Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, August 09, 2011.
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: White Knuckles by OK Go
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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High Teen Unemployment Molding 'Lost Generation'
By Hansi Lo Wang
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Across the country, 16- to 19-year-olds are facing the end of the third summer in a row of unemployment rates above 20 percent. Economists warn that if the trend continues, a generation of young people could face a bleak future in the workforce.
. . .
"Someone that started as a [high school] freshman back in, say, 2007 has never known anything other than a job market where they look for work for weeks and haven't been able to find something," Saltsman says.
. . .
"The risk is that if [teenagers] miss out on [the summer job experience], they become part of this lost generation of teens who never had a chance to get a foothold to take that first step on that career ladder," Saltsman says.
Studies show the discouraged teenage job seeker can grow up to become a discouraged adult worker who is more likely to be underpaid and even unemployed.
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Man with breast cancer denied coverage
By (UPI)
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A South Carolina construction worker with breast cancer and no insurance says he's been denied Medicaid coverage because he's not a woman.
. . .
"I get paid $9 an hour, I don't know how I'm going to pay for it," Johnson said he told his doctors.
As a single, non-disabled man with no children, Johnson couldn't qualify for South Carolina's Medicaid program but he was counseled to apply for a program for those diagnosed with breast cancer whose income is 200 percent of the poverty line ($21,780 per year), ABC reported Sunday.
The program was created by Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act of 2000. And is for women only.
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SETI Receives Over $200,000 in Donations; Allen Telescope Array Back in Action
By Tiffany Kaiser
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Back in April of this year, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) was temporarily shut down due to reduced federal dollars and a state budget crisis. But after receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from fans, SETI is now back in action.
SETI, which is located in Mountain View, California, searches the skies for extraterrestrial life through the use of the Allen Telescope Array located 290 miles northeast of San Francisco. There are 42 telescopes that measure 20-feet-wide in this array, and they operate 24 hours per day. Research and development of the telescopes began in 2001 after a $11.5 million contribution from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, and construction of the telescopes began in 2004 after a $13.5 million donation from Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen. The Allen Telescope Array became fully functional in 2007.
On April 22, 2011, lack of funding put the telescopes on hold. SETI CEO Tom Pierson even described staff cuts that would take place. Loss of funding from the University of California at Berkeley was the biggest financial hit, since it was SETI's partner in operating the array.
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Apple flirts with ranking of biggest company
By Casey Newton
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Apple sliced through the competition to briefly become the most valuable company in the world Tuesday, as its market capitalization surged past No. 1 Exxon before settling slightly lower.
. . .
It capped an astonishing turnaround for a company that founder Steve Jobs has said was weeks from bankruptcy when he returned as CEO in 1997 and focused the company on a handful of key products.
. . .
It was less than two years ago that Apple joined the list of the 10 most-valuable U.S. companies. Since then, it has made a rapid ascent, surpassing Microsoft last year to become the world's most valuable technology company.
Less than a month ago, Exxon was worth more than $50 billion more than Apple. Exxon's market value declined as investors became pessimistic about prospects for economic growth, which drives demand for oil.
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Quebec unveils guide to care of gay elderly people
By (BBC)
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The government of Quebec has unveiled a programme to guide carers in the treatment of elderly gay, lesbian and transgender people.
It aims to protect those populations from homophobia and abuse of the elderly, Quebec officials said.
The first group of openly homosexual older people "does not want to go back in the closet," an advocate said.
. . .
A charter document calls for those caring for elderly homosexual people to ensure they receive equal treatment and do not suffer homophobia, to adopt a positive attitude toward homosexuality and trans-sexuality, and to take measures necessary to combat homophobia.
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Somalia offers al-Shabab amnesty
By (Al Jazeera)
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Somalia's government has offered an open amnesty to al-Shabab fighters after the rebels made a surprise withdrawal from the capital, Mogadishu, over the weekend.
"We offer an amnesty - put down your weapons and your guns, and come and join the people and your society," Abdirahman Osman, a government spokesman, was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency on Tuesday.
. . .
Al-Shabab, who still govern over much of southern Somalia, have waged a bloody war since 2007 to topple the Western-backed transitional government.
. . .
The UN Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it was assessing how the group's withdrawal would open aid group access to the war-torn city, which about 100,000 people have fled from in the past two months to escape extreme drought.
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International |
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U.S. Official Is First To Attend Nagasaki Ceremony Marking Nuclear Strike
By Bill Chappell
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A ceremonial bell tolled in Nagasaki, Japan, Tuesday morning, marking the beginning of a moment of silence to remember tens of thousands of people killed by an atomic bomb that fell from a U.S. plane 66 years ago. And for the first time, the ceremony was attended by a U.S. government official.
James Zumwalt, deputy chief of the U.S. embassy in Tokyo, offered a wreath of flowers to Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan at the ceremony. And Kan, speaking just months after a catastrophe struck Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, pledged that his country would rely less on nuclear energy in the future.
"We must never forget," Kan said of Nagasaki, according to the AP, "and it must never be repeated."
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Uncontacted Tribe Missing, Drug Traffickers Suspected
By Jen Quraishi
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An uncontacted tribe of Indians living in Brazil near the Peruvian border is missing after what looks like a skirmish with drug traffickers. Aerial pictures of the tribe quickly circulated the globe earlier this year. The tribe is now feared for since the guard post near their territory has been taken over by suspected drug traders using the remote area as a route to pass product between Brazil and Peru. Authorities found a backpack with a broken arrow inside it and a 20kg package of cocaine nearby. According to a Survival International press release, men with sub-machine guns and rifles now occupy the area that once held the guard post.
Carlos Travassos, head of a Brazilian government department that deals with isolated peoples, said: "Arrows are like the identity card of uncontacted Indians... we are more worried than ever. This situation could be one of the biggest blows we have ever seen in the protection of uncontacted Indians in recent decades. It's a catastrophe."
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Despite outcry over Syria crackdown, few call for Assad to go
By Hannah Allam
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Despite the growing number of condemnations of Syria's five-month campaign against anti-government protesters, no foreign government has called for President Bashar Assad's removal from power.
The United States, European and Latin American nations, Turkey, and Arab states all have criticized the offensive that's turned nightly news from Syria into a montage of dead protesters at an especially sensitive time, during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Still, none of those players — and not even Israel _has called for Assad's ouster, apparently out of fear over who would replace him.
Analysts say the reason for the hesitance lies in Syria's touchy sectarian demographics and the lack of a cohesive opposition that could result in a protracted civil war were Assad to be toppled suddenly.
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Colombia: conflict zone where medical treatment is a rare luxury
By Imogen Foulkes
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. . .
This is a region that has been blighted for 47 years by Colombia's civil conflict. Rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) are still very active here.
The Caguan region was also, until the US-backed Plan Colombia began coca eradication a decade ago, a centre for coca growing, and thus for the illegal drugs trade.
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The area is so tense that doctors from Colombia's own health service are extremely reluctant to work here.
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There is no public transport, and private boats charge very high prices, partly because the Colombian army has rationed the supply of fuel into the region, saying it is used in the production of cocaine.
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Ai Weiwei resumes China criticism in Twitter messages
By (BBC)
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Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has made his strongest anti-government remarks since his release from detention in June.
Mr Ai posted a message on the Twitter website saying one of his friends, held alongside him during his 80-day detention, had nearly died in custody.
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More than 96,000 people follow Mr Ai's tweets and he had been using it and other sites to campaign against abuses of power and corruption in China.
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Red Cross: Rise in violence against medics in warzones
By Imogen Foulkes
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The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned of an alarming rise in attacks on medical facilities and personnel in conflict zones.
The ICRC report, Healthcare in Danger, lists 600 attacks worldwide on doctors, nurses, ambulances and hospitals from mid-2008 to the end of 2010.
. . .
The right of those wounded in war to receive medical treatment - and the right of medical workers to move freely - are enshrined in the first Geneva Convention.
But, almost 150 years after the convention was adopted, it is being violated on a regular basis, says the ICRC's director-general Yves Daccord.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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HHS grants to expand healthcare access
By (UPI)
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Sixty-seven community centers will share $28.8 million to help build health service delivery sites, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department said Tuesday.
The health service delivery sites are expected to serve an additional 286,000 patients, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a release.
The funds were made available through the Affordable Care Act.
Community health centers work to improve the health of the nation's underserved communities and vulnerable populations by ensuring access to comprehensive, culturally competent, quality primary healthcare services.
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Brother, Can You Spare a Job?
By James Ridgeway
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Among the latest attacks on President Obama's policies are claims that his economic stimulus created few jobs, and at exorbitant cost to taxpayers: $278,000 per job, to be exact. Fuzzy math aside, what his foes fail to mention is that the stimulus, like all else these days, operated under the conservative creed that everything must be done through the private sector. This ethos, which Obama has firmly embraced, prevents the federal government from taking the far more efficient route of simply employing people, which might have created many more good jobs at the same cost.
Had Obama had heeded FDR's experience during the Great Depression, we could have put unemployed people to work rebuilding American infrastructure—bridges, tunnels, railroads, roads—not to mention restoring and shoring up wetlands and carrying out other environmental projects. That's what Roosevelt famously did with his Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps.
. . .
As former MoJo reporter Suzy Khimm writes in the Post, "The question of infrastructure funding will come up as soon as Congress returns from its August recess," since "a bill reauthorizing spending on surface transportation—which would help build roads, highways, and the like—is set to expire in September. There's a big gap between the House GOP proposal, which would slash federal spending to 35 percent less than Fiscal 2009 levels, and Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer's two-year plan to spend $55 billion a year. Boxer's proposal would require revenue beyond what's in the Highway Trust Fund, which receives money from the gas tax, promising yet another fight over which will be better for the economy—reducing the deficit or Keynesian spending on infrastructure."
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Technology, expense kill House's oft-troubled pages program
By Lydia Mulvany
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Since the First Continental Congress in 1774, messengers have been used to run errands and deliver messages to members of Congress. But no more, at least not on the House of Representatives' side.
Bowing to technology and the realities of a federal budget that's dripping in red ink, the House's two top leaders announced Monday that the House page program, whose alumni include Microsoft founder Bill Gates and a variety of politicians, is dead.
. . .
House pages are high school juniors with 3.0 grade point averages, and they serve anywhere from a few months to a full school year. They live in a dormitory and attend classes at the Capitol Page School in the Library of Congress. Boehner and Pelosi's statement said each page cost the federal government $69,000 to $80,000 per school year.
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Bad for business
By Ellen Brown
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It used to be that when the chairman of the United States Federal Reserve spoke, the market listened; but the chairman has lost his mystique. Now when the market speaks, politicians listen. Hopefully they heard what the market just said: government cutbacks are bad for business. The government needs to spend more, not less. Fortunately, there are viable ways to do this while still balancing the budget.
. . .
The figure is actually more than $2.2 trillion. As Jack Rasmus pointed out on Truthout on August 4:
Economists estimate the "multiplier" from government spending at about 1.5. That means for every $1 cut in government spending, about $1.50 is taken out of the economy. The first year of cuts are therefore $375 billion to $400 billion in terms of their economic effect. Ironically, that's about equal to the spending increase from President Barack Obama's 2009 initial stimulus package. In other words, we are about to extract from the economy - now showing multiple signs of weakening badly - the original spending stimulus of 2009! As others have pointed out, that magnitude of spending contraction will result in 1.5 million to 2 million more jobs lost. That's also about all the jobs created since the trough of the recession in June 2009. In other words, the job market will be thrown back two years as well.
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The markets are not reacting to a "debt crisis". They do not look at charts 10 years out. They look at present indicators of jobs and sales, which have turned persistently negative. Jobs and sales are both dependent on "demand," which means getting money into the pockets of consumers; and the money supply today has shrunk.
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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:
. . .
You joined with the ASPCA to donate money to a special OK Go fund: “The Rural Rescue Dog Fund.” Why was this important to you?
DAMIAN KULASH of OK GO:
I have two rescue dogs and I figured there would be a lot of eyeballs on this video and it just seemed like a wasted opportunity if we didn’t at least attempt to bring some of that attention to bear on the welfare of animals. My closest in the world are my two dogs and one of them is actually in the vide0 – the brown one sitting on the table in the front is my dog. I figured if people are moved to do anything after seeing this video…help out animals.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Utilities cash in when you go solar
By John Farrell
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. . .
A quick tutorial. Net metering essentially lets a utility customer run their meter backward if they have an on-site electricity generator (like rooftop solar). So if I'm a commercial customer who uses 10,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) a month but my solar panel generates 4,000 kWh, I only pay for the difference: 6,000 kWh. This is supposedly a great deal, because rolling back the meter at the retail rate typically beats getting paid the utility's "avoided cost" wholesale power rate -- the rate the utility pays for more power from nearby power plants.
. . .
With net metering, the utility treats solar PV electricity generation exactly the same as it would conservation or energy efficiency (with the exception that solar usually gets a more generous rebate). And since both of these strategies are significantly less expensive than PV for reducing electricity demand, the customer loses out.
The customer loses, but the utility wins.
That's because the energy charge doesn't necessarily take into account the additional value that solar provides to the utility. When working with the Palo Alto, Calif., municipal utility, the CLEAN Coalition -- a California renewable energy organization -- found that solar PV was worth nearly 75 percent more than typical "brown power" because of its time of delivery (peak), avoided transmission access charges, renewable energy credits, and additional local value. Similar calculations were also made in Ft. Collins, Colo. That means that instead of the 3-4 cents that utilities claim they pay for an additional kWh from a cheap coal or natural gas plant, solar is actually worth far more.
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Obama Unveils Fuel Savings Plans for Big Rigs, Heavy Duty Vehicles
By Shane McGlaun
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Having high fuel efficiency in a vehicle is a great thing for the driver because they can spend less on fuel. Having higher fuel economy on vehicles across the automotive market will reduce the need to import foreign oil and will help to reduce overall pollution as well. The big downside is that the cost of the tech to improve fuel economy is not cheap and that cost will be passed onto the car buyer.
The Obama administration today outlined its Heavy-Duty National Program [PDF] fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles like semis, concrete trucks, dump trucks, and other heavy work trucks. Rather than targeting a specific mile per gallon rating for the heavy-duty vehicles – like what has been proposed for passenger vehicles -- Obama is going to target a percentage of fuel savings.
The reason for this significant difference in fuel savings is according to the administration imposing a MPG standard on this sort of vehicle would be very confusing considering that the range of categories is wide and the payload and duties in the segment vary widely.
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Science and Health |
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Authorship Rules for Medical Journals Flouted by Pharma Industry, Experts Say
By (ScienceDaily)
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Rather than ensure the proper attribution of authorship, rules set up by leading medical journals to define and credit authorship of published articles are exploited by the pharmaceutical industry in its attempt to conceal and misrepresent industry contributions to the literature.
This is a perspective contained in an article by Alastair Matheson, a medical writer based in the UK and Canada, who argues in this week's PLoS Medicine that the current International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines allow for industry to exaggerate the contribution of named academic authors and downplay that of commercial writers who are excluded from authorship but listed as contributors in the small print.
Matheson contends that the ICMJE guidelines should be fundamentally revised and the concept of origination given comparable importance to authorship and contributorship. . .
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Psychiatrists Failing to Adequately Monitor Patients for Metabolic Side-Effects of Prescribed Drugs, UK Study Suggests
By (ScienceDaily)
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New research from the University of Leicester demonstrates that psychiatrists are not offering adequate checks for metabolic complications that are common in patients with mental ill health -- especially those prescribed antipsychotic medication.
Patients treated with antipsychotic medication, especially those with schizophrenia, have a high rate of metabolic problems, for example up to 60% have lipid abnormalities, 40% have high blood pressure, and 30% suffer from the metabolic syndrome. Some estimate that 90% of patients treated with antipsychotic medication have at least one metabolic risk factor. Given this, there are strong reasons why patients under psychiatric care should be offered regular monitoring.
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The research found that only blood pressure and triglycerides were measured in more than half of patients who were under psychiatric care. Cholesterol, glucose and weight checks were offered to less than half. Monitoring was similar in US and UK studies and for both inpatients and outpatients.
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Roman sword, menorah engraving found
By (UPI)
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An ancient Roman sword and scabbard, and an engraving of a menorah on stone were found during work on a 2,000-year-old drainage tunnel in Jerusalem.
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"It seems that the sword belonged to an infantryman of the Roman garrison stationed in Israel at the outbreak of the Great Revolt against the Romans in 66 CE. The sword's fine state of preservation is surprising: not only its length but also the preservation of the leather scabbard and some of its decoration," Eli Shukron director of the excavations said.
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The excavations are being conducted between the City of David and the Jerusalem Archaeological Gardens near the Western Wall.
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ED linked to women's friendship with males
By (UPI)
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There is a link between erectile dysfunction in heterosexual men and strong relationships between their partners and their male friends, U.S. researchers found.
Benjamin Cornwell, a professor of sociology at Cornell University and Edward Laumann, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, describe the situation as "partner betweenness" -- in which a man's female partner has stronger relationships with his confidants than he does.
In other words, the romantic partner comes between the man and his friends, the researchers say.
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Healthy eating is hard but not impossible for low-income Americans
By Tom Laskawy
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There's a new study out purporting to show that, as this AP story puts it, "healthy eating is a privilege of the rich." In many ways, this headline is meant to be a spear slicing deeply into the Achilles heel of the food movement. In one stroke, it seems to confirm the stereotype of the elitist, Alice Waters-loving, farmers-market-shopping locavore who demands we all drop the Doritos and start learning to love kale chips instead. It is, however, a bit of an overstatement.
. . .
Indeed, their point was not to demonstrate that healthy eating is the province of the rich. Their conclusion was simply that "adopting a nutrient-dense diet in line with both dietary recommendations and current U.S. eating habits may raise food costs for consumers." In other words, it's not enough for the government to set dietary guidelines. It needs to radically change its policies, including but not limited to possibly subsidizing healthy foods, if we are to achieve the goal of healthy eating.
. . .
To me, the most interesting finding of the paper was not the "cost" of potassium (which may be a convenient nutrient for this kind of analysis but is certainly not the one most consumers focus on when shopping). Rather, it was the researchers' results that showed "each time consumers obtained 1 percent more of their daily calories from saturated fat and added sugar, their food costs significantly declined." Over the course of a year, a consumer could reduce food costs by $125 for each 1 percent increase in calories from sugar and fat. In other words, all the financial incentives point strongly to upping calories from fat and sugar and slashing the nutritional quality of the American diet.
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Technology |
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When Social Media Mining Gets It Wrong
By Erica Naone
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. . .
Last week in Las Vegas, at the computer security conference Black Hat, Alessandro Acquisti, an associate professor of information technology and public policy at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University, showed how a photograph of a person can be used to find his or her date of birth, social security number, and other information by using facial recognition technology to match the image to a profile on Facebook and other websites. Acquisti acknowledges the privacy implications of this work, but he warns that the biggest problem could be the inaccuracy of this and other data-mining techniques.
. . .
A number of companies have already begun using social media to measure and track reputation. The Santa Barbara, California, company Social Intelligence, for example, performs social-media background screenings on prospective employees, promising to reveal negative information such as racist remarks or sexually explicit photos, or positive information such as signs of social media influence within a specific field. Other companies, such as Klout, track users' level of social influence, allowing advertisers to offer special rewards to those with high scores.
But Acquisti's research demonstrated the pitfalls of placing too much relevance on social networking data. His team took photos of volunteers and used an off-the-shelf face recognizer called PittPatt (recently acquired by Google) to find each volunteer's Facebook profile—which often revealed that person's real name and much more personal information. Using this information, the team could sometimes figure out part of a person's social security number. They also created a prototype smart-phone app that pulls up personal information about a person after they are snapped with the device's camera.
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London riots: police to track rioters who used BlackBerrys
By Josh Halliday
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Police investigating those responsible for the London riots will be able to track down and arrest them based on their BlackBerry Messenger communication with others who took part.
BlackBerry owners using the private social network to message each other and plan unrest could find their personal information – including their names and those of their contacts – handed over to police as part of their investigation.
The BlackBerry-maker, Research In Motion, on Monday vowed to cooperate with the Scotland Yard inquiry following claims that BlackBerry Messenger played a key role in helping to organise the violence.
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Dear Sixth Circuit Court, Spamming and Hacking Aren’t the Same Thing
By Adrian Covert
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The U.S. Sixth Circuit Appeals recently ruled in favor of a company who claims their computer system was sabotaged by a labor union that told its members emails to their employer about a dispute. But the charge wasn't spamming. It was for hacking.
The claim, as lawyer Nick Akerman points out, says the purported crime did not involve any sort of unlawful entry into the computer system of Pulte's (the company in question).
. . .
Rather, Pulte's email system was configured to only handle so many emails and froze up once that limit had been exceeded. Believing the labor union knew this all along, the court considered the act to be malicious, and issued their ruling using an interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act . . .
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CERN Invites Citizens to Help the LHC Find the Higgs Boson
By Jason Mick
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. . .
CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire -- European Council for Nuclear Research) is teaming up with United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and the University of Geneva to create an organization dubbed "Citizen Cyberscience Centre", which looks to test and deploy similar projects.
The Citizen Cyberscience Centre just yesterday released [press release] its second generation LHC@home software, whose ambitious goal is to assist scientists with locating the legendary Higgs boson and other exotic particles.
. . .
Its concept is that while scientists have advanced physics theory that tells them how they expect systems to behave, they can't actually give a prediction of how a particular system will behave until they put that theory into a system. With LHC@home, members of the public can install a client on their computers, which will apply their spare computing power towards simulating high-energy collisions between protons. The results will then be compared with experimental data from real-world LHC runs to narrow the search for items of interest.
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Cultural |
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Spanish priests join opposition to costly papal visit
By Stephen Burgen
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More than 100 priests from Madrid's poorest parishes have added their voices to the growing protest at the cost of Pope Benedict's visit to Madrid next week.
An umbrella group – the Priest's Forum – says the estimated €60m (£53m) cost of the papal visit, not counting security, cannot be justified at a time of massive public sector cuts and 20% unemployment in Spain.
Evaristo Villar, a 68-year-old member of the group, said he objected to the multinationals with which the Catholic church has had to ally itself to cover the costs of the "showmanship" of the event.
"The companies that are backing World Youth Day and the pope's visit leave much to be desired," he said. "They are the ones who, together with international capital, have caused the crisis. We are not against the pope's visit, we are against the way it is being staged."
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Man, too poor to pay fishing fine, sent to jail
By Mark Frauenfelder
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. . . Last spring, Dewitt was ticketed and fined $215 for fishing smallmouth bass out of season (Dewitt disputes the charge).
But Dewitt, 19 years old with a fiancée and a nine-month-old son, lost his job at a grocery store in 2010 and has been out of work ever since. He couldn’t afford the $215 fine. Instead he offered to pay $100 up front, and repay the rest in a month. But Judge Raymond Voet of Ionia, Mich., refused. The judge sentenced Dewitt to three days in jail.
. . .
“Long thought to be a relic of the 19th century, debtors’ prisons are still alive and well in Michigan,” Kary Moss, executive director of the Michigan ACLU, said in a press release. “Jailing our clients because they are poor is not only unconstitutional, it’s unconscionable and a shameful waste of resources.”
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Pakistan battles against hidden HIV-Aids menace
By (BBC)
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For a long time perceptions of Pakistan as a conservative Muslim country encouraged a belief that HIV-Aids incidence would be non-existent or very low. With the number of HIV cases rising the government finally included it in its 2009 national health policy, but as the BBC's Nosheen Abbas reports, its full extent is still not widely acknowledged.
. . .
The belief that HIV and Aids is an epidemic caused by "immoral activities" remains a popular misconception among the general public.
The efforts of those fighting against the illness have been hampered by the deteriorating security situation in many parts of the country and by this cultural mindset.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working to fight HIV and Aids in the region have received threats and have either changed the location of their offices or only function by telephone.
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Trojan T-shirt targets German right-wing rock fans
By (BBC)
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Music fans who took souvenir T-shirts from a rock festival in Gera, eastern Germany, have discovered they hold a secret message.
The so-called Trojan T-shirts bore a design of a skull and right-wing flags and the words "hardcore rebels".
But, once washed, the design dissolves to reveal a message telling people to break with extremism.
. . .
The stunt was organised by a left-wing group called Exit, which seeks to reduce the influence of the right-wing in Germany.
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