Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, October 28, 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: Night Boat To Cairo by Madness
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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Ferguson Police Chief Expected to Step Down, Officials Say
By Evan Perez and Shimon Prokupecz
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The police chief in Ferguson, Missouri, is expected to step down as part of the effort by city officials to reform the Police Department, according to government officials familiar with the discussions ongoing between local, state and federal officials.
Under the proposed plan, after Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson leaves, city leadership would ask the St. Louis County police chief to take over management of Ferguson's police force.
The announcement could come as soon as next week. It would be one step in what local officials hope will help reduce tensions in the city as the public awaits a decision on whether the St. Louis County grand jury will bring charges against Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.
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Last month, weeks after the Justice Department announced it was investigating Ferguson police, Jackson told CNN he would not step down despite calls for his ouster.
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U.S. FTC sues AT&T over mobile data throttling
By Xeni Jardin
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The U.S. government today filed a lawsuit against AT&T, accusing the nation's second-largest wireless carrier of selling users unlimited data plans, then slowing down Internet speeds after they hit a certain data use threshold.
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According to the FTC’s complaint, consumers in AT&T focus groups strongly objected to the idea of a throttling program and felt “unlimited should mean unlimited.” AT&T documents also showed that the company received thousands of complaints about the slow data speeds under the throttling program. Some consumers quoted the definition of the word “unlimited,” while others called AT&T’s throttling program a “bait and switch.” Many consumers also complained about the effect the throttling program had on their ability to use GPS navigation, watch streaming videos, listen to streaming music and browse the web.
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AT&T called the allegations "baseless" and said the practice was needed to manage network resources.
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Can the world be fair to women?
By (Al Jazeera)
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It has been 120 years since the first country in the world, New Zealand, gave women the right to vote. But a report on gender equality by the World Economic Forum says it will take another 80 years before the global gender gap is closed.
. . . women currently have 60 percent of the standing men have worldwide, a figure that has improved by only four percentage points since 2006.
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Well as it stands, there is not a country in the world where women with similar qualifications are paid as much as men for doing the same job.
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In politics, it is better but not by much. On average, only 21.8 percent of national parliamentarians are women. And here is an interesting one: Between 1992 and 2011 fewer than 10 percent of peace negotiators were female.
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Who Should Pay To Fix The World's Salt-Damaged Soils?
By Alison Bruzek
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Rainfall and irrigation systems designed for lots of drainage usually keep salt from building up in the soil. But as climate patterns shift and more farmers irrigate without sufficient drainage, evaporated salt is crusting on top dirt clumps around the world — especially in places like Central Asia. Normally, soil has anywhere from zero to 175 milligrams of salt per liter. Once that level exceeds 3,500 milligrams per liter, it's next to impossible to grow anything, including major crops like corn, beans, rice, sugarcane and cotton.
That means "the farmers in salt-affected areas bear most of the cost of lost crop production," says Manzoor Qadir, lead scientist of the Water and Human Development Program at United Nations University and one of the authors of the paper, which appears in the UN Sustainable Development journal Natural Resources Forum. But the consequences accumulate all the way up the chain to other businesses that use those agricultural products.
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So who should pay for these things? The private sector, that's who, according to the authors of the paper.
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Specifically, they say, the pulp and paper, transportation, packaging, clothing and even the travel industry should be digging deeper into their pockets. Why? Because the pulp and paper industry or clothing are directly affected by cotton production while transportation and packaging businesses are missing millions of shipments from areas that are producing less because of salt damage, like the Indus Basin in Pakistan or the Aral Sea Basin in Central Asia.
The private sector, says Qadir, can afford to buy the technology and cover the labor costs that would help. That might be a desalination plant, soil additives like gypsum that help absorb salt or land levelers to maintain the soil surface. It could even be as simple as helping farmers plant salt-tolerant crops like licorice.
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International |
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Heroin use is so high in Myanmar that syringes now serve as currency
By Patrick Winn
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The country is one of Asia’s most dysfunctional and war-torn nations. Its currency is so debased that clerks offer tissues, cigarettes or candy in lieu of notes worth 5 or 10 cents. Many customers rightly prefer a few mints or smokes to worthless, stained, taped-up bills.
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Within the region, heroin is potent and cheap. A single dose can sell for as little as $1. Large swaths of Myanmar’s northern jungles are controlled by guerrilla armies, many of them now allied with the central government. These quasi-lawless hills churn out almost all of Asia’s heroin. Only Afghanistan produces more opium, heroin’s key ingredient.
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Addicts in this far-flung region often check in to jungle detox camps, run by evangelical Christians, where they are locked in cages during the throes of withdrawal. Without restraint, addicts will run off and score more heroin, said James Naw, an ex-addict turned rehab counselor in Kachin State. During withdrawal, he said, “The world is a blur. Even the breeze hurts. You’ll do anything for more.”
In recent years, Myanmar has been depicted as a success story — a totalitarian backwater struggling to become a freer society, with White House backing. But these bright hopes are disconnected from scenes in its untamed borderlands. There, insurgency has endured for decades, and guerrilla forces accuse the government of genocide by heroin.
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Afghanistan's new President starts landmark China visit
By (BBC)
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China is already involved in Afghanistan's mining sector but concerns about security could deter broader investment.
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President Ghani said his country viewed China "as a strategic partner, in the short term, medium term, long term and very long term".
In return, President Xi hailed his newly-arrived guest as an old friend of the Chinese people. He was prepared to work towards "a new era of co-operation", he added, and "to take development to a new depth."
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President Ghani faces tough economic challenges as he tries to reconstruct his country's battered infrastructure and reduce dependence on foreign aid and the illegal drugs trade.
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Migrants who risk everything to reach Europe
By Orla Guerin
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Of the 23 members of the Bakr family who set sail for Europe on a crowded traffickers' boat in early September, only one is known to have arrived. The body of 14-month-old Malak Raafat Bakr was found off the coast of Italy. The infant girl, whose name meant Angel, was buried in Italian soil.
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The key traffickers and brokers are shadowy figures known only by nicknames like Abu Hamada (also called the Doctor and the Captain), and the General.
Migrants pay at least $2,000 (£1,200) and sometimes up to $4,000 per person, depending on the condition of the boat.
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More than 3,000 have drowned in the Mediterranean this year, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
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But the focus will be on border control, not search and rescue. Aid agencies fear that more migrants will now die at sea.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Millennials could make a difference on climate, if they voted
By Liz Core
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Here’s how the age gap plays out in a recent survey from the University of Texas at Austin. The researchers polled 2,105 U.S. citizens about voting habits and influential issues. When it comes to the under-35 crowd, 68 percent said they’d be more likely to vote for candidates who support reducing carbon emissions, while only 50 percent of the 65-plus group would. Damn right, millennials! But here’s where the tables turn: 68 percent of younger respondents said that they would vote, compared to a whopping 87 percent of older respondents.
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It seems like there are some pretty damn good heads on young peoples’ shoulders when it comes to energy issues, so why aren’t more of us voting? Is it because P-Diddy is passé? Or because voting feels pointless? Or is it because the only person we really want to vote into any position is Jon Stewart and there’s only one of him to go around and he’s not running, so screw it?
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Firm Buys Big Bike-Share Service; Expansion And Higher Rates Seen
By Bill Chappell
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Alta Bicycle Share, the company that manages bike-sharing programs in New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, and other cities, has been sold to an investment group that includes executives in fitness club operator Equinox and real estate firm Related Companies. The new owners say they'll expand the service in New York, where customers now take more than 1 million trips a month on Citi Bike.
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"The rate for an annual program membership, also for unlimited 45 minute rides, will become $149. This change is necessary to provide world-class service for this hugely popular and well-used system, making it financially viable for the long-term. The price change will go into effect at a date to be announced shortly. Citi Bike is also exploring possible weekend, monthly and tourist membership."
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Alta has struggled both to expand its offerings and to cope with problems in its "supply chain, software system, and operations," as StreetsBlog reports. The Canadian company that has been a key bike-share supplier, the Public Bike System Co., filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, citing nearly $50 million in debt, as the Two-Way reported.
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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:
With a bass line borrowed from The Specials' 'Gangsters', 'Night Boat To Cairo' worked perfectly within the context of their debut album . . . Opening with a rasping baritone saxophone which cleverly approximated the sound of a ship's foghorn, it painted a comical picture of old black-and-white movies depicting colonial chaps marooned in foreign climes.
'Night Boat to Cairo' was also Madness' first recording with a string section; it's been suggested that the arranger misheard the request for a feel that was "Egyptian" as "gypsy", which might help explain the frantic fiddle playing in the background. . .
. . . "I always thought of that song as being an approximation of what the BBC thought that music from the Eastern world would be," he (ed: Suggs") later commented. "It sparked something in my mind - Morecambe And Wise, sand dancers, old light entertainment. That was what informed what we did - telly, movies, old jokes, football, stories."
. . . "The distinctive thing about them from day one was they were seven completely different, sharply drawn characters . . . If you were trying to invent a band for a cartoon or a TV show, you would have been hard-pressed to find seven more perfectly cast individuals. Quite by accident, it was this perfect collision of men and ideas which all appeared at the same time in Camden Town."
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Boston's Thinking of Building Canals Like Venice Because Climate Change
By Adam Clark Estes
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Obviously, a water-ringed city like Boston is threatened by rising sea level due to climate change. And obviously, the city is exploring all kinds of different ways to protect its beautiful brownstones, prestigious universities, and—most importantly—thriving economy. Among the many plans floating around is the one hatched a consortium of city planners and architects called the Urban Land Institute that's described above. It's a plan to turn many of Boston's streets and alleyways into canals.
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In Boston, the focus of the canal-building would be on the Back Bay, an elegant neighborhood that actually used to be a tidal bay. Experts say that the Back Bay's streets will be underwater by the end of the century anyways, so converting a bunch of them into canals could mitigate the rise in sea-level. The canals and the bridges that would join them together would also look a lot nice than a bunch of flooded 200-year-old houses.
This is all to say, Boston would end up looking a lot like Venice or Amsterdam. The big difference, according to Harvard Business School's John Macomber, is the fact that Boston's tidal change is about eight feet a day, while the classic canal cities' are much lower. "The canals would be either high part of the time or low part of the time. So we would have to decide whether they would be really deep or tidal," Macomber recently told the BBC.
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Science and Health |
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Penguin chick weights connected to local weather conditions
By (ScienceDaily)
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Adélie penguins are an indigenous species of the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), one of the most rapidly warming areas on Earth. Since 1950, the average annual temperature in the Antarctic Peninsula has increased 2 degrees Celsius on average, and 6 degrees Celsius during winter.
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Cimino explained that while penguins do build nests, they have no way of building nests that protect the chicks from the elements. This leaves penguin chicks unprotected and exposed while adult penguins are away from the nest. Precipitation, while not considered a key variable, can cause chick plumage to become damp or wet and is generally a major factor in egg and chick mortality and slow growth.
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"Climate change strikes at the weak point in the cycle or life history for each different species," Oliver said. "The Adélie penguin is incredibly adaptive to the marine environment, but climate ends up wreaking havoc on the terrestrial element of the species' history, an important lesson for thinking about how we, even other species, are connected to the environment."
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Body clock: 'Rush hour' transformation discovered
By James Gallagher
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The body's internal clock is known to drive huge changes - it alters alertness, mood, physical strength and even the risk of a heart attack in a daily rhythm.
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Heart disease is driven by artery-clogging cholesterol, which is mostly made in the liver at night. Taking statins in the evening makes them more effective.
The researchers said 56 of the top 100 selling drugs and nearly half of the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines acted on genes which were now known to have this daily oscillation.
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Dr Simon Archer, a body clock scientist from the University of Surrey, told the BBC: "If you move away from one tissue, we looked at gene expression just in the blood, and look at the whole organism then that precise temporal organisation applies to much more than people previously realised.
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Technology |
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Alert! Websites Will Soon Start Pushing App-Style Notifications
By Tom Simonite
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In 2015, most leading Web browsers will be set to support what are known as push notifications. Sites using the technology will be able to ask visitors if they wish to opt in to receive notifications. The site can then deliver them, even if that site is not open in the browser at the time. A news site might use Web notifications to alert users to a breaking story, for example. The technology should become available on both PCs and mobile devices.
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But sites offering Web notifications could soon become much more widespread. Google and Mozilla are working to add the technology to their Chrome and Firefox browsers, which would make the feature available to the majority of people browsing the Web from a PC.
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Varner predicts the technology will be particularly popular for mobile sites. Without notifications, he says, mobile Web pages are not so good for engaging users. “In theory the app store could lose a little bit of its hold on the market,” he says, observing that Web notifications could let Web pages offer a much richer experience. Another reason companies may adopt the technology is that it may prove easier to catch people’s attention in a channel that’s not already deluging people with messages, as e-mail and mobile app notifications do.
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Power storage group Alevo plan 1bn US battery plant
By Suzanne Goldenberg
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The project, a joint venture with state-owned China-ZK International Energy Investment Co, aims to ship its first GridBank, its patented battery array, to Guangdong Province this year, going into production on a commercial scale in mid-2015.
The container-sized arrays store 2MW and would be installed on-site at power plants.
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In a presentation to the Environmental Protection Agency, Alevo said installation of its energy storage system would reduce waste at a typical coal plant by up to 11%, saving electricity companies money, and cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 7%.
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“We don’t know how successful it will be, but it certainly seems to be a contender along with the hundreds of companies out there that are trying to address this problem right now.”
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Responding to Ebola: The Question of Quarantine
By Karyn L. Boyar
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Last weekend, New York and New Jersey officials had new policies in place. Health care workers and others coming from Guinea, Sierra Leone, or Libera who had had any contact with Ebola patients would be quarantined for 21 days. However, the CDC remains committed to reaffirming that the possible transmission from Ebola in the general population isextremely low and does not recommend quarantine for asymptomatic travelers or health professionals treating Ebola. However the CDC is also on record stating that the Ebola outbreak, the worse one on record, has killed at least 4,877 people and perhaps as many as 15,000, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. There is no way of knowing who, among those who have been exposed to Ebola, will comply with CDC recommendations to report Ebola symptoms in a timely manner.
It is not enough to have our president hug one Ebola survivor in the Oval Office and the mayor of New York City ride the subway demonstrating how safe we are, and expect the country to breathe a collective sigh of relief. The federal government needs to act now by recommending a nationwide policy on how states should handle Ebola. The issue is complicated – the need for practitioners to take care of Ebola victims is high, and mandatory quarantines could diminish an already small volunteer pool.
Yesterday, in an effort to balance civil liberties and safety, the CDC announced new recommendations: health care practitioners and other people who had been in contact with Ebola patients should submit to an in-person checkup and a follow up phone call from a local public health office. This response seems lukewarm. A stronger nationwide policy needs to be developed, given the high mortality of the Ebola virus. People need to know that the United States can manage Ebola and protect its citizens safely and with dignity. It seems reasonable to impose a 21-day mandatory quarantine at home for health care workers returning from West Africa.
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'Terror' wi-fi signal leaves LA-London flight grounded
By Zoe Kleinman
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A wi-fi signal named "Al-Quida Free Terror Nettwork" (sic) has resulted in a long delay for passengers on a plane at Los Angeles airport.
A passenger alerted American Airlines cabin crew when his smartphone identified the network as one available nearby and police were notified.
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"Some people use it as advertising. It's an unwritten code of spreading a message that you're allowed to do - but obviously sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's not."
In a discussion about favourite wi-fi names on community site Reddit, users admitted to using titles like "FBI Surveillance Van", "ISIS HQ" and names that sounded like computer viruses to alarm passers-by.
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Cultural |
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Viewpoint: How the consumer dream went wrong
By Jon Alexander
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"On January 24th, Apple will release the Macintosh, and you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984'".
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In the 90 seconds that this ad took to play out, in the first commercial break of the 1984 Superbowl, the voice of Apple declared that the Consumer had come of age, and was now the dominant force in society. All would bow before them - or rather us - and provide us with whatever we wanted, or suffer the consequences. And that this would release us from the tyranny of oppression. Taken in the context of the Cold War in which America and the West now finally had the upper hand, it is hard to overstate the ideological significance of this moment.
. . . think what happens in our real, day-to-day lives. We cue this moral idea of the Consumer somewhere between 1500 and 5000 times a day, depending on whose statistics you trust. Every time you see an advertisement, every time you hear national success measured in Consumer Confidence, every time you read an article that talks about consumers. And it's inevitable that - unconsciously - we start to internalise this idea. We start to believe that, yes, we are Consumers, and yes, the right thing for us to do is to get the best deal for ourselves, measured primarily in material living standards of living, judged by us as narrowly defined individuals, in the short term.
. . . electing our representatives as Consumers, they represent us accordingly, and our national politicians attend the international stage with the same logic - seeking to get the best deal for the individual nation, measured primarily in material living standards of living, judged by narrowly defined individuals, in the short term. When we bring this idea of the Consumer to bear on big, collective challenges, we are doomed to fail before we have even started. This is not a logic with which we stand any chance of solving climate change or global poverty.
. . . Self-interest, competition and the desire for status are of course part of human nature. But they're not the whole of human nature. Collaboration, affiliation, and empathy seem to be just as important to the miracle of evolution.
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The video that shows what street harassment is like
By (#BBC Trending)
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A woman walks along the streets of New York City, minding her own business. Men call out at her: "What's up beautiful?", "Nice!", "Hey baby!". When she ignores them, she is admonished ("Smile!", "You should say thank you more"). At one point a man walks alongside her in silence for over five minutes, despite her obvious discomfort. In total she encounters over 100 comments in 10 hours - not including many more non-verbal signals like winks and whistles.
For many women this experience may sound unremarkable, if depressing. But on this occasion Shoshana B Roberts, 24, was filmed by a hidden camera. A two-minute video, titled 10 Hours of Walking In NYC as a Woman, attracted hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube within hours. It was produced for Hollaback!, which campaigns against street harassment. "This is a typical day in my life," says Roberts. "People need to be aware that this is going on."
The aim of the video is twofold, says Emily May, founder and executive director of Hollaback!. It's intended to show victims of harassment that they aren't alone, and to demonstrate to those who have never experienced such treatment how intimidating it can be. Rob Bliss, who shot the hidden camera footage, said that as a man he was "really surprised" by the sheer volume of approaches Roberts received. He says many men like him simply don't realise how common this kind of behaviour is and the impact it can have. "I don't have an expectation of changing anyone's behaviour, but I wanted a guy to see what it's like from a neutral, third-person perspective what it's like to experience street harassment," he says.
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Kazakhstan: Court fines agency over 'kissing poster'
By (BBC)
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An advertising agency has been handed a large fine for a poster of revered Kazakh bard Kurmangazy locked in a passionate kiss with Alexander Pushkin, Russia's national poet.
Havas Worldwide Kazakhstan says it can't pay the 34 million tenge ($186,000; £115,000) fine, and plans to appeal. The agency's general director says the ruling is "nonsense". "Not one of the 34 plaintiffs appeared in court. The whole hearing was marred by procedural violations," Dariya Khamitzhanova tells the Kapital.kz news portal. Havas has also been ordered to issue an apology in the national media, Tengrinews agency reports.
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Homosexual acts between consenting adults are legal in Kazakhstan, and Almaty is unusually liberal by Central Asian standards, but the country has seen a hardening of attitudes of late. Some government MPs have called for a ban on the "promotion of homosexuality", along the lines of a recent Russian law, or even the outlawing of homosexual acts altogether.
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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. |