The Breakfast Club (Raise Your Glass)

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. 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.

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This Day in History

Martin Luther King accepts Nobel Prize; Women get right to vote in Wyoming; First US domestic passenger jet flight; General Pinochet dies. Otis Redding dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Breakfast News

Texas Ebola cases expose troubling contrasts and spark fears of race divide

The faltering response to a Liberian’s Ebola diagnosis in Texas contrasted starkly to the mobilization after the mere suspicion of the disease in a local law enforcement officer. Some wonder whether it was no coincidence

Frisco, a prosperous and bland modern suburb 25 miles north of downtown Dallas, is normally chiefly known as the home of Major League Soccer’s FC Dallas and the RoughRiders minor league baseball team.

But for a time on Wednesday it was the epicentre of the rolling-news universe, as events at an urgent care centre prompted scenes reminiscent of a contagion disaster movie. Media rushed to provide live coverage of a sheriff’s deputy in a surgical mask being taken to a hospital isolation room by men covered from head to toe in protective clothing. [..]

The contrast in the speed and scale of the response in Frisco compared with events at the low-rent Ivy Apartments complex was jarring: despite confirmation on Tuesday last week that Duncan had Ebola, it was not until last Thursday that the authorities made a concerted effort to control who could enter and exit the apartment where he had stayed, and not until Saturday before the unit was cleaned and decontaminated by a professional crew. As various local and federal agencies appeared to debate and dawdle, the action achieved the rare feat of seeming at once chaotic and slow-moving.

St Louis area braces for protests after police shoot dead black teen

Activists plan marches and civil disobedience after officer kills Vonderrit Myers Jr, 18, weeks after death of Michael Brown in Ferguson

Authorities in Missouri are braced for a weekend of reinvigorated protests around the city of Ferguson over the killing of Michael Brown, after another black 18-year-old was shot dead by a police officer in nearby St Louis.

Three days of demonstrations, marches and acts of civil disobedience have been scheduled by activists demanding justice for Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old whose shooting by a police officer led to intense unrest in Ferguson, a northern suburb of St Louis, in August.

The plans were given fresh impetus after Vonderrit Myers Jr was killed by an off-duty officer in south St Louis on Wednesday night. Police said Myers was shot after shooting at the officer three times with a handgun following a chase. The officer, who fired 17 times, was unhurt.

Alleged sexualised hazing by football players shakes New Jersey town

Allegations that high school athletes subjected younger players to ritual bullying prompts cancelled season, criminal investigation and conflicted outrage

The New Jersey suburb of Sayreville is at the center of a disturbing if familiar narrative – players in an elite high school football program are accused of subjecting younger players to strange, sexualized hazing rituals, all under the noses of officials who are meant to protect them.

Few details have been officially released, but the football season has been canceled and a criminal investigation into serious incidents of hazing is under way. [..]

Abuse is alleged to have happened on an almost daily basis, and would be signalled when a player let out a howl and the locker-room lights were turned off. “In the darkness, a freshman football player would be pinned to the locker room floor, his arms and feet held down by multiple upperclassmen,” wrote NJ.com, based on the account of an unknown parent. “Then, the victim would be lifted to his feet while a finger was forced into his rectum. Sometimes, the same finger was then shoved into the freshman player’s mouth.”

In addition to sexual assault allegations, which the Middlesex County prosecutor is investigating, the program is in the midst of a steroid scandal involving a now-resigned assistant coach.

US military planes arrive at epicenter of Ebola

Six U.S. military planes arrived in the Ebola hot zone Thursday with more Marines, as West Africa’s leaders pleaded for the world’s help in dealing with a crisis that one called “a tragedy unforeseen in modern times.”

Six U.S. military planes arrived in the Ebola hot zone Thursday with more Marines, as West Africa’s leaders pleaded for the world’s help in dealing with a crisis that one called “a tragedy unforeseen in modern times.”

“Our people are dying,” Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma lamented by videoconference at a World Bank meeting in Washington. He said other countries are not responding fast enough while children are orphaned and infected doctors and nurses are lost to the disease. [..]

The fleet of planes that landed outside the Liberian capital of Monrovia consisted of four MV-22 Ospreys and two KC-130s. The 100 additional Marines bring to just over 300 the total number of American troops in the country, said Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, the commander leading the U.S. response.

Farmers Gain Weapon Against Devastating Pig Virus

A disease that killed off at least 10 percent of the nation’s hogs in the last year is starting to threaten farmers again as colder weather approaches.

But they have new tools to fight the ailment, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus. The Agriculture Department has conditionally approved two vaccines, and a third is on the horizon. [..]

The virus infects sows and is passed from them to their piglets, which are particularly vulnerable. About half of the nation’s six million sows have contracted it, and some have lost entire litters to the disease, according to the National Pork Producers Council. [..]

In June, the Agriculture Department set aside $3.9 million to develop vaccines against the disease, but none of that money has gone to the two it has licensed for use thus far. One is made by Zoetis, a titan of veterinary medicine; the other by Harrisvaccines, a company founded by a veterinarian and former animal science professor at Iowa State University, where much of the research on the virus has been done.

In Rickety Boats, Cuban Migrants Again Flee to U.S.

In an unexpected echo of the refugee crisis from two decades ago, a rising tide of Cubans in rickety, cobbled-together boats is fleeing the island and showing up in the waters off Florida.

Leonardo Heredia, a 24-year-old Cuban baker, for example, tried and failed to reach the shores of Florida eight times.

Last week, he and 21 friends from his Havana neighborhood gathered the combined know-how from their respective botched migrations and made a boat using a Toyota motor, scrap stainless steel and plastic foam. Guided by a pocket-size Garmin GPS, they finally made it to Florida on Mr. Heredia’s ninth attempt.

“Things that were bad in Cuba are now worse,” Mr. Heredia said. “If there was more money in Cuba to pay for the trips, everyone would go.”

Robot Takes Cues from Deadly Rattlesnakes

In 2009, Spirit, one of NASA’s two Mars rovers, got stuck in the sand. And more recently, the other rover – Curiosity – had to take a detour to avoid the shifting sands of the red planet.

This got some scientists to thinking about ways to keep our very expensive robotic probes from getting sidelined by something as inconsequential as a sand trap.

And they are taking their cues from Mother Nature.

In an experiment at Zoo Atlanta, deadly sidewinder rattlesnakes were put into a specially designed sandbox with adjustable inclines.

Scientists used high-speed video cameras to track the position of the snakes as they moved sideways up slopes of different grades, a movement called sidewinding. The snakes proved to be agile climbers even in shifting sand.