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.
This Day in History
Galveston hurricane kills thousands; President Gerald Ford pardons Richard Nixon; Nazis begin Leningrad siege during World War II; Comedian Sid Caesar born; Original ‘Star Trek’ premieres on TV.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.
Breakfast News
David Cameron faces scrutiny over drone strikes against Britons in Syria
David Cameron is facing questions over Britain’s decision to follow the US model of drone strikes after the prime minister confirmed that the government had authorised an unprecedented aerial strike in Syria that killed two Britons fighting alongside Islamic State (Isis).
Speaking to the Commons on its first day back after the summer break, Cameron justified the strikes on the grounds that Reyaad Khan, a 21-year-old from Cardiff, who had featured in a prominent Isis recruiting video last year, represented a “clear and present danger”.
Two other Isis fighters were killed in the attack on the Syrian city of Raqqa on 21 August, the first time that a UK prime minister has authorised the targeting of a UK citizen by an unmanned aerial drone outside a formal conflict. One of them, Ruhul Amin, 26, was also British. A third Briton, Junaid Hussain, 21, was killed by a separate US airstrike three days later as part of a joint operation.
We asked all 22 presidential candidates to define a US refugee policy. Few had clear answers
As Europe struggles to host the millions of refugees who have fled war-torn Syria in particular, the image of Kurdi has posed a fundamental question to America: should the US open its borders to more?
Last week, the Guardian contacted the campaigns of every candidate for the White House – 17 Republicans and five Democrats – to ask two questions. Should the US be accepting more refugees? And, as president, how would each candidate define US policy toward those seeking asylum from war-torn and impoverished countries?
But even as presidential candidates offer foreign policy pitches through a lens of moral leadership, just one of 22 contenders – former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley – said unequivocally that the US should take in more refugees and put forward a specific number. In a statement issued on Thursday, the Democrat called on the government to accept 65,000 refugees from Syria over the next year.
Europe plans to house additional 120,000 refugees
FRANCE’S President Francois Hollande has announced that his country will take in 24,000 refugees over the next two years, while it is understood Germany will take 31,000 additional people under a European plan which is strongly opposed by Hungary.
The figure revealed by the French leader yesterday represents France’s share of a European proposal to relocate 120,000 refugees. European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, is due to unveil new proposals tomorrow.
European Union (EU) officials have said Juncker will propose adding 120,000 people to be relocated on top of a group of 40,000 the commission previously proposed relocating.
Students’ return to school is marred by renewed segregation across US
Millions of students around the US have started autumn with familiar rituals: waiting for absent teachers, flipping through outdated books and watching their peers fall behind in strained, segregated schools that experts warn represent a slow-burning crisis neglected by leaders.
Little has changed since a 2014 report concluded that 60 years after the supreme court declared segregation unconstitutional, major regions of the US have turned away from integration toward deeper inequality, said Gary Orfield, a UCLA professor and co-author of that paper.
The “substantial majority” of black and Latino students are in schools segregated by race and poverty, Orfield said. Such students are being primed by struggling schools for “a downward spiral” in a society that increasingly demands college diplomas.
Schools tighten grip on restrictive dress codes – and students are fed up
Across the United States, kids will return to school to see longer list of rules, yet it isn’t the codes that are most problematic – punishments don’t fit the complaints
It’s not just homework that has some young people dreading going back to school. As students file into their classes this month, there’s a whole new world of worry for young people: yoga pants. And shorts. And off-the-shoulder tops, midriff-bearing shirts, and skirts that don’t pass the “fingertip test”.
The list of banned clothing items in high schools seems to get longer every year – and the more restrictive dress codes get, the angrier students grow. This year, hundreds of young women at high schools across the United States are protesting the dress codes nearly as quickly as they are announced. [..]
But it’s not just the dress codes that are problematic; the punishment for transgressors has also become increasingly severe.
Stonehenge ‘on steroids’ found 2 miles away
Stonehenge, the world-renowned circle of stone columns in southern England, may have had a brother.
A much bigger, older brother.
University of Bradford researchers announced Monday that they had discovered a monument of about 100 stones covering several acres thought to have been built around 4,500 years ago.
The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project used remote-sensing technologies to discover the monument, which is near Durrington Walls, also known as “superhenge.” Stonehenge, which is believed to have been completed 3,500 years ago, is about 2 miles away.
The farthest known galaxy is 13.2 billion years old
Scientists have long reckoned that the first galaxies came into being roughly 500 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang, but finding these ancient celestial bodies is tricky when their light is so faint that even many specialized tools aren’t up to the job. However, researchers have managed to spot a galaxy so old that it’s making them question the established timeline for the universe. They’ve determined that the recently discovered EGS8p7 galaxy is a whopping 13.2 billion years old, making it both the farthest known galaxy to date and just 600 million years younger than the universe as we know it. Theoretically, it shouldn’t be possible to see the galaxy at all — in EGS8p7’s era, space was supposed to be full of neutral hydrogen clouds that absorbed radiation and made galaxies invisible to later observers.
Rise of the alternative funeral: beaches, buses and anything but black
The traditionally sombre funeral is being challenged by a surge in popularity for so-called destination funerals held in gardens, sports venues and beauty spots, research suggests.
Mourners are likely to dispense with the traditional hearse, choosing buses, motorbikes, horse-drawn carriages and even white vans instead, according to the research carried out among Co-operative Funeralcare’s 2,500 funeral directors, and a separate poll of 2,000 UK adults.
Nearly half (49%) of Co-op funeral directors said they had arranged a service in a location other than a church or a crematorium in the last 12 months. More than a third of adults (37%) said they would consider an alternative location for their own sendoff.
Locations mooted included a lake or river (25%), the countryside (20%), at home or in the garden (17%), at a beach or out at sea (20%).
The Co-op said the shift away from sombre tributes was also being reflected in the clothes being worn by funeral attendees. A quarter of respondents said they would like their funeral guests to wear anything but black, and nearly three-quarters (72%) of funeral directors said they had arranged services in the last year where this was the case.
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Must Read Blog Posts
Police Dogs’ Lives Don’t Matter? 12 Police Dogs Died Of Heat Exhaustion In 2015 Kit O’Connell, Community @ ShadowProof
Hillary Clinton Just Picked Sides With the Democrats’ Warren Wing Against the Rubin Wing David Dayen, The Intercept
Even Millionaire Workers Like Tom Brady Need Solidarity emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
Pope Francis’s hip new take on abortion is anything but Jon Green, AMERICAblog
I’m a leftist, and I’m not voting for Bernie Raghav Sharma, AMERICAblog
More Experts Realizing That The TPP Is A Horrible And Dangerous Deal On Copyright Mike Masnick, Techdirt
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