Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, May 26, 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: Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker) by Parliament-Funkadelic
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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Cleveland police department agrees to carry out federal reforms
By (BBC)
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The Cleveland police department, which has been criticised for aggressive tactics against African Americans, has agreed to strict federal reforms.
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The department will be required to collect data on use-of-force incidents, will be banned from neck holds, and won't be able to use Tasers targeting head, neck or genitalia.
Officers will also undergo mental health consultations.
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The DOJ report does not lay out this specific goal about body cameras but states that the department will arrange for 'body-worn camera video downloads.'
Cleveland's police force most recently came under criticism in November 2014, when an officer fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice after mistaking his toy gun for a real one.
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Energy industry calls for new emissions targets to aid low-carbon growth
By Fiona Harvey
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The World Energy Council (WEC) said policy uncertainty, and the lack of clear long-term goals on the climate, had hampered the industry’s ability to invest in low-carbon growth.
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The world already has clear targets on greenhouse gas emissions, set out by developed and major developing country governments in Copenhagen in 2009, and ratified the next year under the UN’s Cancun Agreements. Those targets, which run until 2020, are all still valid and have not been repealed.
At Paris, governments are supposed to forge a new agreement with commitments from countries that will run beyond 2020, in some cases to 2025 and in others to 2030 and beyond. Several, including those from the US and the EU, have already been submitted to the UN, while China has provided a strong indication of its targets. More than 30 countries have submitted their targets so far.
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In its report published on Wednesday, it also called for: the removal of trade barriers, such as tariffs, placed on the transfer of environmental goods and services across borders; governments to set a carbon price; provide better policy signals, and invest public money in projects that can gain private capital; greater energy efficiency; and collaboration between the public and private sectors on new technology.
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She said that without a strong commitment from governments, it would “become increasingly difficult to deliver across the three goals of energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability. As the energy industry is telling us, it is now time to get something done.”
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Identity thieves access 100,000 tax records on IRS website
By Danielle Haynes
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Thieves have illegally accessed the tax information of more than 100,000 people on the Internal Revenue Service's website, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Tuesday.
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In order to access the files, the identity thieves must have had previous access to a person's social security number and other identifiable information.
The IRS said it sent letters to all 200,000 taxpayers whose accounts were affected and is offering free credit monitoring for the 100,000 accounts that were accessed. The IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration are both investigating the incident.
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International |
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Hong Kong children learn to code after school
By Juliana Liu
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On a lazy Friday afternoon, a small group of primary school students open their laptops and, laughing and chatting, plunge straight into the world of computer programming.
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They are getting lessons in computer coding not always available within Hong Kong's state schools, with parents paying extra for skills that they hope will keep up with a fast-moving digital industry.
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Hong Kong is already one of the world's most wired cities. According to government figures, 85% of homes have access to broadband, and people own, on average, at least two mobile phones.
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"What we want to do is to incorporate coding as a mandatory part of early secondary education so as to equip students for the future digital world," said Joey Lam, Hong Kong's deputy government chief information officer.
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Other countries in the Asia Pacific region, including Australia and Singapore, are also working out when and how to start compulsory education in computer programming.
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India heatwave kills 800 as capital's roads melt
By (Al Jazeera)
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At least 800 people have died in a major heatwave that has swept across India, melting roads in New Delhi as temperatures neared 50C.
Hospitals were on alert to treat victims of heatstroke and authorities advised people to stay indoors on Tuesday, with no end in sight to the searing conditions.
India's Meteorological Department said it had issued heat warnings to several states where temperatures were forecast to top 45C over the next few days.
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Hundreds of people, mainly from the poorest sections of society, die at the height of summer every year across the country, while tens of thousands suffer power cuts from an overburdened electricity grid.
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The Hindustan Times warned that some of the hot, dry conditions could plunge the worst-affected states into drought before monsoon rains arrive.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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How Many US Troops Will Be In Iraq By the Time Obama Leaves Office?
By Kevin Drum
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According to Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Ramadi was yet another debacle for the Iraqi military: "What apparently happened is the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered; in fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force. That says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves."
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Beyond this, all the usual suspects blame the whole thing on President Obama and his usual weak-kneed reluctance to support our friends overseas. Unfortunately, that matters, regardless of whether or not it's just reflexive partisan nonsense. When it's loud enough and persistent enough, it starts to congeal into conventional wisdom. And if conventional wisdom says that things aren't going well in the war against ISIS, then the pressure to do something ratchets up steadily—and not just from the usual suspects. The pressure also comes in more reasonable form from sympathetic critics. . .
So now I feel like I've caught up a bit on this. And it hardly matters. It's the same old stuff. On the surface, everyone agrees that this is an Iraqi fight and Iraqis need to fight it. But of course our training of Iraqi troops is woefully inadequate—something that should come as no surprise to anyone who remembers that a decade wasn't long enough to train Iraqi troops back when George Bush was running things. If Obama could make it happen within a few months, he really would be a miracle worker.
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The Latest Big Cable Consolidation Will Screw Consumers and Startups
By Adam Clark Estes
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. . . if Charter acquires Time Warner Cable and Bright House it would essentially control cable and internet in the eastern part of the country, as well as the massive market that is Los Angeles. The lack of competition between companies offering broadband is already affecting quality of service for consumers. And allowing three companies to become the second largest cable company in America will destroy enterpreneurialism as well. It will be almost impossible for startup internet service providers to compete.
Internet prices are increasingly steadily in the US, while speeds remain slow compared to other developed nations. There are few incentives for massive cable companies to upgrade infrastructure, since they’re natural monopolies. And there are few incentives for upstarts to disrupt the dinosaurs, too: It’s too expensive and politically difficult for a competitor to enter the market.
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The FCC’s moving in the right direction by overruling state laws that prevented municipal broadband networks from expanding, and President Obama’s talked a lot about how and why we need to change the way America’s internet works. This merger isn’t the way. One more massive natural monopoly means more ammunition to shoot down the smaller competition and one more more war chest for paying lobbyists to defend the interest of big cable.
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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:
Untypically for a black American musician in his late 20s, especially one then operating out of the Motor City centre of so-called soul music, Clinton had his head turned around by the 1966/68 drug/rock changes (hence the increasing strangeness of the Parliaments' last few singles) and he'd already started to think about a revolutionary musical concept a couple of years before the actual event. He was finally provoked into making the jump in order to survive when he temporarily lost the right to the name of his group.
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It wasn't until 1974, when a proper new recording deal was arranged for the Parliament persona with Casablanca, that Clinton's masterplan really began to bear fruit, but, just to recap – coz I've probably lost you by now – by 1970 George Clinton had arrived at the situation where he was juggling five singers including himself (known as Parliament) and five musicians (Funkadelic). A small circus of 10 black freaks operating under two different names on two different record labels.
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"We make it satirical or funny, not point blank aggressive like maybe the punks. You know why? 'Cause we are the direct descendants of the 'You're fucking up'; the end result of the 'You're fucking up' society. This is us. But that's a dangerous one to play with because the fact still remains that you will get popular. And if you get popular you might believe it. And if you believe it then you'll live and you'll die being a pawn for real. So I have to play with it because when I come off stage I wanna tuck it away somewhere. It's too intense otherwise.
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"As for the 'Get up and party' stuff, that's just black America's way of expressing that we got a raise and that we're being more like what white success looks like. you know, violins, big productions, disco, the Teddy Pendergrasses, it all sounds like white pop music of the 50s. A lot of it is cool, but it's still just a rehash of what white America did. Give 'em time, it'll gradually change.
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"It took me a while to realise that I wasn't getting played on no white stations because I was black and I didn't get played on black stations' cause to them it sounded like I was white. So then I had to go back and meet 'em halfway with the Parliament situation, the horns and things, and then hand-walk 'em up to where Funkadelic is at. Even from there we had to take Bootsy to get 'em real young to walk 'em to Parliament to walk 'em to Funkadelic. Now they're gonna pledge groovallegiance to the united funk of Funkadelica."
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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This Is the Unprecedented New Law France Just Passed to Eliminate Supermarket Waste
By Inae Oh
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On Thursday, France's parliament unanimously approved a new law prohibiting large supermarkets from throwing out unsold food, instead mandating stores donate any surplus groceries to charities or for animal feed use.
The law, which aims to reduce waste in a country where people trash up to 30 kilos of food per person annually, is part of a more general energy and environmental bill.
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Now, the local politician who sparked the law's creation is hoping other countries will adopt similar bans on supermarket waste. Arash Derambarsh, who slammed such bleaching practices as "scandalous" to the Guardian, will take his campaign to a United Nations' summit discussing ways to end poverty this November.
In the United States, nearly half of all food goes uneaten and sent to landfills.
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Tall Trees Sucked Dry by Global Warming
By Elizabeth Harball and ClimateWire
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A well-known scientific principle describing how water moves through plants can help explain why trees may struggle to survive as the planet warms, scientists say in a new study.
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The atmosphere pulls water through plants’ systems, and “the warmer and drier the air is—which is what climate change is doing—it’s increasing the evaporative demand,” said McDowell. “The warmer the air is, the more water it can hold, so it sucks harder on those straws.”
To keep from dehydrating, plants start to close their stomata—the openings in leaves through which they take in CO2.
But as stomata close during a drought, they can’t photosynthesize as effectively, McDowell said, preventing trees from taking advantage of more CO2 in the atmosphere.
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Science and Health |
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The 2 Faces of Narcissism: Admiration Seeking and Rivalry
By Matthew Hutson
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The new understanding of narcissism started with a 2013 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that identified narcissism's two dimensions. “Previous theories and measures of narcissism dealt with this trait as a unitary construct, mixing up agentic aspects—assertiveness, dominance, charm—with antagonistic aspects—aggressiveness and devaluation of others,” says Mitja Back of the University of Münster in Germany, the study's primary author. Lumping both aspects together made narcissistic behavior confounding.
Studying hundreds of healthy subjects, Back's team found that traits related to narcissism clustered into two categories, with both facets of narcissism serving to maintain a positive self-image. Self-promotion draws praise, whereas self-defense demeans others to fend off criticism. Admiration seeking and rivalry each have different effects on body language, relationship health and personality.
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It pays to be aware of narcissism's duality. “What attracts us in social partners at first sight is not necessarily what makes us happy in long-term relations,” Back says. Even if narcissists have that bright, charming side, it is often simply a matter of time before the clouds come out. Except, perhaps, on Broadway.
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Study links better 'good cholesterol' function with lower risk of later heart disease
By (ScienceDaily)
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HDL is the 'good cholesterol' that helps remove fat from artery walls, reversing the process that leads to heart disease. Yet recent drug trials and genetic studies suggest that simply pushing HDL levels higher doesn't necessarily reduce the risk of heart disease. Now, a team led by scientists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has shown in a large, forward-looking epidemiological study that a person's HDL function -- the efficiency of HDL molecules at removing cholesterol -- may be a better measure of coronary heart disease risk and a better target for heart-protecting drugs. Cardiovascular diseases, characterized by the buildup of cholesterol-laden plaques in arteries, currently account for more than 17 million deaths annually, or about a third of the global total.
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"This is a definitive finding that HDL function, even in people who are still relatively young and healthy, does predict later heart disease events, which implies that therapies that boost HDL function might reduce risk," says senior author Daniel J. Rader, MD, who directs the Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine and Lipid Clinic at Penn Medicine. Rader is also the chair of the department of Genetics.
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Pharmaceutical companies are still developing drugs to boost HDL levels, and Rader and his colleagues have found in prior studies that some of these compounds also boost HDL cholesterol efflux capacity -- an effect that future heart drugs may specifically target. "That's an area of tremendous interest now," Rader says.
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Scientists develop method to grow sensory hair cells in the ear
By Stephen Feller
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A team of researchers has successfully devised a way to cause embryonic stem cells to become the inner-ear hair cells which are responsible for hearing and balance, according to a new study.
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"Producing large numbers of hair cells will allow the development of high-throughput drug screening to discover new compounds that can promote hair cell regeneration," the study's authors write. "In the long term, they can also be used as a starting point to develop cell replacement therapies that could successfully restore the lost or damaged hair cells in the inner ear."
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Technology |
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Hey, McFly! Canadian sets new hoverboard distance record
By Samuel Gibbs
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Catalin Alexandru Duru flew over Lake Ouareau in Quebec, Canada, reaching 275.9m before the batteries ran out.
“I wanted to showcase that a stable flight can be achieved on a hoverboard and a human could stand and control with their feet,” said Duru, after travelling five times the distance needed to set the Guinness World Record.
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The board, which looks more like the Green Goblin’s glider than a skateboard, took 12 months to design and build and can be used anywhere, although its short flight time means it is not currently a practical means of transport.
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While Hendo’s maglev board might mirror more closely the image portrayed in Back to the Future II, Duru’s propeller-based system is much more likely to work in the real world – if only for a minute.
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We Can Now Make Computer Chips Out of Wood
By Bryan Lufkin
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. . . most of a computer chip is composed of a “support” layer that cradles the actual chip. The research team replaced that support layer’s non-biodegradable material with something called cellulose nanofibril (CNF), which is flexible, wood-based, biodegradable—all things that can make a device way less hazardous.
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The result: a sustainable “green chip” that’s cheaper and less toxic than the materials currently used in electronics. Every little bit helps when we’re piling landfills with thrown out phones, especially when dangerous chemicals in existing computer chips, like gallium arsenide, can leak into the ground. Perhaps this new technology could lead to, say, entire phones being made out of wood-based materials, creating a landscape of responsible electronic devices.
Most phones, tablets, and other portable gizmos are made out of stuff that isn’t biodegradable and is toxic to the environment. Plus, gadgets go obsolete so quickly, prompting folks to rapidly chuck older versions. But using a wood-based material to build the bulk of a computer chip could lead to less harmful devices in the future.
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Cultural |
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Surprise — teens are having sex. How can we make it safer?
By Eve Andrews
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The United States has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the world, and the highest of all industrialized countries — 57 pregnancies (34 births) per 1,000 teens each year, according to one recent study. For perspective, these are higher than the estimated teen pregnancy and birth rates for Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Mongolia. And — what should seem a fairly “duh” fact — 82 percent of teen pregnancies in the United States are unintended.
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Rural girls, however, are being left behind. The teen birth rate in rural U.S. counties is 30 percent higher than the national average. Between 1990 and 2010, that rate in urban and suburban counties dropped by 40 and 49 percent, respectively, while the rate in rural counties only dropped by 32 percent.
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A truly important way in which Washington is better than most is its state law dictating that girls can receive reproductive health care at any age without consent of their parents. That’s critical, because having sex as a teenager is an inherently clandestine thing — no one wants their parents to know what they’re doing in cars and wooded parks.
But actually getting access to that reproductive health care is another matter — and it depends a lot on the kind of community where you live. That became very clear when I met with teens and health practitioners in the state’s most urban county and then its most rural.
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Crowds 'can be counted' with phone and Twitter data
By Jonathan Webb
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Warwick University researchers studied geo-tagged tweets and mobile phone use over a two-month period in Milan.
In two locations with known visitor numbers - a football stadium and an airport - these activities rose and fell in close step with flow of people.
The team said it could enable measurement of events such as protests.
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"We've got these massive data sets and there's a lot to be done with them... But we need to remain cautious about how far we push the data," Dr Manley said.
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"If we're relying on these data sets to tell us where people are, what happens when we have a problem with the way that data is collected?" Dr Manley said.
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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. |