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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Sides in Gaza talks dig in as cease-fire end looms
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Egypt-mediated Gaza truce talks hardened their positions Monday ahead of the expiration of a five-day cease-fire, though both sides appeared reluctant to return to the deadly all-out fighting that has destroyed large parts of the densely-populated coastal strip.
The month-long Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 1,900 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, according to Palestinian and U.N. officials. Israel has lost 67 people, all but three of them soldiers.
Since last week, indirect talks have been taking place in Cairo through Egyptian mediators in an effort to broker a substantive end to the war and draw up a roadmap for Gaza.
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Assange Talks of Leaving Embassy, Sowing Confusion
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sowed confusion Monday with an announcement that appeared to indicate he was leaving his embassy bolt hole, but his spokesman later clarified that that would not happen unless the impasse over his extradition were resolved.
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Abe Stops Apologizing To China And Korea, While Bowing To The U.S.
August 15 is commemorated in Japan as the calendar date for the end of Japan’s horrifically calamitous war of aggression in Asia, the date in 1945 that Showa Emperor Hirohito proclaimed that Japan had accepted the terms of the Allies’ Postdam Declaration.
Every year on August 15 a great commemorative ceremony is held in Tokyo at which Japan’s Prime Minister speaks. At the ceremony on August 15, 2007, a month before he was to resign after having been prime minister for just one year, Abe duly, if somewhat ritually proclaimed Japan’s regret for visiting pain and destruction on its neighbors. The precise phrase was: 先の大戦では、とりわけアジア諸国の人々に対し多大の損害と苦痛を与えた. My translation: In the previous great war, we caused great losses and suffering, especially to the peoples of the countries of Asia.
After Abe’s September 2007 resignation, the phrase was reiterated each year by each succeeding prime minister, up to last year, the first year of Abe’s second round as prime minister, when he omitted it. Last week, he omitted it again, substituting: 歴史に謙虚に向き合い、その教訓を深く胸に刻む. My translation: Humbly face history, taking its lessons deeply to heart.
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National Guard called in after second night of chaos in Ferguson, Missouri
Missouri’s governor said on Monday he would send the National Guard into the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson to restore calm after authorities forcibly dispersed a crowd protesting last week’s fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen by police.
Gov. Jay Nixon signed an executive order deploying the U.S. state militia, saying demonstrators had thrown Molotov cocktails and shot at police as well as a civilian, a description of the night’s events diverging widely from some eyewitness accounts.
“Tonight, a day of hope, prayers, and peaceful protests was marred by the violent criminal acts of an organized and growing number of individuals, many from outside the community and state, whose actions are putting the residents and businesses of Ferguson at risk,” Nixon said in a statement on his website.
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Kenneth Douglas: Man who worked in morgue admits to having sex with corpses
A man who worked in a morgue admitted to having sex with female corpses while at work, federal officials said.
Kenneth Douglas, of Hamilton Co. , Ohio, admitted in court that he sexually abused three corpses while he was drunk or on drugs, but he had sex with up to 100 bodies, he said in a deposition.
“I would just get on top of them and pull my pants down,” said Douglas, who worked the night shift at the morgue from 1976 to 1992.
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Have insurers found new ways to avoid the sick?
Ending insurance discrimination against the sick was a central goal of the nation’s health care overhaul, but leading patient groups say that promise is being undermined by new barriers from insurers.
The insurance industry responds that critics are confusing legitimate cost-control with bias. Some state regulators, however, say there’s reason to be concerned about policies that shift costs to patients and narrow their choices of hospitals and doctors.
With open enrollment for 2015 three months away, the Obama administration is being pressed to enforce the Affordable Care Act’s anti-discrimination provisions. Some regulations have been issued; others are pending after more than four years.
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Rise of the machines? Tiny robot horde swarms to form shapes
They look vaguely like miniature hockey pucks skittering along on three pin-like metal legs, but a swarm of small robots called Kilobots at a laboratory at Harvard University is making a little bit of history for automatons everywhere.
Researchers who created a battalion of 1,024 of these robots said on Thursday the mini-machines are able to communicate with one another and organize themselves into two-dimensional shapes like letters of the alphabet.
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New Drug Helps Some Bald Patients Regrow Hair
The first thing Brian H. noticed was that he could grow a real beard. It had been years since that had been possible, years he spent bedeviled by hair loss on his head, face, arms and legs.
Brian, 34, who asked that his last name be withheld to protect his privacy, suffers from alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease afflicting about 1 percent of men and women, causing hair to fall out, often all over the body. He believes that the “mangy patches” of baldness that have plagued him since his 20s have cost him jobs and relationships.
After trying various treatments, Brian enrolled this year in a study at Columbia University Medical Center testing whether a drug approved for a bone marrow disorder could help people with alopecia. One of the study’s leaders, Angela Christiano, is a dermatology professor and geneticist who herself has alopecia areata.
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Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
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Breakfast Tunes
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Stupid Shit by LaEscapee
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