The Breakfast Club (Sunny Side Up)

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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Today in History

Breakfast Tune: Cigar Box Banjo #4- Whole World Waiting for the Sunrise

Breakfast News & Blogs Below

News

Indigenous Communities Take Chevron to Global Court for ‘Crimes Against Humanity’

Chevron’s repeated refusal to clean up its toxic contamination of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest constitutes an “attack” on civilian populations and should be investigated by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, impacted indigenous and farming communities charged this week in a formal complaint to the global body.

“In the context of international criminal law, the decisions made by Chevron’s CEO, John Watson, have deliberately maintained-and contributed to-the polluted environment in which the people of the Oriente region of Ecuador live and die every day,” states the complaint, which was submitted to the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Thursday on behalf of approximately 80 affected communities, totaling tens of thousands of people.

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Chevron has repeatedly refused to pay the $9.5 billion ordered by Ecuadorian courts and even took the step of removing most of its assets from Ecuador in an apparent effort to avoid paying. Petitioners slam what they call “multiple collateral attacks against the judgment and the lawyers who represented the affected communities.”

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Commission greenlights grocery deliveries by struggling Postal Service

The Postal Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved a plan for the U.S. Postal Service to deliver groceries in San Francisco as part of a test project that could one day expand into a nationwide program.

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Under the new two-year trial run, USPS would work with retail partners to deliver groceries to homes between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. Participating stores would have to drop off their orders at post offices between 1:30 a.m. and 2:30 a.m.

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The commission capped annual revenue for the expanded program at $10 million, telling the Postal Service that it would have to request an exemption to exceed that amount.

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IRS Whistleblowers: Agency Executives Behind Multibillion-Dollar Corporate Tax Giveaways

A 10-year veteran Internal Revenue Service (IRS) attorney has demanded a congressional audit of the IRS to investigate the agency’s alleged role in allowing US corporations to illegally avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes even as it cracks down on individuals and small businesses.

In a letter to Treasury secretary Jacob Lew, IRS commissioner John A. Koskinen and IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, Jane J. Kim, an attorney in the IRS Office of the Chief Counsel in New York, accused IRS executives of “deliberately” facilitating multibillion-dollar tax giveaways. The letter, dated October 19, will add further pressure on the agency, which is under fire for allegedly targeting conservative and Tea Party groups.

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Amnesty International reports on Ferguson

WASHINGTON – Amid a torrent of leaks from a supposedly closed grand jury investigation, Amnesty International on Friday publicly released some broader observations about Ferguson. The thrust is captured in the report’s title: ” On the Streets of America: Human Rights Abuses in Ferguson.”

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“according to data provided to Amnesty International by the St. Louis County Police Department, in the 12 days following the death of Michael Brown, 172 arrests were made in the Ferguson protest zone. The arrest data shows that 132 people were arrested solely for refusal to disperse, 21 for burglary related charges, and four for assaulting police officers.”

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Study: Hand Sanitizers, French Fries Don’t Mix Well With BPA-Coated Receipts

A new study by researchers at the University of Missouri in Columbia reveals that people who used hand sanitizers, handled cash-register receipts and then ate French fries were quickly exposed to high levels of bisphenol A (BPA).

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Published on Wednesday, the Missouri study is the first to suggest that touching receipts coated with BPA after using hand sanitizer and then eating greasy foods such as French fries can actually result in higher levels of the chemical being absorbed into the body. Previous research into BPA looked at direct exposure via food and after passage through the intestinal system.

“The chemicals used to make hand sanitizers, soaps, lotions, and sunscreen degrade the skin’s ability to act as a barrier and so act as skin penetration enhancers,” said Frederick vom Saal, Ph.D., a biological sciences professor at the university.

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