Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, March 03, 2015.
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: Sunrise Sunset by We Are Trees
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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Behind Supreme Court’s Obamacare Case, A Secretive Society’s Hidden Hand
By Nina Martin
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. . . few reports have highlighted the role of the Federalist Society, the conservative law group whose ideas are at the intellectual heart of the King v. Burwell challenge. That’s not surprising, given that the group’s members have played a mostly behind-the-scenes part in King — and in many of the most significant conservative legal victories of the last 30 years.
. . .
Q. What is the Federalist Society? What did it grow out of?
A. The Federalist Society was founded in 1982 by a small group of conservative and libertarian law students at Yale and the University of Chicago. Many of the founders had worked on the Reagan presidential campaign, and when they arrived in their elite law schools, they noticed a profound mismatch between the ideas that were achieving political ascendancy — about limited government and free markets and states’ rights — and a liberal orthodoxy that was embedded in almost all major legal institutions of the time.
Flash forward 30 years: The Federalist Society has matured into a self-professed “society of ideas” that claims 40,000 to 60,000 members. These include every Republican-appointed attorney general and solicitor general since the 1980s, dozens of federal judges, and four sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices: Antonin Scalia, who was one of the organization’s original mentors at the University of Chicago; Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and John Roberts.
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Q. What kind of ideas?
A. The organization’s statement of principles provides a useful frame. The first part says: We believe the state exists to preserve freedom. Two key areas where this principle has played out are the Second Amendment — there has been a radical reframing of the right to bear arms as a right on par with speech and religious freedom — and campaign finance, culminating in Citizens United and the idea that corporations and individuals both have free speech rights.
A second Federalist principle holds that the separation of governmental powers is central to the Constitution. There’s been a very, very concerted effort to narrow the federal power over interstate commerce, to restrict the ability of Congress to regulate, and to dramatically expand states’ rights.
The third principle is the idea that it is the role of the judicial branch to say what the law is and not what it ought to be. That is the key issue in King v. Burwell.
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Canadian government pushing First Nations to give up land rights for oil and gas profits
By Martin Lukacs
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The Harper government is trying to win support for its pipelines and resource agenda by pushing First Nations to sideline their aboriginal rights in exchange for business opportunities, documents reveal.
The news that Canada’s Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs is working to this end by collaborating with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is sparking strong criticism from grassroots Indigenous people.
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The documents cite $600 billion of investment that the Harper government hopes will flow in the next decade into mining, forestry, gas and oil projects. As of March 2013, 94 of 105 projects under federal review were “located on reserve, within an historic treaty area, or in a settled or unsettled claims area”.
. . .
Also referenced is a report by envoy Douglas Eyford, whose appointment by Harper in late 2013 was seen as strategic shift to increasingly woo First Nations in the path of planned pipelines in British Columbia with an economic stake in resource plans. Eyford warned that the federal government’s failure to build good relationships with First Nations had set back the chances for their energy projects.
. . .
The documents say that the group may propose that Canada’s largest corporate lobby, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, be “engaged to champion a new approach including through formal statements at First Minister’s Meetings or major political events.”
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Lifespan of consumer electronics is getting shorter, study finds
By Susanna Ala-Kurikka
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. . . the share of large household appliances that had to be replaced within the first five years of use grew from 7% of total replacements in 2004 to 13% in 2013. This . . . was largely due to an increase in the proportion of recently purchased appliances replaced following a defect, which may point to an obsolescence problem.
However consumer preference is also playing a role. A third of all replacement purchases for products such as refrigerators and washing machines were motivated by a desire for a better unit while the old one was still functioning.
Consumers are also increasingly keen to swap their flat screen televisions for better versions with larger screens and better picture quality, even though more than 60% of replaced televisions were still functioning in 2012.
Policymakers are increasingly concerned about inefficient use of resources in resource-poor Europe, and about the environmental impact of this. The EU is looking to regulate product resource efficiency by including new standards such as durability and repairability in requirements under the Ecodesign Directive, a law that is currently focused on energy efficiency for the most part.
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International |
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How a Pyrenees pipeline could weaken Putin’s grip on European energy
By Paul Ames
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. . .
Leaders of Spain, France and Portugal are expected to strike an accord in the Spanish capital on Wednesday to build new pipelines and power cables, ending bottlenecks that have cut off the Iberian Peninsula from core European energy markets.
Those new connections could slash Europe’s reliance on Russian energy imports — by carrying electricity generated at Spain and Portugal’s extensive wind farms and solar plants to the rest of Europe, as well as pumping gas from eight liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals installed in Iberian seaports.
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Despite ongoing attempts to diversify sources, the EU stills gets about 30 percent of its natural gas from Russia. Around half of that comes via Ukraine. Some EU members like Bulgaria, Finland and Latvia get all their gas from Russia.
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Iraqi forces ramp up offensive to recapture Tikrit
By (Al Jazeera)
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Iraqi forces have continued their offensive to retake the city of Tikrit, seized by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) last June, with troops claiming "gains" in the fighting, security forces told Al Jazeera.
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"Sources on the ground tell us General Qassem Soleimani is actually on the ground directing the fight along with the Iraq military and Iranian-backed militias.
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"The army, federal police, Popular Mobilisation [volunteer] units, and the sons of Salahuddin's tribes are performing the duties of liberation in the largest operation against Daesh since June," said a senior army officer on the ground, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL.
. . .
Military sources said warplanes were involved, but the Pentagon said they excluded those of the US-led coalition fighting ISIL.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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The Koch Brothers Just Launched a Lobbying Campaign to Eliminate an Obscure Government Agency. Here's Why.
By Daniel Schulman
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Koch Industries has officially entered the contentious fight over the fate of the Export-Import Bank, the independent government agency that guarantees loans and provides financing to companies doing business overseas and foreign businesses buying American products—and that has recently become a target for conservatives and libertarians who decry big-government crony capitalism.
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It's not surprising that Koch Industries would part with the business community on this issue and side with the tea party and libertarian wings of the GOP that ardently desire the extinction of the Ex-Im Bank. Charles Koch, whose funding and strategic planning during the 1960s and 1970s helped expand the libertarian movement, has long opposed government interference in the marketplace. He has especially denounced subsidies (though his company will make use of them to remain competitive), bailouts, and corporate handouts. He believes that accepting government perks causes companies to subjugate themselves to government regulation, and he worries that free-market advocates in the corporate world appear hypocritical when they oppose the social safety net for people but seek government benefits for their firms. "How discrediting it is for us to request welfare for ourselves while attacking welfare for the poor," Koch wrote in a 1978 call to arms to the business community. "Our critics rightfully claim that we want socialism only for the rich." In the same article, he called the GOP "the party of 'business' in the wors[t] sense."
Despite his best efforts, Koch's crusade against "corporate welfare" didn't catch on several decades ago. But as the Koch brothers have slowly gained influence within the Republican Party—ultimately establishing what amounts to a shadow party of their own within the GOP—there's evidence that Charles Koch's libertarian philosophy is taking root, and there's no better example of that than the Ex-Im Bank fight. A constellation of groups backed by the brothers, including Americans for Prosperity, have been organizing to eradicate the Ex-Im Bank for months. "I would not say it's coordinated—not at all," Ellender says when asked how closely Koch Industries has been working with the advocacy groups and think tanks leading the Ex-Im Bank fight. He says Koch's effort to shutter the outfit is "part of a macro strategy to eliminate subsidies, mandates, and government-created market distortions where they exist."
Why did the Kochs and their allies single out an agency most Americans have never heard of? "Ex-Im represents both a policy and political target because it's doable," Diane Katz, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which has been at the forefront of the anti-Ex-Im campaign, told Bloomberg. "We're not trying to take down the Federal Reserve here. We're starting with an agency that is ripe."
. . .
The Ex-Im Bank has emerged as a conservative litmus test for the GOP's crop of would-be presidential contenders. At a conference organized by the conservative Club for Growth late last month, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush urged the bank be eliminated. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have also called for its charter to expire.
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Ferguson Official Stated President Obama Wouldn't Last Long "Because What Black Man Holds a Steady Job for Four Years”
By Jaeah Lee
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New details have emerged about the Justice Department's forthcoming report finding patterns of racial discrimination among officials and police officers in Ferguson, Missouri. Among the findings is an email saying that Barack Obama wouldn't last long as president because he's black and data showing that for years, traffic stops, use of force, petty crime charges, and affronts by police canines disproportionately targeted the city's black residents.
Here are more findings as reported by the Associated Press's Eric Tucker and PBS NewsHour:
Ferguson's black drivers were more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to be stopped and searched, according to records over two years. Black drivers were also 26 percent less likely to be found in possession of contraband.
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The Justice Department found that the court uses petty crime charges to pad the city's budget. As of December 2014, 16,000 out of Ferguson's 21,000 residents have outstanding warrants for minor violations, including traffic tickets.
A 2008 message in a municipal email account stated that President Barack Obama would not be president for very long because "what black man holds a steady job for four years."
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Obama says Netanyahu's Iran speech contains 'nothing new'
By (BBC)
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US President Barack Obama has reacted scathingly to a speech by the Israeli prime minister that castigated his policy towards Iran.
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"The alternative that the prime minister offers is 'no deal', in which case Iran will immediately begin once again pursuing its nuclear programme, accelerate its nuclear programme without us having any insight into what they are doing and without constraint," he said.
He said sanctions alone were not sufficient without offering Iran an alternative path.
Other Democrats criticised the speech, with Representative John Yarmuth calling it "straight out of the Dick Cheney playbook - fearmongering at its worst".
Meanwhile, Iran's foreign ministry said Mr Netanyahu's words were "boring and repetitive", Fars news agency 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:
AIMR: Who are We Are Trees and how did they come about?
JN: We Are Trees is just my solo project I started when I was a kid because no one wanted to be in a band with me. It started like any other teenage singer-songwriter acoustic project did. I just listened to a lot of Bright Eyes and I thought I had the whole thing figured out.
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AIMR: Your songs are very emotional ephemeral and perhaps soul baring. Is the anonymity of being presented as a band rather than a solo artist allow you to retain more of yourself rather than being presented to the world as look at me I'm JAMES NEE!!!!!?
JN: The whole thing is very similar to the plot of "Captain Planet"...I think. Sure I compose and direct all the music (and technically that is a solo project), but I'm nothing without the people who back me up and vice versa.
. . .
AIMR: What is the music scene like in Virginia Beach?
JN: It's pretty horrible. The city is pretty much a beacon for tourists. So the government saves no money for art funding unless you're a really bad cover band (then the city will give you hundreds to play really bad cover songs for beach goers). Bands have no where to play, record stores are all shut down, and most people wouldn't even know music existed if not for horrible radio However, Virginia Beach is part of an area called Hampton Roads. And in the past decade or so, Hampton Roads has left a mark in the Hip-Hop world with artists like: Clipse, The Neptunes, N.E.R.D, Pharrell Williams, Timbaland, Missy Elliott Because of them, a slight rise of rappers appeared. Unfortunately, all they're doing is damaging this good reputation this area had. My friends make really good music though. So there's still hope.
. . .
AIMR: Were you parents supportive of you choosing to be a musician or did you shatter their dreams of Dr. Nee?
JN: I've always been the black sheep in my family. My older brother always set these high expectations for my parents to compare me to, and I hate him for that. We don't get along. Currently, I think my parents have accepted what I want to do in life, and I'm thankful for that.
. . .
AIMR: There's a lovely symmetry moving from Boyfriend to Girlfriend does this Yin and Yang approach to naming the EP's signal a major change in direction for your songwriting?
JN: I hate to say this, but I wrote Girlfriend because I fell under peer pressure to make more music. haha. And that's the worst reason to make music. However, the process grew on me. I stopped writing music to please other people, and I started writing music to fill some kind of a gap. Completing this "cycle" for me, means I can end this chapter of my life and musically move on with my life. It is different, and some people won't like it. I'm fine with that though. Girlfriend isn't intended to be better or worse than Boyfriend. Like a real relationship, it's two separate things that each have their own strengths and weaknesses, but once you put them together it makes sense. It's hard to explain. I hope once you listen to it, it'll explain itself.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Mitch McConnell, hemp hero
By Nathanael Johnson
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For years, the politics of hemp farming have been ridiculous and stupid. It’s ridiculous that the government has classified marijuana as a schedule one drug, lumping it in with heroin, when it’s clearly safer than alcohol. And it’s ridiculous that the government then lumps in industrial hemp (which won’t get you high) with pot, classifying it as schedule one, too. Finally, it’s ridiculous that we’re letting these prejudices stop farmers from planting a useful crop.
Apparently McConnell agrees. He was instrumental in making it legal for Kentucky farmers to begin experimenting with hemp. This year, he has cosponsored a bill that would remove hemp from the list of schedule one drugs. And it’s not like he’s working quietly behind the scenes — the man can’t stop talking about hemp.
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McConnell summoned Michele Leonhart, the head of the DEA, to his Senate offices in Washington. The DEA, it appeared, was trying to find an interpretation of McConnell’s farm bill language that would render the hemp pilot projects unworkable. Leonhart told McConnell that her agency had not yet completed a policy review to determine the “intent” of the hemp provision.
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Climate change is messing with leaves, and leaves are messing back
By Suzanne Jacobs
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. . . a new study published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that vegetation patterns around the world are shifting thanks to climate change. Between 1981 and 2012, the timing of leaf emergence (“leaf-on”) and death (“leaf-off) apparently “changed severely” on 54 percent of the planet’s land surface. That means leaf life-cycles around the world are changing — which could, in turn, mean more changes to the global climate.
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Higgins and his colleagues point out that previous studies analyzing the effects of climate change on global vegetation have focused on net plant productivity, rather than life-cycle changes. And while net productivity is a useful measure of carbon sequestration capabilities, it “masks important details of the nature of change.”
That’s why, using satellite images, the researchers decided to take a look at those more subtle changes. Overall, the changes were widespread but inconsistent. Some places saw longer growing seasons with earlier “leaf-on” times, others saw later “leaf-off” dates. Parts of northeastern Argentina experienced earlier growing seasons and longer wet seasons. Savannas in some parts of the world behaved differently than savannas in other parts of the world. You get the idea. Overall, 95 percent of land surface experienced some change.
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Kenya burns tonnes of ivory confiscated from poachers
By (Al Jazeera)
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In a move to discourage poaching and trade in ivory, Kenya's president set fire to 15 tonnes of elephant tusks at a World Wildlife Day event.
Twenty-five years since ivory trade was banned, new demand from emerging markets threatens Africa's elephants and rhinos, President Uhuru Kenyatta said at Tuesday's ceremony at the Nairobi National Park in the capital city.
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China on Thursday imposed a one-year ban on ivory imports amid criticism that its citizens' huge appetite for ivory threatens the existence of Africa's elephants.
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Officials partially attributed the decline to stiffer penalties adopted last year for those involved in the illegal wildlife business.
"We would like to tell the world to stop the trade in ivory because it is destroying our economy, our heritage, our environment," said Paul Udoto, a spokesman for the Kenya Wildlife Service.
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Science and Health |
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Why People "Fly from Facts"
By Troy Campbell and Justin Friesen
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As public debate rages about issues like immunization, Obamacare, and same-sex marriage, many people try to use science to bolster their arguments. And since it’s becoming easier to test and establish facts—whether in physics, psychology, or policy—many have wondered why bias and polarization have not been defeated. When people are confronted with facts, such as the well-established safety of immunization, why do these facts seem to have so little effect?
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Together these findings show, at least in some cases, when testable facts are less a part of the discussion, people dig deeper into the beliefs they wish to have— such as viewing a politician in a certain way or believing God is constantly there to provide support. These results bear similarities to the many studies that find when facts are fuzzier people tend to exaggerate desired beliefs.
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With the disease of bias, then, societal immunity is better achieved when we encourage people to accept ambiguity, engage in critical thinking, and reject strict ideology. This society is something the new common core education system and at times The Daily Show are at least in theory attempting to help create. We will never eradicate bias—not from others, not from ourselves, and not from society. But we can become a people more free of ideology and less free of facts.
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Found: A Legendary Lost Civilization Buried In the Honduran Rainforest
By Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan
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The City of the Monkey God. La Ciudad Blanca, or The White City. All the names given to the lost city rumored to exist in a pristine Honduran rainforest sound mythical, but National Geographic reports that now we have evidence that the legendary city was real.
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In 1928, on his flight over Central America, Charles Lindbergh spied an expansive stretch of white ruins—"an amazing ancient metropolis." Several years later, an anthropolist named W.D. Strong claimed that he'd found ancient artifacts scattered about the Honduran river basins and that during his six-month expedition, he had heard "many stories of stranfe archaeological ruins." Not long after, S.J. Glassmire, a mining engineer and gold prospector from New Mexico, announced that he'd found a lost city that was "five square miles" with "crumbling limestone walls."
. . . The advent of lidar—or Light Detection And Ranging—is letting archaeologists see the Earth in completely new ways. To generate a super-accurate 3D model of the Earth's surface, Lidar sends laser pulses down from a plane, cutting through the foliage and jungle sprawl that would conceal large-scale earthworks to anyone standing nearby.
In a fascinating New Yorker article from 2013, Douglas Preston—who also wrote about this week's news for National Geographic—followed a team that was using lidar to image the surface of the area rumored to be home to the lost city, and was there to witness the revelation of a detailed image of man-made pillars, pyramids, and earthen mounds. It was very real evidence of a lost city, and as Preston explained, it had massive implications for how archaeologists understood pre-Columbian civilization . . .
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Technology |
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How to Restore Trust in American Technology
By Karl Frederick Rauscher
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. . . Before the Snowden revelations, Chinese security experts suspected that U.S. technology might have ulterior purposes (that is, spying). In their calculations, those suspicions have now become certainties. A former U.S. spy chief went on record to explain that it is not good national security policy to buy critical-infrastructure technology from a potential adversary. We should not be surprised if China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology takes a page from U.S. national security strategy and builds out the world's largest national Internet infrastructure with systems it knows it can trust—systems that will not necessarily come from U.S. companies.
American corporations facing the blacklist in China and elsewhere have a few options. The easiest is to stay the course, but that plan has a very real risk of ending badly. Likewise, marginal efforts to restore confidence will almost certainly fall short. The best option is to commit to building bona fide trust. A report prepared by experts from the U.S. and China and presented at the 2013 cybersecurity summit held by the EastWest Institute, IEEE and Stanford University explains how this could be done. The detailed list of recommendations is long, but the key step American companies would have to take is to state, in clear and certain terms, that they are commercial entities and are not part of any country's national security apparatus. These assertions could be backed by severe contractual penalties should products or services be found to violate the level of commercial purity claimed. This would be a simple and practical enough commitment—with enough skin in the game to be a game changer.
A likely collateral benefit is that American firms would have a business imperative to build more secure products. It is possible that the U.S. government could still covertly compromise products made by an American company, but because doing so would jeopardize the very health and survival of a domestic business, it should be less likely. In any case, American companies might not have much choice. Given the U.S. government's reluctance to engage, tech companies need to be prepared to go it alone.
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End of the line for stuff that's built to die?
By Homa Khaleeli
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It is news that will cheer anyone who has struggled to get a vacuum cleaner, fridge or TV repaired only to be told it’s probably cheaper to buy a new one. A new government decree in France is forcing manufacturers to tell consumers how long their appliances will last. French companies will also have to inform consumers how long spare parts for the product will be available, or risk a fine of up to €15,000 (£11,000).
And if this wasn’t enough, from next year faulty products – whether it’s mobile phones to washing machines – will have to be repaired or replaced for free within two years of being purchased.
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But Janet Gunter from Restart, a charity that aims to get people fixing and tinkering again, says bad design, or cheap materials, can also be blamed for limited lifespans. In their free community repair events they have seen examples of a fuse being soldered into hair straightening irons, so it cannot be changed. “There are a couple of barriers to people fixing things,” she says. “Things are not designed to be taken apart any more.” She points out that some new phones don’t have removable batteries or that memory chips on tablets and phones are soldered on to circuit boards: you can’t upgrade them easily, so once they run out or fill up, you’re stuck.
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Apple, Google plan fixes for 'Freak' security bug resulting from US ban on strong cry
By Xeni Jardin
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Apple and Google both announced today that the companies have each developed fixes to help protect users against the newly revealed 'Freak' security flaw, which affects mobile devices and Mac computers.
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The flaw resulted from a former U.S. government policy that forbade the export of strong encryption and required that weaker “export-grade” products be shipped to customers in other countries, say the researchers who discovered the problem. These restrictions were lifted in the late 1990s, but the weaker encryption got baked into widely used software that proliferated around the world and back into the United States, apparently unnoticed until this year.
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The vulnerability in web encryption technology could enable attackers to spy on communications of users of Apple's Safari browser and Google Inc's Android browser, according to researchers who uncovered the flaw. . .
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Cultural |
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There's too much poo on Mount Everest, says mountaineering boss
By (BBC)
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Ang Tshering wants Nepal's government to get visitors to dispose of their waste properly.
He says faeces and urine have been "piling up" for years around the four camps. "Climbers usually dig holes in the snow for their toilet use and leave the human waste there."
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The government in Nepal has yet to come up with a solution to the problem of human waste disposal - but officials will be monitoring the rubbish on the mountain, says the head of the government's mountaineering department Puspa Raj Katuwa
New rules mean each climber must bring 8kg (18lb) of rubbish when they return to base camp.
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Finland: Speeding millionaire gets 54,000-euro fine
By (BBC)
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A Finnish man has been handed a whopping 54,000-euro fine for speeding, it's reported.
Finland's speeding fines are linked to income, with penalties calculated on daily earnings, meaning high earners get hit with bigger penalties for breaking the law. So, when businessman Reima Kuisla was caught doing 103km/h (64mph) in an area where the speed limit is 80km/h (50mph), authorities turned to his 2013 tax return, the Iltalehti newspaper reports. He earned 6.5m euros (£4.72m) that year, so was told to hand over 54,000 euros. The scale of the fine hasn't gone down well with Mr Kuisla. "Ten years ago I wouldn't have believed that I would seriously consider moving abroad," he says on his Facebook page. "Finland is impossible to live in for certain kinds of people who have high incomes and wealth."
There's little sympathy from his fellow Finns on social media. . .
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Tanzania albino killings to end, vows President Kikwete
By (BBC)
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Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete has vowed to end the killings of albinos, which he said had brought shame on the East African nation.
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"It is a false belief that if someone has the body part of a person with albinism, this will bring success in business, fishing and mining activities. This is what has been fuelling this ongoing evil," Reuters news agency quoted President Kikwete as saying in his monthly national television address.
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President Kikwete said that over the last nine years, 139 suspects had been apprehended on links to albino attacks, 73 of whom had been acquitted and 15 found guilty, the Citizen says.
Albinism is particularly prevalent in Tanzania with one in 1,400 affected, according to a 2006 BMC Public Health report. This compares with one in 20,000 in Western countries.
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Leonard Nimoy’s photographs of fat, naked women changed my life
By Lindy West
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I didn’t realise it until after he died – for whatever reason, I’d just never done the mental arithmetic – but Leonard Nimoy is responsible for the single most transformative moment of my life. In a very tangible way, Leonard Nimoy saved me.
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I couldn’t stop looking. It was the first time in my life – I realise in retrospect – that I’d seen bodies like mine honoured instead of lampooned, presented with dignity instead of scorn, displayed as objects of beauty instead of as punchlines. It feels bizarre to put myself back in that headspace now (and even more bizarre to register just how recent it was), but looking at Nimoy’s photographs was my very first exposure to the concept that my body was just as deserving of autonomy and respect as any thin body. Not only that, but my bigness is powerful.
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Unsurprisingly, friends of mine who have shared Nimoy’s Full Body Project on social media in the wake of his death have found their accounts suspended and their content deleted. It’s a testament to how necessary and radical Nimoy’s statement “I asked them to be proud” really is – how can we expect fat people to be proud when the mere existence of our bodies is classified as an obscenity? How can you even begin to see us as human beings if our physical presence in the world is offensive? (Meanwhile, I’ve reported violently racist and misogynist Facebook groups, graphic photos of mutilated corpses, and trolls calling for my rape and death, and been told that it’s all well within Facebook’s terms of service. It’s telling, I think, that even dead women are preferable to fat women.)
Though he was decades behind the pioneers of fat acceptance (and a straight white male saviour is always fraught), for me, Nimoy’s Full Body Project was the first piece of media that told me I had any intrinsic value. Denying people access to value is an incredibly insidious form of emotional violence, one that our culture wields aggressively and liberally to keep marginalised groups small and quiet. Everything in my life – my career, my relationships, my health, my bank account, my sleep schedule, my wardrobe – has got better since I began fighting that paradigm. I live long, and I prosper. Thank you, Leonard.
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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. |