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
Franklin D. Roosevelt sworn in as president, Ronald Reagan takes responsibility for the Iran-Contra affair, the AAA is born in 1904.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I believe I can sing anything.
Miriam Makeba
Breakfast News
Mexico makes first direct response to Trump: We’re not paying for border wall
The Mexican government has made its first direct response to Donald Trump’s pledge to build a wall along the two countries’ border and make Mexico pay for it.
“I say it emphatically and categorically: Mexico, under no circumstance is going to pay for the wall that Mr Trump is proposing,” the Mexican treasury secretary, Luis Videgaray, said late on Wednesday to Milenio television.
The wall proposal by the Republican presidential hopeful has been criticized widely and fiercely in Mexico, but the government itself has tried to avoid commenting directly on the issue until now.
Trump is leading the Republican presidential contenders and has used especially tough talk on immigration.
Berta Cáceres, Honduran environment and human rights activist, murdered
Berta Cáceres, the Honduran indigenous and environmental rights campaigner, has been murdered, barely a week after she was threatened for opposing a hydroelectric project.
Her death prompted international outrage at the murderous treatment of campaigners in Honduras, as well as a flood of tributes to a prominent and courageous defender of the natural world.
The co-founder of the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (Copinh) was shot dead by gunmen who entered her home in La Esperanza at around 1am on Thursday. Some reports say there were two killers; others suggest 11. They escaped without being identified, after also wounding her brother.
Police told local media the killings occurred during an attempted robbery, but the family said they had no doubt it was an assassination prompted by Cáceres’s high-profile campaigns against dams, illegal loggers and plantation owners.
Twelve new arrests over Cliven Bundy standoff include Trump campaigner
The FBI escalated its investigation into Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s 2014 standoff with the federal government Thursday with sweeping raids across the country that resulted in 12 arrests, including that of a Donald Trump campaign coalition co-chair in New Hampshire.
Two of Bundy’s sons were also among those arrested, amid signs that federal authorities are ramping up their efforts against the ultra-conservative, anti-government movement that also inspired the armed standoff in Oregon earlier this year.
Cliven Bundy had long refused to pay fees to the government to allow his cattle to graze on federally controlled public lands – a dispute that escalated to an armed standoff in 2014 when officials tried to seize his livestock. Hundreds of anti-government activists, some heavily armed, flocked to Bunkerville to support the Bundys, and the government ultimately backed down.
Seattle sued over city ordinance that allows Uber, Lyft drivers to unionize
The US Chamber of Commerce sued the city of Seattle on Thursday over an ordinance that allows drivers of ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft to unionize, saying it violates federal antitrust laws.
Seattle last year became the first US city to pass a law giving drivers for companies such as Uber and Lyft, as well as taxis and for-hire drivers, the right to collectively negotiate on pay and working conditions.
City officials took action amid growing concerns about how drivers are compensated. Both Uber and Lyft vigorously opposed the measure, arguing that existing federal labor law trumps local legislation.
Russian atheist faces year in jail for denying existence of God during webchat
A man in southern Russia faces a potential jail sentence after he was charged with insulting the feelings of religious believers over an internet exchange in which he wrote that “there is no God”.
Viktor Krasnov, 38, who appeared in court Wednesday, is being prosecuted under a controversial 2013 law that was introduced after punk art group Pussy Riots was jailed for a performance in Moscow’s main cathedral, his lawyer Andrei Sabinin told AFP.
The charges – which carry a maximum one-year jail sentence – centre on an internet exchange that Krasnov was involved in in 2014 on a humorous local website in his hometown of Stavropol.
Genetics of cancer tumours reveal possible treatment revolution
A landmark discovery into the genetic makeup of tumours has the potential to open a new front in the war on cancer, delivering potent therapies that are tailored to individual patients, scientists have said.
The breakthrough comes from research into the genetic complexity of lung and skin cancers which found that even as tumours grow and spread around the body, they carry with them a number of biological “flags” that the immune system can be primed to attack.
Because the flags, which appear as surface proteins, are found only on cancer cells, they provide what scientists described as “exquisite targets” for new therapies that draw on the power of the immune system to combat cancer.
Breakfast Blogs
The Rich Kid Adventures of Donald and Willard Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
Husband of San Bernardino Victim Agrees: Farook’s Phone Unlikely to Yield Useful Information emptwheel aka Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
Read the Sexist Email Exchange About Rula Jebreal With Former AIPAC Spokesman Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept
New Teflon Toxin Causes Cancer in Lab Animals Sharon Lerner, The Intercept
I Bet The Party Couldn’t Even Decide On An Alternative To trump Steve M., No More Mister Nice Guy Blog
Yes, Donald Trump Can Create Problems For Free Speech & The First Amendment Mike Masnick, Techdirt
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