The Breakfast Club (Redemption)

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

President Ronald Reagan born; Hillary Clinton runs for the U.S. Senate; Britain’s King George VI dies; baseball legend Babe Ruth and reggae superstar Bob Marley born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

Bob Marley

Breakfast News

Nearly 200 images released by US military depict Bush-era detainee abuse

Bruises, reddened marks and bandaged body parts featured in nearly 200 images of US detainee abuse that the Pentagon was forced to release on Friday, the result of a court battle that has lasted more than a decade.

While the American Civil Liberties Union – which has fought for the publication of the photos of Bush-era torture in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2003 – hailed the belated disclosure, it pledged to keep fighting for approximately 1,800 more images the Pentagon continues to withhold, which it believes documents far more graphic detainee torture.

The photos are part of a cache relevant to investigations of detainee abuse at two dozen US military sites around Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps Guantánamo Bay. Many showed detainees in states of undress having their bodies inspected, with rulers and coins held up for comparison and placement of injuries.

In November, Ashton Carter, the US defense secretary, cleared the way to release 198 of the images after a federal judge rejected longstanding government attempts to suppress the entire cache.

Twitter deletes 125,000 Isis accounts and expands anti-terror teams

Twitter has deleted more than 125,000 accounts linked to terrorists since mid-2015, the company announced, offering some of the most detailed insight yet of how Silicon Valley is collaborating with western governments in its fight against Islamic State.

The social media company is relying on a mix of human judgment and technology, developing teams of specialists in the US and Ireland that comb through thousands of suspect accounts.

Isis has also been linked to automated accounts, or “bots”, that churn out extremist rhetoric. These automated accounts can sometimes be caught with tools normally used to fight spam.

“We condemn the use of Twitter to promote violent terrorism,” the company said in a statement on 5 February. “This type of behavior, or any violent threats, is not permitted on our service.”

Taiwan struck by magnitude 6.4 earthquake, trapping dozens in rubble

A powerful earthquake has struck Taiwan near the southern city of Tainan, with dozens feared trapped under a collapsed apartment block.

Tainan city government said 221 people had been rescued, 154 had been hospitalised, and two people were in critical condition after the quake.

Emergency officials said a 10-day-old infant, a 55-year-old woman and a 50-year-old man died in the earthquake. Taiwan’s official news agency said the infant and the man were pulled out of a 17-storey Wei Guan residential building and that both were later declared dead.

The agency said 256 people were believed to have been living in 92 households.

The US Geological Survey recorded powerful tremors of 6.4 magnitude early on Saturday morning local time, following initial reports of a 6.7 magnitude earthquake.

Aid agencies scramble as 20,000 Syrians reach Turkish border crossing

Turkey’s main border crossings with north-west Syria remain closed for a second day as tens of thousands of refugees flee a Russian bombardment and a ground offensive by pro-government groups that has all but besieged Aleppo.

Aid agencies in southern Turkey were scrambling to deliver food and shelter to whole communities that had fled the most sustained attack of the five-year war, with some arrivals claiming their towns and villages had been decimated by indiscriminate bombing.

The United Nations estimated that 20,000 people had gathered at the Bab al-Salam border crossing. Most are believed to be among the poorest residents of northern Syria, who had remained behind throughout a conflict that had emptied out the countryside between Aleppo and the border, and whittled away the rebel-held east of the city itself.

The regime push marks one of the most decisive phases of the war, and comes after three years of setbacks in the north, in which most of Aleppo and Idlib provinces had fallen from the grasp of Damascus.

Iowa Democratic party altered precinct’s caucus results during chaotic night

In the Iowa Democratic party’s chaotic attempt to report caucus results on Monday night, the results in at least one precinct were unilaterally changed by the party as it attempted to deal with the culmination of a rushed and imperfect process overseeing the first-in-the-nation nominating contest.

In Grinnell Ward 1, the precinct where elite liberal arts college Grinnell College is located, 19 delegates were awarded to Bernie Sanders and seven were awarded to Hillary Clinton on caucus night. However, the Iowa Democratic party decided to shift one delegate from Sanders to Clinton on the night and did not notify precinct secretary J Pablo Silva that they had done so. Silva only discovered that this happened the next day, when checking the precinct results in other parts of the county.

The shift of one delegate at a county convention level would not have significantly affected the ultimate outcome of the caucus, but rather, it raises questions aboutthe Iowa Democratic party’s management of caucus night.

Noaa and Nasa team up to investigate strongest El Niño on record

America’s two leading climate science agencies are conducting an unprecedented survey via land, sea and air to investigate the current El Niño event and better understand its impact on weather systems that have brought both parched and soaking conditions to North America.

The project, which will conclude in March, will deploy resources from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and Nasa to analyze one of the strongest El Niños on record. El Niño is a periodic phenomenon in which parts of the eastern Pacific warm, causing a ripple effect for weather around the world.

Noaa’s Gulfstream IV research plane and its ship Ronald H Brown will collect data from the vast stretch of the Pacific ocean where El Niño climate events are spawned. Nasa will deploy its Global Hawk unmanned aircraft, which is able to fly at 65,000ft for 30 hours at a time.