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
Richard Nixon gives his ‘Checkers’ speech; Rome’s Augustus Caesar born; Lewis and Clark finish trek to America’s West; Psychologist Sigmund Freud dies; Musicians Ray Charles and Bruce Springsteen born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
The autumn wind is a pirate. Blustering in from sea with a rollicking song he sweeps along swaggering boisterously. His face is weather beaten, he wears a hooded sash with a silver hat about his head… The autumn wind is a Raider, pillaging just for fun.
Breakfast News
EU governments push through divisive deal to share 120,000 refugees
European governments have forced through a deal to impose refugee quotas, sharing 120,000 people between them in a watershed decision that several states bitterly opposed.
The decision to overrule opponents in the newer states of central Europe was highly unusual and perceived as an assault on the sovereignty by the four countries that voted against.
While applauded by NGOs and immigration professionals as a belated attempt by the EU to get to grips with its biggest ever migration crisis, the decision was highly divisive and sets the scene for a tense summit of EU leaders in Brussels on Wednesday dedicated to the refugee emergency.
Syria confirms receipt of Russian jets to target Isis
Syria has confirmed for the first time that it has received advanced fighter and reconnaissance aircraft from Russia, which the Damascus government says have significantly enhanced its ability to target Islamic State fighters.
The Syrian air force has “taken delivery of at least five fighter planes from Moscow, as well as reconnaissance aircraft which allow us to identify targets with great accuracy,” a senior military official told the AFP news agency on Tuesday. Russia has also sent other “sophisticated military equipment” to fight Isis.
A Syrian army officer told the Guardian separately that infantry units were now receiving more accurate satellite images of Isis positions and that airstrikes against them were thus more accurate and frequent, apparently thanks to Russian help.
Los Angeles officials propose spending $100m on homelessness emergency
Los Angeles officials said Tuesday that they would declare a state of emergency on homelessness and proposed spending $100m to reduce the number of people living on city streets.
City council president Herb Wesson, members of the council’s Homelessness and Poverty Committee and mayor Eric Garcetti announced the plan outside City Hall – as homeless people dozed nearby on a lawn.
“These are our fellow Angelinos,” the mayor said. “They are those who have no other place to go, and they are literally here where we work, a symbol our city’s intense crisis.”
An emergency declaration and the funding will require action by the full city council. Wesson didn’t specify where the money would come from, but he said budget analysts would find it “somehow, someway”.
US pharmaceutical firm to roll back 5,000% price rise for drug
Turing Pharmaceuticals, a small company that generated outrage by raising the cost of an old anti-infective drug by more than 5,000%, said it would roll back that increase to make sure it remains affordable.
Turing and its chief executive officer, Martin Shkreli, became the new face of the US drug pricing controversy this week, after the New York Times reported that the company had raised the price of Daraprim, a 62-year-old treatment for a dangerous parasitic infection, to $750 (£488) a pill from $13.50 (£8.79) after acquiring it. The medicine once sold for $1 a pill.
The story sparked outrage among patients, medical societies and the Democratic presidential frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, who outlined a proposal to cap rocketing prescription drug costs for consumers.
Syrian War Causes The Global Doomsday Seed Vault’s First Withdrawal
The doomsday seed vault on Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago houses the world’s back up supply of seeds to ensure crop diversity. It contains deposits of nearly 865,000 varieties of seeds buried within a mountain in case of catastrophe. Due to Syria’s civil war, it will now allow a withdrawal of its contents for the first time in its existence.
The request to take out a small amount of the millions of total seeds from within the Svalbard Global Seed Vault comes from another gene bank, the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas, which is currently based in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, but was previously headquartered in Syria.
One reason gene banks exist is to provide breeders, scientists and farmers with seed varieties to improve crop growth and yields in the face of changing climates. Amid Syria’s brutal civil war, however, ICARDA has struggled to provide this function.
US judge rules Happy Birthday is public domain, throws out copyright claim
A federal court judge in Los Angeles has declared the song Happy Birthday to You belongs in the public domain, dealing a blow to the music publishing company that has been collecting royalties from the song for decades.
US district judge George H King ruled on Tuesday the copyright originally filed by the Clayton F Summy Co in 1935 applied to a specific arrangement of the song, not the tune itself.
King ruled that Summy never acquired the rights to the song’s lyrics, and the defendants’ claims to the contrary were “implausible and unreasonable”.
“Because Summy Co never acquired the rights to the Happy Birthday lyrics, the] defendants, as Summy Co’s purported successors-in-interest, do not own a valid copyright in the Happy Birthday lyrics,” King wrote in a [judgment posted online (pdf).
A New Dinosaur Has Been Discovered — And He’s Hungry
Researchers have discovered a new dinosaur with the resilience to live in darkness for months at a time and endure the unforgiving high Arctic of Alaska.
Ugrunaaluk (oo-GREW-na-luck) kuukpikensis (KOOK-pik-en-sis) was a duck-billed herbivore that grew to a length of up to 30 feet and chewed with hundreds of individual teeth made for eating coarse vegetation, researchers with the University of Alaska Museum of the North revealed Tuesday.
The dino is from a distinct species of hadrosaur, one that lived 69 million years ago in temperatures far cooler than his hadrosaur cousins found in Canada and the lower 48 states.
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Must Read Blog Posts
“It’s Good to Be Back,” Petraeus Says before He Offers a Vague Apology and Oil Market Advice emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
Scott Walker’s Implosion Is Chaos Theory at Work Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
Sinister visions of America in crisis: Hollywood finally gets foreclosures right in “99 Homes” David Dayen, Salon
Bernie Sanders’ Private Prison Reform Bill Would Leave Opportunities For Industry To Grow Brian Sonenstein, Prison Protest @ ShadowProof
Inspector General Urged To Investigate Justice Department For Ignoring CIA Torture Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter @ ShadowProof
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Your Moment of Zen
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2 comments
Iggy would do that.