The Breakfast Club (Wandering)

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

Civil rights marchers attacked in Selma, Alabama; Nazi Germany’s dictator Adolf Hitler sends troops into the demilitarized Rhineland; Movie director Stanley Kubrick dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

Breakfast News

Five Years After Fukushima, ‘No End in Sight’ to Ecological Fallout

The environmental impacts of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are already becoming apparent, according to a new analysis from Greenpeace Japan, and for humans and other living things in the region, there is “no end in sight” to the ecological fallout.

The report warns that these impacts—which include mutations in trees, DNA-damaged worms, and radiation-contaminated mountain watersheds—will last “decades to centuries.” The conclusion is culled from a large body of independent scientific research on impacted areas in the Fukushima region, as well as investigations by Greenpeace radiation specialists over the past five years.

UK sends boats to Aegean Sea ahead of EU migrant crisis summit

The British military is deploying boats and a helicopter to the Aegean Sea as part of stepped up NATO efforts to stop smugglers and stem the flow of migrants heading to Europe.

The move comes as leaders are set to meet at an EU-Turkey summit in Brussels on Monday to discuss the region’s migration crisis.

“We’ve got to break the business model of the criminal smugglers and stop the desperate flow of people crammed into makeshift vessels from embarking on a fruitless and perilous journey,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement announcing the deployment of the RFA Mounts Bay, two cutters and a Wildcat helicopter.

The vessels will participate in an operation “that aims to reduce the flow of migrants from Turkey to Europe” by spotting smugglers and sharing information with the Turkish coast guard, the statement said.

Iran Says Court Sentences Billionaire To Death For Embezzlement

A court in Iran has sentenced to death Iranian businessman Babak Zanjani and two accomplices for embezzlement, the judiciary said on Sunday, in a case widely watched due to the billionaire’s prominent role in helping the government evade oil sanctions.

The Islamic court convicted the defendants of “spreading corruption on earth”, a capital offense, and ordered them to repay funds embezzled from, among others, state-run National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said on live television.

The defendants can appeal against the ruling.

UN Human Rights Chief: FBI Could Unlock “Pandora’s Box” in Apple Case

The United Nations human rights chief on Friday warned that the U.S. government risks opening a “Pandora’s Box” if it successfully forces Apple to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the suspected San Bernardino shooters.

“Encryption and anonymity are needed as enablers of both freedom of expression and opinion, and the right to privacy,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement. “It is neither fanciful nor an exaggeration to say that, without encryption tools, lives may be endangered. In the worst cases, a government’s ability to break into its citizens’ phones may lead to the persecution of individuals who are simply exercising their fundamental human rights.”

“In order to address a security-related issue related to encryption in one case, the authorities risk unlocking a Pandora’s Box that could have extremely damaging implications for the human rights of many millions of people, including their physical and financial security,” he said.

Costco Just Gave Its Lowest-Paid Workers A Raise

Costco is going to start paying some of its workers more.

The big box store announced Thursday that it would raises minimum wages at its stores around the country by $1.50. The company’s lowest hourly wages will be between $13 and $13.50 and hour, up from $11.50 to $12 an hour, according to Bloomberg.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post.

The country’s minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009, but several other large corporations have raised wages for their workers recently. Both Walmart and McDonalds are among the companies with massive low-wage workforces that decided to raise wages in 2015.

Costco has about 117,000 workers, and it’s not clear if everyone is getting a raise, or just those making the minimum, per Bloomberg.

Jimmy Carter Says He No Longer Needs Cancer Treatments

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said on Sunday that he will no longer need treatment for melanoma, a type of skin cancer that had spread to his liver and brain, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper reported.

The 91-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner will continue to be observed by doctors, but will not need treatment with a promising immunotherapy drug that helps the body’s immune system target cancer cells, the newspaper said, quoting his nonprofit public policy center, the Carter Center.

A spokeswoman for the Carter Center told the newspaper in an email that if doctors find that the former president’s cancer returns, he will resume treatment.

The former president shared his news at a Sunday school class he teaches in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, the newspaper said, quoting Carter’s niece, Mandy Flynn.