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.
AP’s Today in History for March 13th
Uncle Sam cartoon debuts; Law prohibiting teaching evolution goes into effect; Deadly rampage at Scottish elementary school; Brigadoon opens on Broadway. (March 13)
Breakfast Tune Big Banjo From Broadway by Roger Sprung on 1963-64 Folkways LP
Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below
ExoMars: ‘giant nose’ to sniff out life on Mars prepares for launch
Robin McKie, The Guardian
Space engineers are making final preparations for the launch of a robot spacecraft designed to sniff out signs of life on Mars. The probe, ExoMars 2016 – the first of a two-phase exploration of the Red Planet by European and Russian scientists – is scheduled to be blasted into space on a Proton rocket from Baikonour cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 0931 GMT on Monday.
The spacecraft consists of a module called Schiaparelli that will test heat shields and parachutes in preparation for future probe landings on Mars and a second main component, the Trace Gas Orbiter or TGO, that will analyse the planet’s atmosphere. In particular it will seek out the presence of the gas methane which, on Earth, is produced by living organisms.
“Essentially our spacecraft is a giant nose in the sky,” said Jorge Vago, an ExoMars project scientist based with the European Space Agency (Esa). “We are going to use it to sniff out the presence of methane on Mars and determine if it is being produced by biological processes.” …
Malware Suspected in Bangladesh Bank Heist
Reuters
Investigators suspect unknown hackers installed malware in the Bangladesh central bank’s computer systems and watched, probably for weeks, for how to go about withdrawing money from its U.S. account, two bank officials briefed on the matter said on Friday.
More than a month after hackers breached Bangladesh Bank’s systems and attempted to steal nearly $1 billion from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, cyber security experts are trying to find out how the hackers got in.
FireEye Inc’s Mandiant forensics division is helping investigate the cyber heist, which netted hackers more than $80 million before it was uncovered. …
Big Food Illegally Hid Funders of Campaign to Kill GMO-Labeling Effort, Judge Rules
Tamar Haspel, Fortune
The nation’s largest food industry group broke the “spirit and letter” of the law when it concealed the backers of a multimillion dollar campaign to kill a food-labeling initiative, a state of Washington Superior Court judge ruled on Friday.
The pre-trial ruling, by Thurston County Superior Court Judge Anne Hirsch, found that the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association, the food industry group, violated the state’s campaign finance disclosure laws when it tried to hide the identities of the corporate funders. GMA had waged a fight against Washington’s 2013 food-labeling initiative, with $11 million in donations from PepsiCo, Nestle and Coca Cola.
The state Initiative 522, which would have required food labels for genetically modified ingredients, was narrowly defeated.
Go humans: Lee Sedol scores first victory against supercomputer
Agence France-Presse in Seoul
A South Korean grandmaster of the ancient Chinese board game Go has scored his first win over a Google-developed supercomputer, a surprise victory after three humiliating defeats in a high-profile showdown between man and machine.
Lee Sedol thrashed AlphaGo after a nail-biting match that lasted for nearly five hours on Sunday in Seoul – the fourth of the best-of-five series in which the computer clinched a 3-0 victory on Saturday.
Lee struggled in the early phase of the fourth match but gained a lead towards the end, eventually prompting AlphaGo to resign. …
- Taking Action Against Austerity, Greek Activists Block Home Foreclosures
Michael Nevradakis
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Lost goldfish case in Norway closer to being solved
HELSINKI (AP) — Norwegian police have bigger fish to fry so they’ve allowed a fellow officer to take home a goldfish that had been waiting for its rightful owner in a jam jar at the local police station.
Bodo Police spokesman Tommy Bech says investigators “were very close to solving” the case of the lost goldfish, found abandoned Saturday in a shopping bag at a soccer stadium in the northwestern town.
Officers had felt it their duty to look after the fish until the owner was found, Bech said Monday. He said the fish had been “well looked after.”
Bech said that Bodo police were now focusing on other issues and declined to give further details about the goldfish.