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
Nathan Hale hanged in the American Revolution; Iraq invades Iran; President Gerald Ford faces a second assassination attempt in weeks; ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ hits Broadway; Songwriter Irving Berlin dies.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.
Breakfast News
Eastern European leaders defy EU effort to set refugee quotas
Central and eastern European leaders have defied attempts by Brussels and Berlin to impose refugee quotas ahead of two days of high-stakes summits in Brussels to try to decide on what already looks like a vain attempt to limit the flow of refugees and migrants into Europe.
After months of being consistently behind the curve in grappling with the EU’s huge migration crisis, interior ministers will meet on Tuesday to focus on the highly divisive issue of mandatory quotas to share refugees across the union. There will then be an emergency summit of leaders on Wednesday.
Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg’s foreign minister, who is chairing Tuesday’s meeting, failed to reach a breakthrough in Prague on Monday with his counterparts from the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Latvia.
US may accept UN condemning trade embargo against Cuba for first time
For the first time, the United States may accept a United Nations condemnation of the US trade embargo against Cuba without a fight, the Associated Press has learned.
US officials tell the AP that the Obama administration is weighing abstaining from the annual UN general assembly vote on a Cuban-backed resolution demanding that the embargo be lifted. The vote could come next month.
No decision has yet been made, said four administration officials who were not authorized to speak publicly on sensitive internal deliberations and demanded anonymity. But merely considering an abstention is unprecedented. Following through on the idea would send shock waves through both the United Nations and Congress.
It is unheard of for a UN member state not to oppose resolutions critical of its own laws.
Big Price Increase for Tuberculosis Drug Is Rescinded
A huge overnight price increase for an important tuberculosis drug has been rescinded after the company that acquired the drug gave it back to its previous owner under pressure, it was announced on Monday.
However, outrage over a gigantic price increase for another drug spread into the political sphere on Monday, causing biotechnology stocks to fall broadly as investors worried about possible government action to control pharmaceutical prices. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index fell more than 4 percent. [..]
The cases of Daraprim and of the tuberculosis drug, cycloserine, are examples of a relatively new business strategy – acquiring old, neglected drugs, often for rare diseases, and turning them into costly “specialty” drugs.
Judge rejects bid from Angola Three’s Albert Woodfox after 40 years in solitary
A judge on Monday rejected defense efforts to exclude key witness testimony against the last remaining Angola Three member still behind bars and to throw out his indictment entirely in the 1972 killing of a prison guard.
Judge William Carmichael also ruled that the trial against Albert Woodfox could go forward in West Feliciana parish, rejecting defense claims that he could not get a fair trial in a place where Louisiana’s Angola prison is also located.
Woodfox is the last member of a group often referred to as the ‘Angola Three’ for their extended stays in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola as well as other prisons. The decades-long case has gained international attention and highlighted the use of solitary confinement in American prisons.
Slender Man stabbing case suspended as officials consider suspects’ adult status
A Wisconsin judge on Monday suspended the case of two 13-year-old girls accused of trying to kill a classmate near Milwaukee while an appeals court decides whether to review a decision to keep the case in adult court.
Judge Michael Bohren removed the girls’ October trial date from his calendar and delayed hearing pre-trial motions, the Journal Sentinel reported.
The two girls are charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the May 2014 attack on Payton Leutner. Investigators say the girls lured Payton to a park in Waukesha where they stabbed her 19 times in an effort to appease the online fictional character Slender Man. They left her for dead, but Payton was able to crawl from a wooded area, where she was discovered by a bicyclist. After several surgeries, she has returned to school.
US may be drastically underestimating landfill emissions – study
Landfills may be emitting more methane than previously reported because the Environmental Protection Agency may be drastically underestimating how much garbage is being deposited in landfills across the US, according to a new Yale University study.
Banana peels, coffee grounds, plastic bottles and other detritus tossed in the garbage usually ends up in a landfill and emits methane as it decomposes.
Methane is a greenhouse gas up to 35 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a driver of climate change over the span of a century, and landfills are the United States’ third largest source of methane emissions, according to the EPA. The Obama administration is focusing on cutting methane emissions as part of its Climate Action Plan.
Sumatran rhinos likely to become extinct, warn environment experts
Earth’s last remaining Sumatran rhinos are edging perilously close to extinction, according to one of the world’s top conservation bodies.
There are fewer than 100 of the animals left in the rainforests of the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the Kalimantan province of Borneo. The last Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) in Malaysia was spotted two years ago in the Sabah region of Borneo but experts last month declared the species extinct in that country.
That has prompted the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to sound the alarm over the species’ fate, which it said is headed for extinction if urgent action is not taken.
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Must Read Blog Posts
The New Stellar Wind Language emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
Trump Defends His Tweets: ‘Somebody Said They Were Excellent’ Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
SEC Commissioner’s Husband Caught Marketing Influence David Wright, The Bullpen @ ShadowProof
DEA Chief Admits Marijuana Is Less Dangerous Than Heroin, But Won’t Reschedule Kit O’Connell, Community @ ShadowProof
SEC’s Mary Jo White Plots to Oust Effective Accounting Regulator, in Face of Escalating Criticism Over Conflicts Yves Smith, naked capitalism
Clinton on the Keystone Pipeline: “I can’t wait too much longer, and I am putting the White House on notice” Baius Publius, Hullabaloo
CIA, FBI And Much Of US Military Aren’t Doing The Most Basic Things To Encrypt Email Mike Masnick, Techdirt
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