Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, September 02, 2014.
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: Lift Every Voice and Sing by Kim Weston
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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Why a Tennessee town has the fastest internet
By (BBC)
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The south-eastern Tennessee town of Chattanooga has some of the fastest internet connection speeds in the world, thanks to a fibre-optic network installed by the government-owned electric company, EPB.
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Chattanooga's success is a testament to the power of government infrastructure investment, writes Daily Kos blogger Steven D.
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Companies like Cox and Comcast are trying to prevent public utilities like EPB from competing directly with private internet providers, he says.
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Currently 20 states have laws placing limits on municipal broadband networks, according to Ars Technica, including strict prohibitions in Texas and Nevada.
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"I have said before that I believe the FCC has the power - and I intend to exercise that power - to pre-empt state laws that ban competition from community broadband," FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in May.
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The cynical money person’s guide to our renewable energy future
By Heather Smith
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Divestment makes unusual waves because it encourages moving money around for reasons of both morality and enlightened self-interest. It also raises a question: If investors are going to divest from the $5 trillion in energy stocks that they currently hold, what should they be investing in instead?
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The main focus of the report is the way that batteries and solar, when joined together like Voltron, have the power to reshape our utility markets — or, as Grist’s Amelia Urry put it, “make today’s power plants as extinct as the dinosaurs.” This is something that people have been talking about for a while now (and it’s the reason Tesla Motors is starting to seem like more than just a maker of fancy hippie hot rods).
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The drawback to all of this is that as people start pulling less electricity off the grid, it could mean lower revenues for utilities (and definitely for the companies that supply fuel to those utilities). Utilities are moving to protect their bottom lines by jacking up the basic flat fee that they charge to connect to the electrical grid and by lobbying for legislation that would make solar more difficult to install.
It’s hard to say how the solar blocking will go. Last year in Washington, fossil fuel interests spent about thirty times as much on political contributions as alternative energy. When it comes to rooftop solar, the rules around zoning and building codes are so complicated that just navigating them can add thousands of dollars to the cost of system. Yet there seems to be as much effort to streamline rules around solar in some places as there is to put up roadblocks in others.
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Is this the future? After I wrote an article about the bidding war over Tesla’s gigafactory, a friend sent me an email about how the fuss over the electric car, in particular, looked like its own bubble — a bid to extend the viability of the private automobile, when the young folks seem to be losing interest in them, entirely, in favor of such retro marvels as that driverless car that is also known as “the bus” or the post-electric green car that we like to call “the bicycle.”
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Corruption 'impoverishes and kills millions'
By (BBC)
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A report by the US-based anti-poverty organisation One says much of the progress made over the past two decades in tackling extreme poverty has been put at risk by corruption and crime.
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If action were taken to end secrecy that allows corruption to thrive - and if the recovered revenues were invested in health - the group calculates that many deaths could be prevented in low-income countries.
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One is urging G-20 leaders meeting in Australia in November to take various measures to tackle the problem including making information public about who owns companies and trusts to prevent them being used to launder money and conceal the identity of criminals.
It is advocating the introduction of mandatory reporting laws for the oil, gas and mining sectors so that countries' natural resources "are not effectively stolen from the people living above them".
It is recommending action against tax evaders "so that developing countries have the information they need to collect the taxes they are due" and more open government so that people can hold authorities accountable for the delivery of essential services.
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Ebola crisis: 'world is losing the battle'
By (Al Jazeera)
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Joanne Liu, of Doctors Without Borders, said on Tuesday that authorities were "losing the battle", and that the world had ignored the gravity of the epidemic.
"Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it. Leaders are failing to come to grips with this transnational threat," she said.
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Liu called for a global biological disaster response, including funding for more field hospitals, trained civilian or military medical personnel and mobile laboratories in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
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At least 1,550 people have been killed by the disease in the three countries, including more than 120 health workers. Nigeria and Senegal have also reported deaths.
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International |
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Data retention: Telstra reports jump in access requests by government
By Paul Farrell
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Government requests to Telstra for warrantless access to Australians’ phone, internet and email logs jumped by 3,000 in the past six months, the company’s latest transparency report reveals.
The report comes as the federal government pushes for a mandatory data retention scheme to force telecommunications companies to retain personal data from phone and web users.
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Under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 local, state and federal government agencies can request personal data from telecommunications companies without a warrant. The content cannot be disclosed but records of who, when or where a person communicated with another can be requested.
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Israel Claims 988 Acres Of West Bank Land
By Emily Harris
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It is a dispute over land in the West Bank. Over the weekend, Israel declared nearly 1,000 acres of the West Bank to be Israeli state land. This clears the way for more Jewish settlement in an area Palestinians say should be part of their future state. U.S., U.N. and Palestinian officials all criticized Israel's decision.
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There are already many settlements in this area, and settlement supporters argue it's a natural place for Israel to continue to build. They also argue it is politically important to build. This is in the area where three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed in June. Local settlement leaders say, building more Jewish homes is the appropriate Zionist response to such violent acts.
But one Palestinian political leader, Hanan Ashrawi, said, the announcement represents Israel's, quote, "deliberate intent to wipe out any Palestinian presence on the land." She also cited nearly 1,500 new settlement units approved elsewhere in the West Bank since mid-June, done, she said, under the cover of the confrontation with Hamas.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Inflation Is Still the Great Bogeyman of the Rich
By Kevin Drum
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In a post yesterday, Krugman refers to my suggestion that it's mostly a case of septaphobia, or fear of the 70s. The idea here is that inflation really did run out of control in the 70s, and it really did take a massive recession engineered by Paul Volcker to rein it in. If that was one of your seminal experiences of the consequences of loose money, then it's no surprise that you fear inflation. But Steve Randy Waldman says this is "bass-ackwards":
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Quite right. Because the high inflation of the 70s really was painful for the middle class, the 70s do indeed serve a very useful purpose to elites who want to keep fear of inflation alive. But that begs the question: Why do they want to keep fear of inflation alive? The fact that elites have hated inflation forever isn't an answer. During the days of the gold standard, high inflation really did hurt the wealthy. But today's economy is vastly different from the hard-money + financial repression economy of the 70s and before. Inflation is much less threatening to the rich than it used to be. Why haven't they figured this out?
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So yes: It's septaphobia, both in a real sense and as a useful morality tale. It's false consciousness from wealthy elites who don't really believe that inflation will spur the economy. And it's the innate conservatism of the rich, who don't have much incentive to accept change when they're already doing pretty well. Add to that the fact that inflation phobia is an easy sell to voters because the middle class really does have reason to fear inflation, and you have everything you need to make it nearly impossible to convince people that a bit of higher inflation would be a good thing right now. And so we stagnate.
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Meet the Risky Mortgage Pioneer Trying to Pay His Buddy's Way Into Congress
By Molly Redden
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Before running for Congress, Innis served as dean of the University of New Hampshire's business school, which was renamed for Paul after he donated $25 million. His campaign website touts major building projects he oversaw as dean—projects financed by Paul's contribution. And Innis' congressional run is getting a big-time boost from a brand new super-PAC founded and financed by Paul.
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But Paul's support is somewhat controversial. Paul made his millions as a mortgage wholesaler—a middleman who sells mortgages to homeowners and then sells the homeowner's application for a loan to the bank or lender that will underwrite the loan. Mortgage wholesalers don't set the terms of a loan—but they aren't obligated to get a homeowner the best rate. Wholesalers, many argue, helped fuel the housing bubble because they work on commission and face incentives to push as many mortgages as possible. Paul in particular spearheaded the use of Alt-A loans—a marginally less risky cousin of subprime loans, which require sparse documentation to obtain. These loans helped inflate the real estate market in 2004 and 2005. And Paul is credited with helping spread easy credit to Americans by pioneering new ways to package mortgage debt for investors. When he closed his company, Paul Financial, at the height of the housing crisis, his firm held $3.1 billion in total loan applications.
Armed with these facts, Democrats have tied Paul to the financial crash in 2008. "Paul helped push us to the financial edge," fumed Arnie Arnesen, a liberal talk radio host in New Hampshire.
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Paul is party of the new breed of political donors that have risen up in the wake of Citizens United v. FEC who are dropping money bombs into individual races rather than spreading their wealth around. In 2013, John Jordan, a roguish California vintner, spent $1.4 million on Gabriel Gomez's failed bid for the Senate in a Massachusetts special election. This year, an Oklahoma mother spent more than $225,000 supporting her 27-year-old son's failed campaign for Congress. In her bid for Senate, Oregon GOP candidate Monica Wehby has received the support of a super-PAC primarily funded by two people: a Las Vegas sex hypnotherapist and her ex-boyfriend.
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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:
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Weston, 71, one of the less visible stars at Motown during its heyday, told the audience about her triumphs in the music business despite being overshadowed by other divas such as Diana Ross, Mary Wells, and Martha Reeves.
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Weston recorded singles such as "Helpless" and 1963's "Love Me All the Way." Her top solo record was 1965's "Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)."
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"It was a time when DJs played the records they liked and got paid for it," Weston said.
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Weston said one of the highlights of her career came in 1970, when she recorded a cover of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," also known as the Black National Anthem.
But it wasn't for Motown.
"Motown never got into political issues," she said. Berry Gordy Jr., the founder of Motown, "didn't want to get into that."
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Filtering, Not Chemicals, May Best Detoxify Fracking Fluids
By Elisabeth Bowley and ChemistryWorld
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Estimates suggest that in the next 50 years, over one trillion gallons of water will be used in shale gas extraction but research from scientists in the US suggests that environmentally detrimental compounds are being created when this fluid is recycled.
Shale gas is found in rock formations kilometers underground. Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, facilitates the release of this energy dense fuel in a cost-effective and timely manner. Water, sand and a combination of other additives are pumped into the ground at high pressure, breaking the shale formations apart, allowing the gas to migrate to the surface where it can be collected.
Some of the chemical additives and the vast quantities of water used for fracking have raised environmental concerns. The high dissolved salt and organic content of reclaimed fracking fluid, which includes hydrocarbons, greases and biological matter, means it is unsuitable for immediate reuse. And there’s a risk it would be toxic to aquatic organisms so it cannot be released into rivers or groundwater. So if we can’t reuse the fluid, and we can’t dispose of the fluid, we have to treat the fluid.
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Currently, treatment methods use halogen containing oxidants to remove bacteria from the water. However, these oxidants also react with naturally occurring hydrocarbons, forming environmentally detrimental chlorocarbons and organobromides. Therefore, treating the water chemically may not be the best solution.
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Propane made with renewable process for the first time
By Adam Vaughan
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Propane, which makes up the bulk component of liquefied natural gas (LPG), has previously only ever been produced from fossil fuels.
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The new work only produced tiny quantities of propane, but is a proof of concept that it could be produced without the need for its two usual sources of production – petrol refining and natural gas processing. “It’s not something that’s going to be used by industry today, but it is important and significant,” said Jones, who added he would need to scale up the production by three magnitudes to attract investors.
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“At the moment algae can be used to make biodiesel, but it is not commercially viable as harvesting and processing requires a lot of energy and money. So we chose propane because it can be separated from the natural process with minimal energy and it will be compatible with the existing infrastructure for easy use.”
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Who, what, why: Does limiting the power of appliances save energy?
By (BBC)
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It started with vacuum cleaners. Then there were howls of outrage when it emerged the European Commission has set up a working group to look at whether other common household appliances - kettles, toasters, bread makers and hairdryers among them - should also be regulated.
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Take hairdryers. You could use a 1,000-watt hairdryer for a minute or a 500-watt one for two minutes and it would in theory use the same energy. But, says Henry Lau, outreach officer at the Institute of Physics, it's not that simple. You have to look at how efficient hairdryers actually are. "Part of the power is being used to power a heating element, you'll get some energy wasted heating other parts of the hairdryer, not just the air." Design matters - is it better to have faster-blown air, or hotter air?
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There's no simple relationship between motor power and energy use, says Prof Will Stewart, fellow at the Institute of Engineering and Technology. And a big motor used at low power will use about the same energy as a smaller engine doing the same job. But the EU is right to expect better efficiency. He estimates it should take about 2,000 watts of power applied for less than a minute to dry wet hair. Yet most hairdryers take far longer with similar or more powerful motors. The hope must be that manufacturers will do more with less power. But he wonders if regulation is necessary. "The hairdryer is a very small potato in terms of energy use."
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Science and Health |
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Quality of US diet improves, gap widens for quality between rich and poor
By (ScienceDaily)
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The quality of the U.S. diet showed some modest improvement in the last decade in large measure because of a reduction in the consumption of unhealthy trans fats, but the gap in overall diet quality widened between the rich and the poor.
An unhealthy diet is closely linked to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and some cancers. Eating a healthy diet is an important part of the strategy to prevent adverse health outcomes. Evaluating population trends in diet quality is important because it can offer guidance for public health policy.
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"Our study suggests that the overall dietary quality of the U.S. population steadily improved from 1999 through 2010. This improvement reflected favorable changes in both consumers' food choices and food processing, especially the reduction of trans fat intake, that were likely motivated by both public policy and nutrition education. However, overall dietary quality remains poor, indicating room for improvement and presenting challenges for both public health researchers and policy makers. Furthermore, substantial differences in dietary quality were seen across levels of SES, and the gap between those with the highest and lowest levels increased over time," researchers noted.
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In a related commentary, Takehiro Sugiyama, M.D., Ph.D., of the National Center for Global Health and Medicine, Tokyo, and Martin F. Shapiro, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of California, Los Angeles, write: "The growing chasm in dietary quality by SES confronts us with the possibility that the governmental efforts to mind this gap have been insufficient. It is disappointing that the improvement seen in those of higher SES was not seen in the lower-SES group."
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Any diet will do, say researchers, if you stick to it
By James Gallagher
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The range of diets covered included, Atkins, South Beach, Zone, Biggest Loser, Jenny Craig Nutrisystem, Volumetrics, Weight Watchers, Ornish and Rosemary Conley.
It showed that after 12 months, people on low carbohydrate and low fat diets both lost an average of 7.3kg (16lb). Those on low carb meal plans had lost slightly more at the six-month marker.
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Prof Susan Jebb, from the University of Oxford and a government advisor on obesity, said diets were more similar than they appeared, advocating cutting calories to 1,500 a day, sticking to strict meal times and avoiding biscuits, cakes and chocolate.
"The issue is about adherence and it's how closely and how long can you keep sticking to the plan over time that matters.
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Technology |
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A "Private Photo" Mode For Your Phone Is a Great Idea
By Brian Barrett
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Apple, Google and the other big tech companies should acknowledge that millions of their customers regularly use their products to engage in sensitive, intimate activities. These companies can and should offer a "private photo" option for sensitive photos that prevents them from being uploaded to the cloud.
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In fact, what's most brilliant about Private Photo is that we're already conditioned to use it. Any time you pursue the slightest bit of deviance in your browser, you head immediately to Incognito Mode, or Private Browsing, or whatever cone of silence Internet Explorer offers. What does that do, on a technical level? Who cares!, the horny masses cry out, it lets me watch porn without getting caught. Just swap in "create" for "watch" and maybe "an intimate personal portrait" for "porn," and you've got Private Photo mode. Something that keeps your photos on your phone for as long as you want them there.
No, it's not a complete solution. People will still choose to put their sexytime photos in the cloud for whatever reason, or will forget to go Private. Photos you send to other people directly from your phone are just as vulnerable as the ones you keep in the cloud; sometimes even more so. But we clearly need a better solution than the one we've got. Two-factor verification is wonderful, but any security measure is only as good as your ability to convince people to use it. And as a first line of defense, I'll take something as simple as Private Photo over jumping through authentication hoops any day. Or, as the case might be, slightly drunken night.
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Nigeria's Using a Biometric ID Card That Doubles As a Debit Card
By Alissa Walker
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The National eID card, which was officially launched over the weekend by president Goodluck Jonathan, is in many ways the equivalent of an American drivers' license, with name, age, and fingerprints collected as part of the application process. (Nigeria is also doing an iris scan, which some states do.) The cards will serve as the primary identity verification system for government services and international travel for everyone over 16.
But unlike our drivers' licenses, Nigeria's card can also be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted as a method of payment. This is perhaps the most progressive part of the program and would provide the most social impact: Only about 30 percent of the country's citizens currently have bank accounts. This card would instantly allow the other 70 percent of Nigeria's population to save and spend money in the same way as that small group.
Of course, MasterCard knows this and that's why they're involved: They're hoping to get some new customers out of the deal. It's not unlike a similar partnership that Google has entered into with Kenya's government that gathers personal information as part of an electronic public transport system (which will eventually allow users to charge other goods on their cards as well).
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Gamers take a stand against misogyny after death threats
By Kevin Rawlinson
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The letter, which was written by games developer Andreas Zecher of independent games studio Spaces of Play, encouraged people who witnessed threats of violence on sites such as Twitch, Facebook and Twitter - as well as others - to report them.
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On 25 August, Sarkeesian, who runs the Feminist Frequency website, released the latest episode in her series on the portrayal of women in video games.
In it, she addressed the tendency towards "largely insignificant non-playable female characters whose sexuality or victimhood is exploited as a way to infuse edgy, gritty or racy flavoring into game worlds".
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Earlier this year, Sarkeesian won the Game Developers Choice ambassador award. The accolade is given to a person deemed to have "helped the game industry advance to a better place, either through facilitating a better game community from within, or by reaching outside the industry to be an advocate for video games and help further our art".
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Cultural |
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Andy Hall: Thailand trial for UK labour activist
By (BBC)
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Defamation is a criminal offence in Thailand and Mr Hall could be jailed for a year if found guilty.
But Mr Hall is also facing charges under the computer crime act, which can result in seven years in jail. On top of that the company is seeking $10m (£6m) in a civil suit.
The report he helped to write, for the group Finnwatch, said Natural Fruit Company, the country's largest producer of pineapples, mistreated its workers - a claim the company denies.
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But Natural Fruit's owner, Wirat Piyapornpaiboon, told the AFP news agency: "The report caused damage to me and my company. Any accusations were not true... If true, why are there so many workers who want to work at my factory?"
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The US state department this year demoted Thailand on a list measuring how well a country combats human trafficking. It is currently in a tier for countries which are not making significant efforts to comply with US standards.
Thailand relies significantly on migrant workers from neighbouring Myanmar and Cambodia, but reports say that some do not have legal papers and many work long hours for lower pay than Thai workers.
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Hamas popularity 'surges after Gaza war'
By (Al Jazeera)
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Hamas's support has surged after its war with Israel and would win Palestinian elections if they were held today, an opinion poll suggests.
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More than half of respondents said armed resistance - a pillar of Hamas's ideology - would help gain a Palestinian state, as opposed to 20 percent who said they supported non-violent means.
And 79 percent of respondents said they believed that Hamas won the Gaza war, three percent backed Israel and 17 percent said both sides were losers.
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Hamas has fought three wars against Israel while Fatah has pursued on-off talks, mediated by the United States, which have so far failed to secure an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
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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. |