Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, January 22, 2015.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Chump Man Blues by Blind Blake
News below Aunt Flossie's hairdo . . .
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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Look forward to a sweaty future, America, thanks to climate change
By Eve Andrews
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. . . We try not to talk about it or think about it, probably because sweating is miserable! There’s no quicker or more wretched way to remind oneself that to be human is to be trapped in 100+ pounds of meat for all of your living days. But there’s a lot of bodily moisture (shoot me, please) to look forward to as parts of the U.S. get warmer, and as more and more confused people choose to move to those parts of the country.
Between 1970 and 2000, the U.S. averaged about 2.3 billion person days of extreme heat each year. But between 2040 and 2070 that number will be between 10 and 14 billion person days a year, according to the study.
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That’s an increase of 400-600 percent in Americans’ exposure to extreme heat. Extreme heat is defined, for the record, as temperatures in excess of 95 degrees Fahrenheit. |
Apple and Google sign letter urging Obama to support encryption
By Alex Hern
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The letter argues that “strong encryption is the cornerstone of the modern information economy’s security,” and that the government should “fully support and not undermine efforts to create encryption standards [nor] in any way subvert, undermine, weaken or make vulnerable” commercial software.
It was obtained by the Washington Post in advance of its publication on Tuesday. The letter is also signed by three members of Obama’s five-person review group set up in 2013 to reassess technology policy in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks that summer.
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With the launch of iOS 8, “the information stored on many iPhones and other Apple devices will be encrypted by default”, Comey told the Brookings Institute in Washington DC last year. “Shortly after Apple’s announcement, Google announced plans to follow suit with its Android operating system. This means the companies themselves won’t be able to unlock phones, laptops and tablets to reveal photos, documents, email and recordings stored within.”
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Comey said: “At the outset, Apple says something that is reasonable – that it’s not that big a deal … Apple argues, for example, that its users can back up and store much of their data in ‘the cloud’ and that the FBI can still access that data with lawful authority. But uploading to the cloud doesn’t include all of the stored data on a bad guy’s phone, which has the potential to create a black hole for law enforcement.”
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Nature vs. Nurture: It's a tie, study finds
By Stephen Feller
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Researchers analyzing 50 years of data collected on 14.5 million pairs of twins found that variation between them for traits and diseases worked out to 49 percent based on genetics and 51 percent environment in most cases.
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"What is comforting is that, on average, about 50 per cent of individual differences are genetic and 50 per cent are environmental. The findings show that we need to look at ourselves outside of a view of nature versus nurture, and instead look at it as nature and nurture."
The conclusion from studying reports of similarities and differences for nearly 18,000 traits across more than 2,700 studies shows that future research should consider both genetics and environment because of their equivalent average influence on development.
Researchers say genetic and environmental influence was balanced across most traits, though some had wider differences. Bipolar disorder, for example, was found to be about 70 percent genetic and 30 percent environmental. The research also showed individual traits were often the result of the cumulative effect of genetic differences.
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The rise and rise of the fossil fuel divestment movement
By Emma Howard
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Since McKibben’s climate movement 350.org launched its fossil fuel divestment campaign in 2012, more than 220 institutions – including universities, faith organisations, local authorities, pension funds and foundations – have committed to divesting from fossil fuels.
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By the end of the year, research by Oxford University suggested that it had become the fastest growing divestment campaign in history, surpassing those targeting the tobacco industry and apatheid in South Africa. The movement has only continued to accelerate.
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In March 2015, the UN organisation responsible for coordinating a global climate change deal backed divestment saying it did so because “it sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of ‘burn what you like, when you like’ cannot continue.”
Moral victories were hailed as the World Council of Churches – which represents half a billion Christians – ruled out all fossil fuel investments in 2014 and the Church of England moved its £9bn fund out of thermal coal and tar sands in April.
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The campaign was given a boost in April 2013 by the launch of a report by economist Nick Stern and thinktank Carbon Tracker which showed that overvaluation of fossil fuel reserves could be creating an investment bubble with the potential to plunge the world into deep financial crisis. It is estimated that if international agreements to avoid dangerous levels of climate change are heeded, two-thirds of fossil fuel reserves in the ground cannot be burned.
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International |
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Cuba establishes banking ties in US ahead of talks
By (BBC)
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Cuban diplomats will now have access to banking services in the US, clearing a major hurdle to restore diplomatic ties between the two counties.
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This week's talks in Washington could be the last round of negotiations before embassies are re-opened.
The US will remove Cuba from its list of sponsors of terrorism on 29 May.
US President Barack Obama announced the historic US thaw with Cuba in December but the US trade embargo against the country remains, and may only be ended by Congress.
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Egyptian authorities using sexual violence on 'massive scale'
By (BBC)
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The study notes a surge in sexual violence after the Egyptian military takeover in July 2013.
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The officer from the start got into the van and said to me: "Come here I'm going to show you if I'm a man." He sexually assaulted me, the soldiers laughed, and then he raped me completely. I was paralysed, I started to vomit blood.
My life is ruined. I'm afraid of my son, my husband and even my father.
The authors said they did not have evidence that commanders were giving the orders, but the scale of the violence - and the impunity - suggested there was a political strategy. |
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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The 85-Year-Old Nun Who Went to Prison for Embarrassing the Feds Is Finally Free
By Josh Harkinson
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Sister Megan Rice, the 85-year-old activist nun who two years ago humiliated government officials by penetrating and vandalizing a supposedly ultra-high-security uranium storage facility, has finally been released from prison. A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the 2013 sabotage convictions of Rice and two fellow anti-nuclear activists, Michael Walli, 66, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 59, ruling that that their actions—breaking into Tennessee's Y-12 National Security Complex and spreading blood on a uranium storage bunker—did not harm national security.
Rice's case has become the subject of intense media scrutiny, including a recent New Yorker profile by Eric Schlosser, whose latest book exposed gaping flaws in America's nuclear weapons program. The activists now await re-sentencing on a lesser charge of damaging federal property. The punishment is expected to be less than the two years they've already spent in federal prison.
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US ponders more arms for Iraqi tribes after Ramadi rout
By (Al Jazeera)
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US President Barack Obama is considering faster training and more arms supplies for Iraqi tribes, while eying a rapid counteroffensive to retake Ramadi from the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), a US official has said.
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Meanwhile, many of the Shia groups that helped retake Tikrit are armed and trained by Iran.
The White House wants to see those groups firmly under the command and control of the Iraqi military, but is also turning to Sunni tribes, which helped turn the tide of America's own war in Iraq through the "Sunni Awakening."
But reeling from the worst setback since ISIL grabbed swathes of territory in June last year, Abadi called in the Shia-dominated Popular Mobilisation units for help.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
During the mid 1920s, the unexpectedly strong sales of Blind Lemon Jefferson's Paramount 78s sent record scouts scrambling to sign male blues artists. One of their best discoveries was Blind Blake, a swinging, sophisticated guitarist whose warm, relaxed voice was a far cry from harsh country blues. Some of Blake's 78s cast him as swinging jazzman or jivey hipster, while others walked the long, lonely road to the gallows. The man with the "famous piano-sounding guitar" is still regarded as the unrivaled master of ragtime blues fingerpicking.
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Some believe Blind Blake was born Arthur Phelps, but during the recording "Papa Charlie And Blind Blake Talk About It," Papa Charlie Jackson asks him, "What is your right name?" Blake responds, "My name is Arthur Blake." The name on the copyrights for "C.C. Pill Blues" and "Panther Squall Blues" is Arthur "Blind" Blake, which strengthens the case for Blake being his given name. He had a pronounced Southern accent and reportedly worked in south Georgia, Kentucky, along the East Coast, and in Bristol, Tennessee, before landing in Chicago.
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Blind Gary Davis likewise studied Blake's 78s. "The guitar was being played like a piano in almost all the areas of America except the Delta," explains Stefan Grossman, "meaning that the left hand was literally doing that boom-chick, boom-chick pattern. Blake was able to use his right-hand thumb to syncopate it more, like a Charleston. He was very, very rhythmic and incredibly fast--I don't know anyone who can get to that speed. That's Blake's real claim to fame, because his chord progressions are nothing fancy. But the thumb work is fantastic, and what he's doing with his right hand set him apart from everyone. Rev. Gary Davis said Blake had a 'sportin' right hand.' . .
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The bluesman's final fate is uncertain. "Blind Blake--now, that's another one that's a mystery," reported Georgia Tom Dorsey during the 1960s. "How he got out of the show [business], I don't know. But he was a good worker and a nice fellow to get along with, as far as I'm concerned." After Paramount folded in '32, Blake never recorded again. "I figure he went back to Jacksonville when his recording contract was over," says Wardlow. "No one's ever found out what happened to him. Gary Davis said that Blake was hit by a streetcar, and that's the only rumor of his death that I know of. Maybe he got robbed and killed, 'cause he was blind."
For a while, though, Blind Blake's records sold almost as well as Blind Lemon's, and he had a tremendous impact, especially in the Southeast.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Peabody Energy exploited Ebola crisis for corporate gain, say health experts
By Suzanne Goldenberg
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As part of a PR offensive to rebrand coal as a “21st-century fuel” that can help solve global poverty, it has emerged that at the height of Ebola’s impact in Africa, Peabody Energy promoted its product as an answer to Africa’s devastating public health crisis.
Greg Boyce, the chief executive of Peabody, a US-based multinational with mining interests around the world, included a slide on Ebola and energy in a presentation to a coal industry conference in September last year. The slide suggested that more energy would have spurred the distribution of a hypothetical Ebola vaccine – citing as supporting evidence a University of Pennsylvania infectious disease expert.
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“There is no apparent merit or evidence to support such a thesis,” said Irwin Redlener, director of Columbia University’s National Centre for Disaster Preparedness, and an advisor to the White House on the US response to Ebola. “Peabody has very specific and explicit corporate goals. I think this is a pretty far fetched leap from a global crisis to try to justify the existence of a company that is interested in producing and selling coal.”
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Peabody denied it was using the Ebola crisis for its own gain. “Mr Boyce was simply noting that a lack of electricity dramatically impaired the ability to fight Ebola in key nations that have little energy access and where hospitals rely on generators for power,” Vic Svec, the company’s senior vice-president for global investor and corporate relations told the Guardian.
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The Ebola claims surfaced amid growing pressure on Peabody Energy from the downturn in coal and a global anti-apartheid style fossil fuel divestment campaign.
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The developing world is beating the U.S. at clean energy
By Tim McDonnell
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Although America and most other G20 nations are moving toward a clean energy overhaul, its the developing world where you’ll find the most explosive growth: When you add in emerging markets like Brazil, India, and South Africa, clean energy investment in developing countries totaled $131 billion in 2014, only 6 percent less than the combined total for developed countries. It’s the closest that gap has ever been, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF):
BNEF
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It’s no mystery why developing countries are positioning themselves to win this race. For one, they need the electricity. As it stands, more than 1.3 billion people, mostly in Asia, India, and sub-Saharan Africa, live without access to reliable modern service . . .
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Energy poverty isn’t the only factor driving clean energy’s growth. In Bulgaria or Ukraine, both of which Pew identified as key places for energy investment in the developing world, the growth is driven by a desire to wrest control from foreign fossil fuel suppliers, i.e. Russia’s Gazprom. That’s according to Phyllis Cuttino, a clean energy analyst who authored the Pew report. “These countries want to have sources they don’t have to import, and they want to stimulate economic growth,” she said.
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So where does this leave United States? There’s a huge opportunity for clean energy entrepreneurs to expand into developing countries, Cuttino said. Indeed, according to Commerce Department stats, six of our top 10 destinations for clean energy exports are developing countries. President Barack Obama has made electrification in Africa a signature foreign policy initiative of his second term. That move in itself sends an important signal about the difference between clean energy here and in the developing world. Here the benefits are primarily environmental. There, clean energy is seen as a key step to alleviating poverty.
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ESPN's New Hire Says Global-Warming Fears Are "Intellectually Dishonest"
By Greg Howard
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ESPN is a sports media conglomerate that largely, intentionally operates under the conceit that sports exist within a vacuum, untouched by the outside world except for instances in which the outside world intrudes on the sports universe. It’s a fallacious conceit, but it has some unintended positive consequences. Its solipsistic coverage of sports has allowed ESPN to manage to gather a stunning range of ideas and intellects, and is the only way a company could simultaneously employ the likes of Keith Olbermann, Jason Whitlock, Darren Rovell, Bomani Jones, Sarah Spain, and—holy shit, is that Will Cain?
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“Isn’t lying about blowjobs,” Bill Maher asked, “ way less important than lying about the things Republicans lie about? Like global warming isn’t real? Do you think Ted Cruz—who has degrees from Princeton and Harvard–do you really think he thinks global warming is a hoax, or does he know it’s true but he tells that to the rubes who vote for him? Because they believe it. Which is a worse lie?”
“I genuinely like debating you,” Cain responded, through audience applause. “One of your great failings is your inability to see the intellectual response in the global warming debate. The response which is: you can’t predict the future.”
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A quick trip down the Will Cain rabbit hole shows that before ESPN, he rarely spoke about sports. More often, though, Cain has carved out a role as a shill who works to further the interests and ambitions of oil corporations, Republican political candidates who attempt to hoodwink and/or energize their base, and those who vilify women and/or minorities while denying their agency. . .
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Science and Health |
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Skipping meals linked to abdominal weight gain
By (ScienceDaily)
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In the study, mice that ate all of their food as a single meal and fasted the rest of the day developed insulin resistance in their livers -- which scientists consider a telltale sign of prediabetes. When the liver doesn't respond to insulin signals telling it to stop producing glucose, that extra sugar in the blood is stored as fat.
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"This does support the notion that small meals throughout the day can be helpful for weight loss, though that may not be practical for many people," said Martha Belury, professor of human nutrition at The Ohio State University and senior author of the study. "But you definitely don't want to skip meals to save calories because it sets your body up for larger fluctuations in insulin and glucose and could be setting you up for more fat gain instead of fat loss."
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"Under conditions when the liver is not stimulated by insulin, increased glucose output from the liver means the liver isn't responding to signals telling it to shut down glucose production," Belury said. "These mice don't have type 2 diabetes yet, but they're not responding to insulin anymore and that state of insulin resistance is referred to as prediabetes."
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The dark side of the 'love hormone:' Similarities with the effects of alcohol
By (ScienceDaily)
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Oxytocin is a neuropeptide hormone produced in the hypothalamus and secreted by the posterior pituitary gland. It has long been established as playing a significant role in childbirth and maternal bonding. More recently it has been identified as a brain chemical with a key role in determining our social interactions and our reactions to romantic partners -- hence its nickname of 'the love hormone'.
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When administered nasally, oxytocin appears to closely mirror the well-established effects of alcohol consumption. However the researchers warn against self-medicating with either the hormone or a swift drink to provide a little more confidence in difficult moments.
Alongside the health concerns that accompany frequent alcohol consumption, there are less desirable socio-cognitive effects that both alcohol and oxytocin can facilitate. People can become more aggressive, more boastful, envious of those they consider to be their competitors, and favour their in-group at the expense of others. The compounds can affect our sense of fear which normally acts to protect us from getting into trouble and we often hear of people taking risks that they otherwise wouldn't.
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Do bugs sleep?
By David Pescovitz
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According to University of Wisconsin biologist Barrett Klein, paper wasps, cockroaches, praying mantises, and fruit flies definitely doze. The challenge though, he tells National Geographic, is identifying when an insect is actually zonked out or just in a "sleep-like state." If they are "drooping in the direction of gravity," they are likely snoozing.
In a 2010 study, Klein looked at sleep deprivation in honeybees, creating quite a super villainous sounding machine to do so: the insominator.
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Bees inform each other about food sources and potential nest sites through a movement called a "waggle dance." The study showed sleep-deprived bees "behaved quite differently than bees with the more precise directional information."
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Technology |
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NASA asks for new ideas to bolster asteroid redirect mission
By Brooks Hays
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The ultimate aim of the space agency's Asteroid Redirect Mission is settled. Officials want to capture a boulder from a near-Earth asteroid and place it into orbit around the moon. But NASA isn't sure how to get started.
Agency engineers need a strategy and a robotic spacecraft. A lot details need to be filled in. And they're hoping a spark of creativity from the private sector can help get the ball rolling. That's why the agency issued a Request for Information, or RFI.
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But NASA doesn't want just any starry-eyed idea. They want the ideas to meet quite a few specifics. The agency wants ideas on how to build a spacecraft that employs advanced Solar Electric Propulsion technology.
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The ultimate purpose of the redirect mission is to enable testing related to the agency's planned future trip to Mars.
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The angry harassment retort that hit home
By (BBC)
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Prerna Pratham Singh, a 21-year-old from Delhi, had been ignoring the random "hi" messages she had been receiving from an account she didn't recognise on Facebook until she received a particularly lewd one. Enraged, Singh took a screengrab of the conversation and posted it along with a rant against harassment.
"Let me tell you sir. I have seen cheap people like you all around the corner," she wrote. "I am going to make sure that you are brought to the limelight. Us girls don't come on Facebook to have sex or get attention. But hey, if you want some, here's your chance to fame. Get ready to be prosecuted by the police and all over Facebook. I'm pressing charges." She also made pointed references to the man's wife.
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"He chose to send the message to me and hence I have the right to share it," Singh told BBC Trending. "As long as the person is not publicly named and shamed, they will not stop doing it." She says her intention was not to humiliate the person, but to send a message to those who think they can get away with sending women lewd comments.
Some have accused her of conducting a publicity stunt, she says, but she is sticking to her message, "It is absolutely okay to tackle physical, mental, emotional, financial abuse in the real world as well as the virtual world," she says.
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Cultural |
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Why do US police keep killing unarmed black men?
By (BBC)
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"Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people. More unarmed black people were killed by police than unarmed white people last year. And that's taking into account the fact that black people are only 14% of the population here.
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"We haven't seen mayors step up and make clear commitments to eliminate the level of police violence in their communities. I think that says a lot about the relative value that they place on those constituents' lives."
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"One of the things they looked at is what they called threat perception failure. The officer believed that the person was armed and it turned out not to be the case. And these failures were more likely to occur when the subject was black [even if the officers were themselves black or Latino].
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"The first rule of law enforcement is to go home at the end of your shift. The key principle is officer survival. That's what all training is designed to promote. But it ends up endangering civilians rather than preserving their safety.
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"Training involves an average of about 60 hours on deadly force - the use of firearms - and just over 60 hours on self-defence. Compare that to de-escalation conflict resolution training: the average there is only eight hours of training, and most of that is classroom-based.
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Fighting HIV where no-one admits it's a problem
By (BBC)
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The phrase "Aids epidemic" awakens distant memories in most of Europe, Australia or the Americas, where infection rates have generally been in decline for years. But as former UK Health Secretary Lord Fowler explains, the phrase is not used in Russia either - despite failed policies that have allowed infection rates to soar.
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Almost 60% of those with HIV in Russia are injecting drug users and a further group are the sexual partners of the drug users. The HIV virus has spread like wildfire via contaminated needles and syringes.
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It is also true that no support is given to the handful of voluntary organisations trying to fill the gap. Sarang says that her small foundation is the only one doing harm-reduction work on the streets of Moscow. But it is an organisation which lives on a shoestring. It would dearly like a van to act as a mobile testing centre but that is beyond its resources - and volunteers have to lug their supplies around in rucksacks on the Moscow metro.
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But although discrimination against children with HIV has diminished, other prejudices remain very much alive. Adults with HIV can face ostracism. Sex workers caught carrying condoms are too often threatened with a charge of soliciting and forced to pay bribes to police. President Putin's legislation against the promotion of homosexuality encourages bigots, and makes it hard to get safe-sex advice leaflets printed.
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Perhaps it is for these reasons that when asked about the outlook for an Aids-free Russia, Vadim Pokrovsky confesses he is not very hopeful. "Victory on HIV infection," he says quietly, "will require another 25 years."
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |