Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, rfall, and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw. The guest editors are Doctor RJ and annetteboardman.
Special thanks to JekyllnHyde for the new OND banner.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
BBC
The governor of the US state of Missouri has activated the state's National Guard in anticipation of a grand jury decision over the killing of an unarmed black teenager.
In a statement, Mr Nixon said the guard will "support law enforcement's efforts to maintain peace".
ABC News
A grand jury's decision in Ferguson, Missouri, may open or end the latest chapter in the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. The residents of Ferguson and much of the country are waiting to see if the grand jury will hand down an indictment of the cop who shot Brown -- something that may be announced at any time.
Weighing the Evidence in the Shooting Death of Michael Brown
New Ferguson Videos Show Darren Wilson After Fatally Shooting Michael Brown
Here's a timeline of what has happened since Brown's death.
Newsweek
Members of the self-styled tech-revolution group Anonymous have apparently seized control of several Twitter accounts and websites belonging to members of the Ku Klux Klan in retaliation for threats made against protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.
The group of so-called hacktivists has successfully targeted websites belonging to such organizations as the Church of Scientology, the government of Zimbabwe and corporate sites belonging to Visa, MasterCard and PayPal in the past.
The hackjob, given the hashtag #OpKKK by the group, began Sunday on as the first part of a two-part “op,” as Anonymous calls its hacking activities. The second part, called #HoodsOff, involves the “doxing” of KKK members in and around St. Louis.
New York Times
FERGUSON, Mo. — Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency on Monday, allowing him to activate the Missouri National Guard in preparation for a grand jury decision on whether to indict a white police officer for shooting to death an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, three months ago.
The declaration was certain to add to mounting tension here as people awaited the grand jury’s decision, which officials have said is expected in mid- to late November. Many here have said they expect the grand jury to decide against indicting the Ferguson officer, Darren Wilson, and they anticipate a show of anger and protest afterward. Some protesters said that calling up the Guard before a grand jury decision was a premature, antagonistic move that presumes that demonstrations will be violent.
Daily Beast
On MSNBC Wednesday night, Traditionalist American Knights Imperial Wizard Frank Ancona told host Chris Hayes that his group has received hundreds of phone calls from people concerned about “random attacks on whites, D.C. sniper-style shootings,” and threats against police officers' families. The fliers, Ancona explained, are meant to educate people on what rights they legally have to use lethal force in self-defense. He claimed people already “feel much better” about their safety now that the Klan is on the case.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ancona gushed to The Riverfront Times about the positive impact the Ferguson fracas is having on his group’s membership numbers.
“These Ferguson protesters are the best recruiters since Obama,” Ancona told the St. Louis weekly. “Normally we might hear from 10 people a week in Missouri, and now we’re hearing from more like 50 people a week. Sometimes, depending on these news stories, we get 100, 200 calls in a day.”
TPM
A supporter of Ferguson, Mo. police officer Darren Wilson recently launched a fundraising campaign to put up a billboard in the town that would read "#PantsUPDontLOOT."
The supporter, who lists himself as living in Brentwood, Tenn., launched the campaign on Oct. 28 on the website IndieGoGo. As Gawker noted on Monday, it had already reached its funding goal.
Wilson is the police officer who in August fatally shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson.
The phrase "Pants Up, Don't Loot" was popularized by the conservative National Review as a response to the chant commonly recited by supporters of Brown: "Hands Up, Don't Shoot."
The Guardian
I never had Ebola. I never had symptoms of Ebola. I tested negative for Ebola the first night I stayed in New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s private prison in Newark. I am now past the incubation period – meaning that I will not develop symptoms of Ebola.
I never had Ebola, so please stop calling me “the Ebola Nurse” – now!
This is what did happen: I was quarantined against my will by overzealous politicians after I volunteered to go and treat people affected by Ebola in west Africa. My liberty, my interests and consequently my civil rights were ignored because some ambitious governors saw an opportunity to use an age-old political tactic: fear. Christie and my governor in Maine, Paul LePage, decided to disregard medical science and the constitution in hopes of advancing their careers. They bet that, by multiplying the existing fear and misinformation about Ebola – a disease most Americans know little about – they could ultimately manipulate everyone and proclaim themselves the protectors of the people by “protecting” the public from a disease that hasn’t killed a single American. Politicians who tell lies such as “she is obviously ill” and mistreat citizens by telling them to “sit down and shut up” will hopefully never make it to the White House.
Here’s my good news: the unconstitutionality of forcing asymptomatic healthcare workers into in-home quarantine was determined by due process of law, and a courageous and insightful judge agreed with science and public health law. You cannot – in Maine, at least – quarantine me in the off chance that I might one day become ill with a contagious disease.
The Guardian
A Native American tribe in South Dakota has called a congressional vote to approve the Keystone XL pipeline an “act of war” and vowed to close the reservation’s borders if the US government tries to install a pipeline there.
The prospective route for the pipeline, which would connect Canadian tar sands fields to the Gulf coast, runs through the 922,759-acre (1,442 sq mi) Rosebud Sioux reservation in south-central South Dakota. The House of Representatives voted 252-161 on Friday to approve the pipeline.
“I pledge my life to stop these people from harming our children and our grandchildren and our way of life and our culture and our religion here,” the tribe president, Cyril Scott, said on Monday. He represents one of nine tribal governments in the state.
Scott said he will close the reservation’s borders if the government goes through with the deal, which is scheduled to come up for a Senate vote on Tuesday.
Environmentalists believe the pipeline would increase US reliance on fossil fuels and that the transport of tar sands oil across the United States could have serious environmental consequences. Campaigners for the pipeline argue that it would create more jobs and lower energy costs.
The Guardian
The radio journalist who questioned Bill Cosby about rape allegations that have recently resurfaced, only to be met by excruciating on-air silences, has defended his reporting and denied that he “ambushed” the comedy legend.
Scott Simon, the NPR host who quizzed the 77-year-old about the long-standing allegations in an interview broadcast on Weekend Edition on Saturday, has given his justification for the probing in a Twitter stream. He said there was no chance of Cosby being ambushed by the questions, which were appended at the end of a recorded conversation about the star’s loan of his private art for an exhibition in Washington DC, as the interviewee was accompanied by his “famous Hollywood PR man”.
“Once charges publicized, we could not duck asking. We even felt he might welcome the chance to say, ‘It’s not true’,” he said.
The Guardian
One in 30 American children are homeless, according to a new state-by-state report that finds racial disparities, increasing poverty and domestic violence responsible for the historic high.
According to the report released on Monday by the National Center on Family Homelessness, child homelessness increased in 31 states and the District of Columbia. Nearly 2.5 million children experienced homelessness in the US in 2013, an 8% rise nationally from 2012.
California and states in the south and south-west ranked particularly poorly in an analysis of homelessness, state responses and associated factors. According to the report, California has more than 500,000 homeless children, a high cost of living and only 11,316 housing units for homeless families; only Alabama and Mississippi, with chronically bad poverty rates, ranked worse.
“Child homelessness has reached epidemic proportions in America,” Dr Carmela DeCandia, director of the center, said in a release with the report. “Living in shelters, neighbors’ basements, cars, campgrounds and worse – homeless children are the most invisible and neglected individuals in our society.”
Reuters
The State Department's unclassified email systems were the victim of a cyberattack in recent weeks, around the same time as White House systems were breached, a senior U.S. official said on Monday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no classified systems were compromised. Portions of State's unclassified systems have been shut down to improve security but should be back online shortly.
"The department recently detected activity of concern in portions of its unclassified email system," said the senior U.S. official.
"The department is implementing improvements to the security of its main unclassified network during a scheduled outage of some Internet-linked systems," the official added.
The maintenance has affected unclassified email traffic and employee access to public websites from the unclassified system, the official said, adding the systems should be back up soon.
Reuters
U.S. military forces conducted 11 air strikes against Islamic militants in Syria and 20 in Iraq since Friday, Central Command said on Monday.
Nine of the Syria strikes were near the Turkish border city of Kobani and destroyed seven Islamic State positions and four staging areas and struck one unit, the command said in a statement. Two near Dayr Az Zawr hit an Islamic State crude oil collection facility and destroyed a tank, it said
NPR
Editor's Note: This story on Abdul-Rahman Kassig, formerly known as Peter, was published last month after the Islamic State publicly threatened to kill him. It is being republished in the wake of his death.
I met Abdul-Rahman Kassig in Beirut in the summer of 2012, when the young American was still known as Peter. Yet the Arabic name he would soon choose for himself certainly seemed fitting — Abdul-Rahman alludes to the mercy of God, and Peter wanted so much to ease the suffering he saw in Syria.
Kassig first volunteered in the poor Palestinian camps of Lebanon, which are now also hosting thousands of Syrian refugees who have fled their homeland since war erupted there in 2011. He was deeply moved by what he saw, and he decided to delve further.
A trained emergency medical technician, he began volunteering at a hospital in Lebanon's neglected northern city of Tripoli, and he shared every part of life with his Syrian colleagues, living with them and sharing meals. He called it a "very emotional, life-changing experience."
Kassig took his work home with him. His house was always open to Syrian friends he met along the way. Kassig took them in like brothers, whether employing them in his aid group or just giving them a bed to sleep on.
NPR
NPR continues a series of conversations from The Race Card Project, where thousands of people have submitted their thoughts on race and cultural identity in six words.
Marc Quarles is African-American, with a German wife and two biracial children — a son, 15, and daughter, 13. The family lives in Pacific Grove, a predominantly white, affluent area on California's Monterey Peninsula.
Every summer, Quarles' wife and children go to Germany to visit family. Consequently, Quarles spends the summers alone. And without his family around, he says, he's treated very differently.
Most of the time, "I've noticed my white counterparts almost avoid me. They seem afraid," Quarles tells NPR Special Correspondent Michele Norris. "They don't know what to think of me because I'm in their neighborhood. I oftentimes wonder if they think I'm a thug."
"The same does not happen when I have the security blanket and shield of my children," Quarles says. "When my children are with me, I'm just a dad. I love being a dad."
Al Jazeera America
It was 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 9 when Casie McGee and Sarah Adkins learned that the West Virginia government would begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. They stopped at home to change into dress shirts and were happily surprised to find that the wedding rings they ordered on Amazon, in anticipation of such a day, had just arrived.
By 4, marriage license in hand, they were on the steps of the courthouse building in their city of Huntington. Adkins’ best friend, a student at Marshall University who is a licensed reverend, rushed over from campus to marry the couple. The scene, says McGee, was “a mess of news cameras and excitement.”
For McGee and Adkins, plaintiffs in the legal challenge to the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, the day was the culmination of a long fight to wed. But for gay rights groups, it was only the latest step toward equal rights for LGBT people. After the Supreme Court declined last month to hear a series of cases on gay marriage, West Virginia became one of a dozen states (along with Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming) that allow gay people to marry but at the same time fail to provide them with explicit protections against job and housing bias. Such discrimination isn’t simply theoretical: Six months into their relationship, McGee fell ill and Adkins, who worked at a bakery, took time off to care for her. Adkins’ boss questioned the nature of their relationship, then, for the first time, began writing her up whenever she missed work. Adkins says she quit to go back to college before she could be fired.
Al Jazeera America
Politicians in the capital squabble and jockey for influence. Their quarrels breed distrust and open warfare, jeopardize alliances and preclude united action. The main players have the power to shape the world around them, but they lack perspective, ignoring the perils threatening the future of their society.
It’s a familiar story — as anyone on Capitol Hill knows — but it’s never been more compellingly told than by George R. R. Martin in “A Song of Ice and Fire,” his as-yet-unfinished series of novels that has been turned into the wildly popular television show “Game of Thrones.”
Martin told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview that there's an implicit link between his fictional Westeros and our contemporary politics. “We have things going on in our world right now like climate change that’s ultimately a threat to the entire world,” he said. “But people are using it as a political football … You’d think everybody would get together. This is something that can wipe out possibly the human race.”
The failure of politicians to put aside their ambitions to confront a greater danger provides an underlying narrative for Martin’s books. While they take place in a universe of dragons, giants and ice zombies, the novels contain a real life warning: The self-interested rivalries that consume so many politicians endanger everyone.
Al Jazeera America
nterstate Crosscheck is a computerized system meant to identify fraudulent voters. While Crosscheck’s list of nearly 7 million names of “potential” double voters has yet to unearth, as of this writing, a single illegal vote this year, it did help Republican elections officials scrub voters from registries, enough, it appears, to have swung several important Senate and governor’s races in favor of the GOP.
There is good reason to believe that Crosscheck-related voter purges helped propel Republican candidates to slim victories in Senate races in Colorado and North Carolina, as well a tight gubernatorial race in Kansas.
snip
he Crosscheck list purges could easily account for Republican victories in at least two Senate races. In North Carolina, the GOP’s Thom Tillis won over incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan by just 48,511 votes. Crosscheck tagged a breathtaking 589,393 North Carolinians as possible illegal double voters (though state elections officials cut that down to roughly 190,000).
In Colorado, Republican Cory Gardner was able to force out incumbent Senator Mark Udall in a race that had poll-watchers guessing all summer. The outcome might have been more predictable if Colorado had made public that 300,842 of the state’s voters were now subject to being purged from the voter rolls.
The Rocky Mountain State’s elections officials have a history of cleansing voter rolls without public explanation. Before the 2008 election, Colorado’s GOP Sec. of State Donetta Davidson began an unprecedented scrub of the electoral rolls, disenfranchising nearly one in six voters.
DW
The EU will blacklist more Ukrainian separatists but not issue new sanctions against Russia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made a number of specific references to the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
EU foreign ministers on Monday agreed to freeze the assets of and ban travel for some Ukrainian separatists. However, for now Russia has escaped further economic sanctions.
The EU foreign affairs coordinator said engagement with Russia and reforms in Ukraine should supplement the penalties already in place.
"Sanctions in themselves are not an objective," Federica Mogherini (right in photo) said on Monday.
The European Union has fallen short of a united stance on Ukraine, initially targeting individuals after Russia's annexation of Crimea in March, and then broadening penalties to target the country's overall economy after the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July, allegedly by separatists.
DW
The second annual Global Slavery Index (GSI) has shown that 35.8 million people are subject to modern day slavery - some 20 percent more worldwide than initially thought. The highest total of slaves was in India.
The results of a survey published on Monday by anti-slavery campaign group Walk Free estimates that some 35.8 million people are currently trapped in modern day slavery.
In its second annual report, the 2014 Global Slavery Index (GSI) said that due to new methods, some 20 percent more people are enslaved around the world that previously thought.
"There is an assumption that slavery is an issue from a bygone era. Or that it only exists in countries ravaged by war and poverty," said Andrew Forrest, chairman of the Australian-based Walk Free Foundation.
Spiegel Online
Berlin has begun to see Moscow as an adversary rather than as a potential partner. The German government is concerned about efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to increase his influence in the Balkans. Stopping him, however, could prove difficult.
It is a fundamental principle of German foreign policy that talks are the best way to solve diplomatic problems. Such was the rationale behind Gernot Erler's recent trip to Moscow to speak with Russian parliamentarians about the ongoing Ukraine-related difficulties. Erler is the German government's Russia liaison and he has spent much of his political career working towards better relations between Germany and Russia. But his recent trip to the Russia capital was a painful one. There was no one in parliament who was willing to speak with him.
NPR
The Church of England moved toward ordaining its first female bishops Monday, as its governing body voted to enable women to become bishops. The move comes two decades after the church first ordained women as priests, in 1994.
"Today we can begin to embrace a new way of being the church and moving forward together," Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said after the vote. "We will also continue to seek the flourishing in the church of those who disagree."
The new policy comes several years after the Church of England first voted to approve the idea of ordaining women as bishops. Earlier attempts to make the change were largely undone by disagreements over how it should be enacted.
In the end, the historic change was executed fairly simply; for instance, one portion of the Anglican Church canon a section was amended to begin with a new paragraph: "A man or a woman may be consecrated to the office of bishop."
Announcing the new policy, the church also noted that it currently has openings for bishops in four dioceses, and for assistant bishops at five.
BBC
High-resolution pictures have now been released of the Philae probe in the act of landing on Comet 67P last Wednesday.
They were acquired by the Narrow Angle Camera on the Rosetta satellite, which had dropped the little robot towards the surface of the "ice mountain".
The images are presented as a mosaic covering the half-hour or so around the "first touchdown" - the probe then bounced to a stop about 1km away.
Philae lost battery power on Saturday and is no longer talking with Earth.
Scientists still have not located the craft's current resting spot.
But European Space Agency controllers have not given up hope of hearing from the plucky robot again - if it can somehow get enough light on to its solar panels to recharge its systems.
Getting a precise fix on its location, to then photograph its present predicament would provide a better idea of whether this is likely to happen.
BBC
Russia has expelled a number of Polish diplomats in an apparent tit-for-tat move after a Russian envoy was sent home from Warsaw.
Four diplomats were given 48 hours to leave on Friday, Polish TV reports.
Russia has also become embroiled in a spying row with Germany, throwing out one of its envoys in response to a similar decision in Berlin.
Russia's relations with Nato and EU member states have worsened sharply because of its conduct in Ukraine.
After Russia annexed Crimea, it was also accused of fomenting unrest in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. Russia denies claims that it has sent heavy weaponry and regular servicemen to the east.
Poland, a former eastern bloc state, joined Nato in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
Polish officials said initially that a Russian diplomat had been expelled for contact with a Polish army colonel who was arrested last month on suspicion of spying. They said the diplomat had been working for Russia's GRU military intelligence.
Al Jazeera America
Protests over the disappearance of 43 missing students raged across Mexico and the United States over the weekend. Activists blamed a government they say has ties to organized crime and called for people in Mexico and the U.S. to support a Mexico-wide strike on Thursday.
Coinciding with the Nov. 20 strike, protest marches will be held in Mexico City, as well as dozens of cities across the U.S. including New York City and Los Angeles.
“We want to warn that these acts of protest will not be silenced while the civil and human rights of our Mexican brothers continue to be violated and trampled on by a government that has colluded with organized crime and to those who blamed the crimes committed by the state on [cartels] — thereby evading their own responsibility in the state sponsored genocide that has been committed with total impunity,” #YoSoy123NY, the New York chapter of a Mexican social movement that opposes Mexico’s current government, said in a statement handed out at a protest in New York City on Sunday.
“Alive they were taken. Alive we want them back,” protesters said as they marched in Union Square.
Al Jazeera America
Scores of Palestinian protesters burned tires in East Jerusalem overnight after a Palestinian bus driver was found hanged in his vehicle on Sunday.
An Israeli forensics team said Monday that Yusuf Hasan al-Ramuni’s death was a suicide and that there was no evidence of foul play, but Palestinian authorities and Ramuni's colleagues and relatives said they suspected murder.
A supervisor had found Ramuni’s body at a bus depot on Sunday in the East Jerusalem industrial zone of Har Hotzvim, police said in a statement.
Ramuni, 32, was identified by family members who said he was from Al-Tur on the Mount of Olives in occupied East Jerusalem.
His relatives ruled out that the father of two could have committed suicide.
"My brother had children and was a happy man. It is impossible that he killed himself," said Osama al-Ramuni, the victim's brother.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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The Guardian
A surgeon from Sierra Leone who was being treated for Ebola at a Nebraska hospital died on Monday, according to the hospital.
Dr Martin Salia, a permanent US resident, is the second patient to die of Ebola in the US. He arrived in Omaha on Saturday, having left Freetown on Friday by air ambulance. He was immediately transported to Nebraska medical center, where he began treatment in the hospital’s biocontainment unit.
Doctors and nurses cared for the ailing surgeon around the clock, the hospital said. At around 4am on Monday Salia’s heart stopped and medical staff were not able to revive him.
“It is with an extremely heavy heart that we share this news,” Dr Phil Smith, medical director of the Biocontainment Unit at Nebraska medical center, said in a statement. “Dr Salia was extremely critical when he arrived here, and unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to save him.”
Experts believe early detection and treatment is critical to surviving the disease which has killed nearly 5,200 people, primarily in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Reuters Allergan Inc (AGN.N) on Monday accepted a $66 billion takeover bid from Actavis Plc (ACT.N), closing the door on a hostile offer from activist investor William Ackman and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc (VRX.TO).
The cash-and-stock deal values Allergan at $219 per share and is $6 billion more than the price Valeant had last offered to pay. Valeant said in a statement that it could not justify paying such a high price for Allergan, which makes the Botox wrinkle treatment.
The deal came after Allergan spent six months maneuvering against a takeover by Ackman and Valeant, including in a legal battle. Allergan Chief Executive Officer David Pyott had said shareholders would be hurt because Valeant's cost-cutting, particularly in research and development, would stop its growth, and he questioned Valeant's accounting.
NPR
The wheels of drug research grind slowly, but they can grind exceedingly fine.
Merck said Monday that its cholesterol drug Vytorin was vindicated by a nine-year-long clinical study that aimed to find out if adding a drug that blocked the absorption of cholesterol to a statin, long the gold standard for cholesterol care, would help patients at a high risk of heart attack and stroke.
Previous research had raised doubts about Vytorin's effectiveness. In a bit of a surprise, the study, known by the acronym IMPROVE-IT, showed that the drug worked. Still, the effects were modest.
Researchers found that when people took Vytorin (a combination of the statin simvastatin and ezetimibe, the cholesterol blocker) for seven years, their risk of heart attack and stroke was about 2 percentage points lower than patients taking only simvastatin.
NPR
It's a hot summer day outside Lincoln, Neb., and Jack Chappelle is knee-deep in trash. He's wading in to rotting vegetables, half-eaten burgers and tater tots. Lots of tater tots.
"You can get a lot of tater tots out of schools," Chappelle says. "It doesn't matter if it's elementary, middle school or high school. Tater tots. Bar none."
Chappelle is a solid waste consultant with Engineering Solutions & Design in Kansas City, Kan. Local governments hire his crew to literally sort through their garbage and find out what it's made of. On this day, he's trudging through Lincoln's Bluff Road Landfill.
"In the country you get more peelings," Chappelle explained. "You get more vegetables."
A lot of the waste he finds is food — from homes, restaurants, stores and schools.
"When you're in the city, you get a lot more fast-food containers with half-eaten food in them," Chappelle says. "A lot more pizza boxes."
Food is the largest single source of waste in the U.S. More food ends up in landfills than plastic or paper.
Artist Dan Roosegaarde pays tribute to Vincent Van Gogh's painting Starry Night by creating this bike path in Van Gogh's hometown of Eindhoven.
NPR
In the Dutch town of Eindhoven, artist Daan Roosegaarde has paid homage to its most famous resident, Vincent Van Gogh, by creating a glowing bike path that relies on solar-powered LED lights and interprets his classic painting Starry Night.
Roosegaarde says he wants his work, illuminated by thousands of twinkling blue and green lights, to speak to everyone.
NPR
Lots of things can trigger an asthma attack, but one of the most common causes is odor — anything from the heavy scent of perfume to a household cleaner.
Sondra Justice is a 60-year-old retired postal worker from Philadelphia, and for her, lots of odors are dangerous: aerosol cans, certain charcoals and cleaners, "even mixing bleach in water irritates my throat," she says. If Justice smells any of these things, it can bring on an asthma attack. Her airways constrict, and breathing becomes shallow and difficult. "I'll get a hacking cough, my throat will feel like it's closing up, I'll break out in hives — it's awful when it happens," she says.
So life for Justice is a constant worry. She's always on the lookout for any smell that could provoke her asthma.
C/NET
When Astro Teller, head of Google's secretive Google X research lab, addressed a Vanity Fair gathering of the technorati in San Francisco last month, he said convincing people to wear a smart device on their face or any part of their body is a "tough" sell.
How tough? Companies need to make devices useful enough to compel you to attach them to your body, he said at the time.
But there's another catch: Wearables, from Glass to smartwatches, also need to be cheaper -- a lot cheaper -- before they go mainstream.
"Every time you drop the price by a factor of 2, you roughly get a 10 times pick up of the number of people who will seriously consider buying it," Teller said in an interview at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. That means "two more rounds of halving in price" for most wearables before they're an attractive buy.
For certain products, like $30 or $40 pedometers, a big price cut probably won't make much of a difference, he said. "But for a $200 watch, or Glass, or anything in between, I think it's sort of fair."
C/NET
For most of us, Facebook at work means scrolling through the pictures of your mate's birthday party and getting in a couple of rounds of Farmville when you're meant to be working on the Henderson presentation. But the world's biggest social network reportedly wants to make things more professional, taking on LinkedIn with Facebook at Work.
According to the Financial Times, Facebook is developing a new site that features a similar newsfeed and groups to the current friends and family-based social network, but enables you to collaborate with colleagues and keep in touch with professional contacts. Your personal Facebook feed -- including potentially embarrassing photos, drunken posts and other personal stuff -- would be kept separate.