Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, December 20, 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: La Grange by ZZ Top
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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One-third of U.S. youth arrested by age 23
By (UPI)
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Almost one-third of U.S. teens and young adults are arrested or taken into custody by age 23 for offenses other than traffic violations, researchers found.
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"Since the last national estimate based on data from 1965, the cumulative prevalence of arrest for American youth -- particularly in the period of late adolescence and early adulthood -- has increased substantially," the study said. "At a minimum, being arrested for criminal activity signifies increased risk of unhealthy lifestyle, violence involvement, and violent victimization."
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Oh, SNAP! Grow gardens with food stamps
By Claire Thompson
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Hightower signed up for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps. When she looked through the information pamphlet she received, she found out that SNAP benefits can be used to buy seeds and plants, not just food. So she went to Whole Foods, bought some seeds, and planted a garden of salad greens. "It was one of the things I could do that made me feel like my kids weren't going to have to let go of [eating well]," she said.
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SNAP Gardens prints cheerful posters in several languages advising SNAP recipients that they can use their benefits for seeds. Simon said he's gotten requests for the posters from farmers markets in 24 states and Washington, D.C. (While it's becoming more common knowledge that EBT can be used to purchase food at farmers markets, many vendors are still unaware that they work for seeds and plants, too.) The posters are also designed to be displayed in local SNAP offices, community centers, or public housing locations. SNAP is a federal program, but administered locally, Simon explained, so local governments have more power to spread the word about different ways it can be used.
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With the help of a $1,000 microgrant from Awesome Food, SNAP Gardens will start working with The Dinner Garden -- which sends out free starter packs of seeds by request -- to set up a telephone hotline with gardening information. (Simon said that Dinner Garden founder Holly Hirshberg didn't know about using SNAP benefits for seeds, either.) Part of the grant will also pay to include a flyer about using EBT for seeds with every packet The Dinner Garden sends out, with the assumption that many of those requesting free seeds might also be eligible for SNAP.
Hightower said her garden doesn't offset her grocery budget dramatically -- it produces maybe five dollars' worth of salad greens a week. But using her SNAP benefits to garden is worth it for other reasons. "It makes me feel good, like I'm holding onto my values," she said. "My kids know that going out and picking your greens is normal; it's part of our family's culture. Just because you're poor doesn't mean you can't have this for yourself."
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Homeless people die 30 years younger, study suggests
By (BBC)
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Homeless people in England die 30 years younger than the national average, new research has suggested.
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Drug and alcohol abuse account for a third of all deaths among the homeless.
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The Sheffield University report, which was commissioned by the charity Crisis, said that while drug and alcohol abuse often lead to homelessness, being without a home exacerbates the problem.
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It was not just people sleeping on the streets who were studied, the wider homeless population which include those who live in night shelters, hostels and who use day centres were also considered.
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Mystery of Car Battery's Current Solved
By (ScienceDaily)
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Chemists have solved the 150 year-old mystery of what gives the lead-acid battery, found under the hood of most cars, its unique ability to deliver a surge of current.
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'The unique ability of lead acid batteries to deliver surge currents in excess of 100 amps to turn over a starter motor in an automobile depends critically on the fact that the lead dioxide which stores the chemical energy in the battery anode has a very high electrical conductivity, thus allowing large current to be drawn on demand,' said Professor Russ Egdell of Oxford University's Department of Chemistry, an author of the paper.
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Through a combination of computational chemistry and neutron diffraction, the team has demonstrated that lead dioxide is intrinsically an insulator with a small electronic band gap, but invariably becomes electron rich due to the loss of oxygen from the lattice, causing the material to be transformed from an insulator into a metallic conductor.
The researchers believe these insights could open up new avenues for the selection of improved materials for modern battery technologies.
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Philippines declares 'state of calamity'
By (Al Jazeera)
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A state of national disaster has been declared in the Philippines, and authorities are preparing for temporary mass burials after nearly a thousand people died in recent floods.
At least 957 people are confirmed dead so far and 49 others are missing after tropical storm Washi lashed the southern island of Mindanao and surrounding areas over the weekend, said civil defence chief Benito Ramos.
Washi brought heavy rains that swelled rivers, unleashing flash floods and landslides in the middle of the night and swept away shantytowns built near river mouths. The death toll rose sharply as the bodies of people who were swept out to sea were recovered.
President Benigno Aquino flew to Mindanao on Tuesday to survey the devastation by air, co-ordinate the relief effort, and express his condolences to the victims' relatives, aides said.
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International |
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Sirte and Misrata: A tale of two war-torn Libyan cities
By Jon Donnison
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Mr Mishri was a loser in the conflict in Libya.
He paid a price for living in Sirte, Muammar Gaddafi's hometown.
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The city was pummelled by rebel forces in the dying days of the conflict, as the late Libyan leader made his last stand.
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Fighters from the Misrata Brigades can now be seen patrolling the streets of Sirte.
Residents of Misrata are beginning to rebuild, unlike those in Sirte
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In Misrata, the damage is not as severe as in Sirte, but it is still substantial.
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Things falling apart
By Tim F.
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Does anyone have an idea what will happen when Greece runs out of last-minute stopgap tricks? I suppose it means that the major players in Europe all get their bets called at the same time. As I understand from Duncan Black . . . almost everyone ‘hedged’ their position by selling each other insurance. That way when party A runs aground party B finds its insurance unexpectedly worthless, making its position untenable and putting party C in jeopardy since they bought insurance from party B. . . . Those shiny bank vaults turn out to be full of cotton wads and shredded newspaper, and in a week or two ex-stockbrokers are beating each other with rocks over a can of beets. |
Egyptian women protest in Cairo against brutal treatment
By Glen Johnson in Cairo and Luke Harding
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Hundreds of women have taken to the streets of Cairo to protest against military rule and the brutal treatment of female protesters by Egypt's security services.
The women rallied outside a government office complex in Tahrir Square, the scene of violent clashes earlier on Tuesday in which at least four demonstrators were shot dead by military police.
Dozens of men joined the demonstration out of sympathy with the women. They acted as a protective cordon and chanted: "Egyptian women are a red line."
The protest came after soldiers made another violent attempt to evict demonstrators camped in the square, during the fifth day of bloody confrontation between the military and opponents of army rule.
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Sunni leaders warn of sectarian chaos in Iraq
By Martin Chulov in Ramadi and Reuters
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Two leading members of Iraq's largest and most powerful Sunni tribe have warned of imminent sectarian chaos in the wake of the US withdrawal, claiming that the government of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is promoting an anti-Sunni agenda.
The sheikhs, leaders of the highly influential Duleimi tribe, both insist that Sunnis have been increasingly marginalised over the past year to the point where they now have little input into affairs of state in post-US Iraq.
Their warnings come as Iraq's vice-president, Tariq al-Hashimi, defended himself over claims in an arrest warrant issued for him that he had used his guards to act as hit squads to target political rivals and had ordered a recent car bombing near the Iraqi parliament.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Congress invokes 'Schoolhouse Rock' in debate, but misquotes it
By William Douglas
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During Tuesday's heated debate over whether the House of Representatives and the Senate need to form a conference committee to resolve their differences over an extension of the Social Security payroll-tax cut, lawmakers didn't just quote the Constitution: They invoked "Schoolhouse Rock" and "I'm Just a Bill."
"Since the dawn of the republic, these are how differences are settled between the House and Senate," Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, said on the House floor. "If you don't remember your civics 101, maybe if you have small children like I do, you can go back and watch the 'Schoolhouse Rock' video. It's very clear."
Well, no.
The 1970s cartoon featuring a rolled-up bill singing about how he becomes a law doesn't specifically mention the conference committee process, although the song's author assumed Tuesday that he'd included the step when he penned the tune as part of ABC's "Schoolhouse Rock" educational series.
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The Federal Reserve proposes new banking rules
By Samantha Stainburn
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The Federal Reserve proposed new rules today designed to ensure that US banks can survive future financial crises without taxpayer-funded bailouts.
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The Fed said it would require that the net credit exposures between any two of the six largest financial firms to be limited to 10 percent of each company's regulatory capital, Reuters reported.
The rules also include triggers that would be activated if a bank were heading towards financial trouble, the New York Times reported. These include restrictions on growth and capital distributions and dividends, as well as limiting executive compensation, according to the Times.
One surprise in the proposed regulations is that smaller banks with $10 billion to $50 billion in assets will also be required to hold annual stress tests and establish risk committees, the Wall Street Journal reported. "That is a really bad idea," because it adds further burden to being a small bank, John Kanas, the chairman and chief executive of BankUnited Inc., which has about $10 billion in assets, told the Wall Street Journal. "Yet another little piece of our profitability will eke out the bottom of the door."
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Homeless US families find little to cheer at Christmas
By Ian Pannell & Ian Sherwood
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With the gap between rich and poor widening in the US, the world's richest nation is now struggling to employ, house, and feed its poorest, as the BBC finds in two of America's state capitals.
. . . Accurate figures are difficult to come by, but as many as 3.5 million Americans are thought to have had need of shelter at some point in the year. There has been a sharp rise in the number of people homeless for the first time, especially families with children.
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With tears in her eyes Victoria talks about the rented property they once called home. The family had to leave when they were unable to meet the monthly payments when Robert lost his job as a painter and decorator this autumn.
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"We had a home, we had a yard for the kids to play in. We had two dogs, two wonderful dogs that we don't have any more and I was able to cook. I used to make dinner every night and now I can't even cook for my family. That's hard.
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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:
"La Grange" is a song by the rock group ZZ Top from their album Tres Hombres, released in 1973. One of their most successful songs, it was released in 1973 and received extensive radio play, rising to #41 in the Billboard Pop Singles list in 1974. The song refers to a bordello on the outskirts of La Grange, Texas (later called the "Chicken Ranch"). This brothel is also the subject of the Broadway play and film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the latter starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds.
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The initial groove of the song is based on a traditional boogie blues rhythm used by John Lee Hooker in his "Boogie Chillen" and Slim Harpo's "Shake Your Hips." A failed suit by the copyright holder of Boogie Chillen resulted in the court ruling that the rhythm was in the public domain.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Unusual Marine Mammal Deaths on Four US Coasts
By Julia Whitty
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As of this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared three "unusual mortality events" (UME)—unexplained death clusters—for multiple species of marine mammals on four US coastlines: the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, the Bering Sea, and the Chukchi Sea.
Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, a UME declaration triggers a scientific investigation into the cause or causes of the die-off. At least two of these UMEs have potential implications for human health.
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Deep-sea "batteries" could power sensors
By David Pescovitz
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Researchers are hoping that "biological batteries" at the bottom of the oceans could power sensors to help scientists study the deepest blue. Microbes living in chimneys atop hydrothermal vents digest chemicals like hydrogen sulfide bubbling up from below the ocean floor. In the process, the microbes generate electrical current that runs through the chimneys. Recently, Harvard biologist Peter Girguis and his colleagues measured the current at an underwater chimney 2,200 meters down on a ridge off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Then they built an artificial system in their laboratory. From Science News:
“The amount of power produced by these microbes is rather modest,” said Harvard biologist and engineer Peter Girguis, who presented his research December 5 at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “But you could technically produce power in perpetuity...”
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Science and Health |
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Being Told Painting Is Fake Changes Brain's Response to Art
By (ScienceDaily)
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Being told that a work of art is authentic or fake alters the brain's response to the visual content of artwork, Oxford University academics have found.
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Professor Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University, said: 'Our findings support what art historians, critics and the general public have long believed -- that it is always better to think we are seeing the genuine article. Our study shows that the way we view art is not rational, that even when we cannot distinguish between two works, the knowledge that one was painted by a renowned artist makes us respond to it very differently. The fact that people travel to galleries around the world to see an original painting suggests that this conclusion is reasonable.'
When a participant was told that a work was genuine, it raised activity in the part of the brain that deals with rewarding events, such as tasting pleasant food or winning a gamble. Being told a work is not by the master triggered a complex set of responses in areas of the brain involved in planning new strategies. Participants reported that when viewing a supposed fake, they tried to work out why the experts regarded it not to be genuine.
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Social Media in Protests: Study Finds 'Recruiters' and 'Spreaders'
By (ScienceDaily)
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A study has explored the dynamics behind social network sites in recruiting and spreading calls for action that contribute to mass mobilisations in riots, revolutions and protests.
Led by Oxford University and published in the journal Scientific Reports, the study finds that the most influential group consists of a small group of users close to the centre of a network. This group, described by the researchers as the 'spreaders', plays a critical role in triggering chains of messages reaching huge numbers of people. However, early participants in the protest and those starting the recruitment process, have no characteristic position within the network: they are the leaders of the movement and first movers in their local networks. They spark the initial online activity that recruits the spreaders, but they are scattered all over the network, suggests the study.
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The time at which different users first got involved and started emitting messages allowed the researchers to distinguish between activists who were leading the protests and those who responded later on. They found that when calls to action came from many different sources within a short time window, their effects were amplified, resulting in 'recruitment bursts'. The vast majority of users were recruited this way responding to the collective behaviour of others, says the study.
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New Solar Cell Gives Its "110 Percent" in Efficiency
By Jason Mick
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Using quantum dots -- tiny nanometer scale semiconductor crystals -- researchers at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory have cracked an important physical barrier and achieved levels of performance long considered impossible for a solar cell.
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The overall design is in line with the "thin-film" methodology, which is currently rising in commercial production. Thin film cells tend to rely on scarce (i.e. expensive on a per mass basis) resources, such as rare earth metals. However, they use so little of them -- given the low mass of the thin film -- that they are not significantly more expensive than existing polycrystalline silicon cells. Generally, the only major extra cost to thin film is the initial cost of shifting the production technology.
The new NREL cell shatters the quantum efficiencies of previous designs, posting a peak external quantum efficiency of 114 ± 1% and a peak internal quantum efficiency of 130%.
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US hopes music and art can sooth traumatised soldiers
By Jane O'Brien
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The US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan etched scenes of violence and death into the memories of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Now, military researchers are exploring whether writing, art and music can sooth veterans seared by wartime trauma.
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The military has already embraced the arts as an important part of therapy and healing. The NICoE has a music room and art studio where one wall displays a series of face masks designed by patients trying to process the trauma of conflict.
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The NICoE research will help bolster the NEA's broader mission to establish the arts as a fundamental part of human development at every age. It could also help justify public funding at a time when Congress is looking at ways to cut budgets.
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Technology |
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Stealth Texting
By (TR Editors)
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Researchers at Microsoft created a touch screen that can be operated through fabric. The system, dubbed PocketTouch, was incorporated into a prototype mobile device that could be operated while still in a user's pocket. If a person's phone rang during a meeting, a rapid touch gesture could silence it or send a particular text message in response. The system worked through 23 different fabric types, even the thick fleece of a winter jacket.
Why it matters: Although touch screens have become the default mode of interaction for mobile devices, they have drawbacks compared with traditional buttons. A conventional touch screen rejects any signal it detects that is not strong enough to have come from direct contact, which is why it can be frustrating to try to use one while wearing gloves. The Microsoft work shows that improvements to touch-screen technology could replace the lost functions left behind with traditional buttons.
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Microsoft wins key patent decision against Motorola Android in US
By Charles Arthur
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Motorola Mobility - the company that Google is buying for $12.5bn - has infringed Microsoft's patents in making its Android handsets, according to a ruling by the US International Trade Commission.
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The verdict - which is an "initial determination", rather than a final verdict - follows a complaint filed in October 2010 y Microsoft in which Motorola was accused of infringing nine patents relating to the now-discontinued Windows Mobile and the current Windows Phone platforms. The four patents cover topics such as monitoring remaining memory, updating contact lists and synchronizing on- and off-line use.
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But for Google, which has been understood to be buying Motorola in order to bolster its patent portfolio, the vulnerability of its acquisition to Microsoft's patent portfolio may mean that it cannot protect other Android licencees from the need to pay licence fees to Microsoft to cover their liabilities under patent law. Microsoft is already receiving millions of dollars in payments from Samsung and HTC after settling patent litigation related to Android.
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The Empire Strikes Back: Apple Scores U.S. Ban on HTC's Low End Phones
By Jason Mick
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Remember how the Imperials stormed into the rebel base on Hoth, just as they were successfully clearing out? That's more or less how one of Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) biggest court victories played out. Much like Apple's short-lived Netherland's sales ban against Samung, its legal victory over Taiwan's Android-endowed HTC Corp. (TPE:2498) only temporarily hits the Asian smartphone maker's lower end products.
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Like many of Apple's technology patents, it came from the lucrative period between 1998 and 2004, where Apple pushed through increasingly ambiguous patent claims, which it would use over a decade later as a club to try to beat back its mobile competitors.
The patent seems to cover in various vagueries some sort of software framework that takes messages and then launches events -- a nebulous description that could cover everything this side of Windows 7 to Watson the supercomputer.
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Cultural |
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12 indicted in Amish hair-cutting assaults
By (UPI)
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A federal grand jury in Cleveland Tuesday indicted 12 Amish men and women in a series of religiously motivated hair-cutting assaults on other Amish.
The Justice Department said the seven-count indictment charges 10 men and two women, all from Ohio, with multiple counts stemming from five separate assaults that occurred from September through November. In each case, authorities allege, the defendants forcibly removed beard and scalp hair from the victims, with whom they had ongoing religious disputes.
In the Amish religion, men wear their beards and women wear their hair as symbols of their faith.
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Defeating the Point of Fact-Checking
By Adam Serwer
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Fact-checking, as a genre, probably shouldn't exist. It does largely because of one of the weirder conventions of mainstream journalism, which is to give equal weight to competing claims regardless of whether or not they actually deserve it. Determining the truth or falsity of a given claim is of a lower priority than actually meeting a deadline.
The purpose of fact-checking websites like PolitiFact, then, is to solve an invented problem by focusing on facts rather than "balance," since a commitment to the latter can be easily manipulated in the service of spreading falsehoods. For the past two years, PolitiFact chose as its "Lie of the Year" two Republican talking points. In 2009 the "Lie of the Year" was Sarah Palin's whopper that the Affordable Care Act contained "death panels" that would decide whether people lived or died based on "levels of productivity." The 2010 "Lie of the Year" was that the ACA constituted a government takeover of health care (it actually preserves the private insurance system).
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It seems rather clear that the point here was to avoid another avalanche of conservative criticism that would undermine PolitiFact's credibility as an unbiased source. In doing so, the group has proven that fact-checking organizations are themselves vulnerable to the very problem that spurred their existence in the first place: A media tradition of "objectivity" in which "fairness" to competing sides of an argument overwhelm journalists' commitment to reporting what is true, and what is not.
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Whites adopting blacks: Love not enough
By (UPI)
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Darron T. Smith of Wichita State University and Cardell Jacobson of Brigham Young University, who wrote the book "White Parents, Black Children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption," said black children growing up in mostly white communities encounter racial marginalization.
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"If white folks intend to raise black children, they must know that denying or downplaying racial slights or taunts, for example, only adds to the misery of their children," Smith said in a statement. "Because white Americans are least likely to understand racial discrimination they must have a real incentive to help their child learn to cope."
Smith said when white parents adopt minority children, they need to be aware of the extent to which race is part of the children's identity -- and one way is to surround themselves with a multitude of black friends and mentors, not just one or two tokens.
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Penguin droppings hit panda queue at Edinburgh Zoo
By (BBC)
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People queuing to see the panda enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo are being hit by penguin droppings as the curious birds have been watching proceedings.
Rockhopper penguins have been standing along the edge of their enclosure since the pandas arrived earlier this month.
The penguins are higher than the panda enclosure due to the site being on Corstorphine Hill.
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