmy Carter’s melanoma, a form of skin cancer, has been discovered in four places on his brain and is likely to “show up other places in my body”, the former US president said on Thursday.
Carter told a news conference he would be undergoing radiation treatments and injections to fight the cancer, which was discovered after he underwent surgery to remove a growth on his liver, where melanoma also had been discovered, he said.
Carter, 91, first announced the cancer diagnosis last week.
Long-suffering California can blame drought on global warming, experts say
Global warming has increased the severity of the ongoing drought in California, as part of a larger trend of human-caused climate change intensifying dry weather spells, scientists said on Thursday.
Scientists predict that “enhanced drought” will continue in California throughout this century because global warming has “substantially increased” the likelihood of extreme droughts in the state.
Recent studies have looked at climate models to predict the future frequency of droughts while others have analyzed historical records to see the probability of drought. The paper published on Thursday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, however, looks at how much of the current drought can be blamed on global warming.
It’s Official, July Was Earth’s Hottest Month On Record
July 2015 was officially the Earth’s hottest month in recorded history, government scientists confirmed Thursday, following up on preliminary data published earlier this week by NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency.
The average temperature in July was 61.86 degrees Fahrenheit, beating the previous global record set in 1998 and again in 2010 by about one-seventh of a degree. That’s a large margin for weather records.
Weather monitoring data stretches back more than 135 years, to 1880. But nine of the 10 hottest months on record have happened since 2005.
First wild grey wolf pack in nearly a century sighted in California
California’s first grey wolf pack since wild wolves disappeared from the state nearly a century ago has been spotted in the woods in the northern part of the state, wildlife officials said on Thursday.
The pack appears to include a wolf photographed by state fish and wildlife experts last month, then believed to be alone.
“This news is exciting for California,” Charlton H. Bonham, director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, said in a statement. “We knew wolves would eventually return home to the state, and it appears now is the time.”
Pictures of the wolves – five pups and two adults – posted on the department’s website show the family in a meadow with tall trees behind them.
Sunken 1715 Spanish fleet a treasure trove that keeps on giving gold
Diver William Bartlett had just started exploring a 300-year-old shipwreck with a metal detector late last month in the waters off Florida’s Atlantic coast when he found his first Spanish gold coin. Then one coin became two and two became so many he had to stuff them into his diving glove.
When he resurfaced, “every fingertip was stacked with gold coins, and we knew then we were into something super special”, the captain of his boat, Jonah Martinez, said Thursday.
Over the next two days, Martinez, Bartlett and another treasure hunter, Dan Beckingham, found 350 coins worth $4.5m, the most valuable find from the 1715 shipwreck site in recent decades.
Fortune hunters flock to Polish town after alleged find of Nazi gold train
A city in south-western Poland is in a state of high suspense following claims made by two men that they have found a Nazi train packed with gold. Local authorities in Wałbrzych said they were investigating the reports, as fortune hunters from around Europe were making their way to the town in the hope of enjoying some of the potential spoils – or at least witnessing the discovery of what could yet turn out to be a spectacular historical find.
The men, reported to be a German and a Pole, have appointed a lawyer to negotiate with the authorities for a 10% finder’s fee for the train and its contents. Local news site Wiadomości Wałbrzyskie said the train contained up to 300 tonnes of gold, as well as a batch of diamonds, other gems and industrial equipment. The men said only once they have secured their fee in writing will they reveal the whereabouts of the train.
Banksy’s Dismaland: ‘amusements and anarchism’ in artist’s biggest project yet
He describes it as a “family theme park unsuitable for small children” – and with the Grim Reaper whooping it up on the dodgems and Cinderella horribly mangled in a pumpkin carriage crash, it is easy to see why.
Banksy’s new show, Dismaland, which opened on Thursday on the Weston-super-Mare seafront, is sometimes hilarious, sometimes eye-opening and occasionally breathtakingly shocking.
The artist’s biggest project to date had been shrouded in secrecy. Local residents and curious tourists were led to believe that the installations being built in a disused former lido called Tropicana were part of a film set for a Hollywood crime thriller called Grey Fox.
Historic ‘Tile’ Discovery Gives Math World A Big Jolt
A team of mathematicians has wowed the math world with their discovery of a new kind of pentagon capable of “tiling a plane”–that is, fitting together on a flat surface without overlapping or leaving any gaps.
It’s said to be only the fifteenth such pentagon ever found and the first new one to be found in 30 years. Finding one is a bit like discovering a new atomic particle, Dr. Casey Mann, associate professor of mathematics at the University of Washington in Bothell and a member of the team, said in a written statement.
The team made the find with the help of a computer program designed just for the purpose
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Must Read Blog Posts
This Week in the Laboratories of Democracy Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
Washington Shocked! Shocked That AP’s George Jahn Is a Tool for Iran Deal Opponents Jim White, emptywheel
What’s the Difference Between Saudi Arabia and ISIS? emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler, Emptywheel
Lawsuit Filed After Walmart & Costco Sold Slave Labor Seafood Ban Wright, The Bullpen @ ShadowProof
New Schools, Less Crime: Colorado Sees Benefits Of Marijuana Legalization Kit O’Connell, Community @ ShadowProof
Wave of TV Ads Opposing Iran Deal Organized By Saudi Arabian Lobbyist Lee Fang, The Intercept
The Puritanical Glee Over the Ashley Madison Hack Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
Appellate Court Judges Cite ‘1984’ to Expand Corporate First Amendment Rights Jon Schwarz, The Intercept
DOJ Issues First Annual Media Subpoena Report Tim Cushing, Techdirt
Court Says Government Has To Reveal If It Kept The Data From The DEA’s Mass Surveillance Program Mike Masnick, Techdirt
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