Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Everyone’s welcome here, no special handshake required. Just check your meta at the door.
Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Breakfast News
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Ukraine signs historic EU deal that sparked months of upheaval
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed an association agreement with the European Union on Friday, the same deal whose reversal set off a crisis in the nation.
His predecessor’s decision to shun the deal last year and work with Russia instead unleashed deadly strife that led to the ouster of the nation’s President, the loss of Crimea and a pro-Russia separatist rebellion.
Sealing the deal may be the second-most important moment in Ukraine’s history, Poroshenko said, after its independence from Russia.
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Australia: MH370 likely on autopilot with unresponsive crew in flight’s final stage
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 likely flew into the southern Indian Ocean on autopilot with an unresponsive crew, Australian authorities said Thursday, divulging new details about what they believe happened during the missing plane’s final hours.
The information emerged as officials announced a southward shift, as expected, in the underwater search for the Boeing 777, which disappeared March 8 with 239 people on board.
Searchers have found no trace of the jetliner or its passengers, making the case probably the biggest mystery in aviation history and leaving the families of those on board bereft of answers.
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Afghan election impasse revives suspicions about Karzai’s role
As thousands of Afghans poured into the streets of Kabul on Friday to protest over the impasse in their country’s presidential election, there was little doubt who they held responsible for the mess – outgoing President Hamid Karzai.
“Death to Karzai!” some shouted through loudspeakers as protesters marched on the presidential palace, accusing him of creating the crisis over his successor.
No one has provided any hard evidence that the protesters are right, but even within Karzai’s family and inner circle, many believe the president quietly engineered the electoral debacle to keep his hands on the levers of power.
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Uighur academic Ilham Tohti ‘denied food’ in China jail
The detained Uighur academic Ilham Tohti was denied food for more than a week and his legs have been shackled, his lawyer says.
Mr Tohti, an economics professor who has criticised China’s ethnic policies, has been detained since January. He has been charged with separatism.
His lawyer Li Fangping met with him for the first time this week.
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Wisconsin governor not a target of special investigation: lawyer
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was not a target of an investigation into possible illegal coordination between his campaign and special interest groups during elections in 2011 and 2012, a lawyer for the prosecutor leading the investigation said on Thursday.
Neither Walker, a potential Republican White House hopeful in 2016, nor anyone else has been charged in the investigation launched in August 2012 under a Wisconsin law that requires such probes to be conducted in secret.
Randall Crocker, an attorney representing special prosecutor Francis Schmitz, said Thursday that documents released publicly last week outlined the prosecutor’s legal theory of the investigation and did not establish the existence of a crime.
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Corporate America’s sponsorship for gay pride parades increases
In between muscular men in speedos gyrating to thumping dance music and drag queens decked out in formal gowns, Salt Lake City’s gay pride parade also featured a few, more conventional participants: Some of America’s most well-known companies.
From Starbucks to eBay to Macy’s, the increasing visibility of corporations at the parade in Utah and at others across the country in recent years comes as same-sex marriage bans fall in the courts and polls show greater public acceptance of gay marriage.
In that climate, companies are finding that the benefits of sponsorship outweigh the risks of staying away, giving them a chance to make a statement in support of diversity and use it to help recruit and retain top talent who want to work for a business that supports LGBT rights.
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Class Dismissed, Forever: Rural Schools Face Closures
It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of place, pop. 790, a potato-farming community in northern Maine that kisses the border of Canada. The downtown is made up of a few structures dotted along a horseshoe-shaped road: the Country Store, where farmers, mechanics, and contractors get their morning coffee and midday sandwiches; a modest, ranch-style town office; a slightly decrepit 1920s barn bearing the faded words “Monticello Grange”; and the Wellington School, perched at the rear of an overgrown baseball field.
On a recent Tuesday morning, seemingly every car in town was parked outside the elementary school in the center of Monticello. Inside, Wellington’s principal, Cindy Peterson, was high-fiving winners of perfect-attendance awards and ski-club certificates given to many of the school’s 66 pupils. On one side of the room, it was a celebration: a giant cake’s icing-letters cheering on the graduating 3rd graders. On the other side, a funeral: jagged stacks of cardboard boxes, adorned with Sharpie notes, reminding the audience that after the festivities, Monticello’s only school would be closing its doors after 60 years.
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Florida Court Overturns Death Sentence for 1985 Killing
With new DNA evidence in hand, a divided Florida Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the death sentence and conviction of Paul C. Hildwin, a man found guilty nearly three decades ago of strangling a woman in Hernando County, Fla. The woman, Vronzettie Cox, 42, whose body was found in the trunk of a car, had been raped.
The DNA evidence found on Ms. Cox’s underwear and a washcloth at the scene matches that of her former boyfriend, William Haverty. Mr. Haverty is in prison serving a sentence for attempted sexual battery of a child.
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Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults
One in 10 deaths among working-age adults between 2006 and 2010 were attributable to excessive drinking, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
A study published in Preventing Chronic Disease found that excessive alcohol use – which includes binge drinking, heavy weekly alcohol consumption and drinking while underage or pregnant – was responsible for approximately 88,000 deaths between 2006 and 2010. The lives of those who died were shortened by about 30 years.
About 70% of those deaths were working-age adults between the ages of 20 to 64, said Mandy Stahre, epidemiologist at the Washington State Department of Health and author of the study.
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Ancient Fecal Matter Reveals Secrets of Neanderthal Diet
New research suggests Neanderthal parents, like their modern-day human counterparts, might have had to lecture their kids to eat their vegetables.
Researchers from MIT and the University of La Laguna in Spain say 50,000-year-old Neanderthal fecal matter suggest our early ancestors were not solely meat-eaters, eating plants, berries, tubers and nuts.
“It’s important to understand all aspects of why humanity has come to dominate the planet the way it does,” said Roger Summons, a professor of geobiology in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and co-author of a paper about the discovery in a statement. “A lot of that has to do with improved nutrition over time.”
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Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
“He who seeks truth shall find beauty. He who seeks beauty shall find vanity. He who seeks order shall find gratification. He who seeks gratification shall be disappointed. He who considers himself the servant of his fellow beings shall find the joy of self-expression. He who seeks self-expression shall fall into the pit of arrogance.”
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Breakfast Tunes
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Stupid Shit by LaEscapee
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