Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, January 19, 2015
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time. Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - respect is due.
This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Father and Son by Yusef Islam
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Top News |
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Report highlights plight of DRC's 'cobalt children'
By (Al Jazeera)
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Children as young as seven are being sent down dangerous mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to extract highly valued cobalt for batteries to power the world's electronic devices.
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After Congolese children and adults risk their lives in the mines, cobalt is then sold to Chinese and South Korean battery manufacturers who supply major tech and car companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, and Volkswagen, it said.
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"It is difficult to afford the school fees, it is hard to afford food. We work because we have to - because there are no jobs. Give us jobs and we'll look after our children properly." Francois was quoted as saying.
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Poulsen said it was up to the major Western companies to take responsibility for the exploitation of the Congolese miners.
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Apple board argues against shareholder diversity proposal
By Alex Hern
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The motion, proposed by the Apple shareholder Antonio Avian Maldonado II, would require the board of directors to “adopt an accelerated recruitment policy” if it were voted in by a majority of shareholders.
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The proposal, which was revealed in Apple’s proxy statement released in the run-up to next week’s first quarter results for the 2016 financial year, was not welcomed by Apple’s board, which has recommended shareholders vote against it.
“This proposal would require the board to adopt an accelerated recruitment policy for increasing diversity among senior management and the board. We believe that the proposal is unduly burdensome and not necessary because Apple has demonstrated to shareholders its commitment to inclusion and diversity, which are core values for our company,” the board said in its advice to shareholders.
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Apple publishes statistics about the diversity of its employees, revealing that in 2015, 54% of its US workforce was white, 18% asian, 11% hispanic and 8% black. In “leadership” roles, however, 63% of employees are white, 21% are asian, 6% are hispanic and just 3% are black, and Apple’s executive team is overwhelmingly made up of white men.
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Tax evasion impacts country credit ratings and lending costs says new study
By (ScienceDaily)
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High levels of tax evasion are linked to higher interest rates and can be a predictor of a country's credit risk, according to a new study led by the University of East Anglia (UEA).
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Prof Markellos said: "Given the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in Europe, any new findings about the drivers of country credit ratings and costs of debt are particularly valuable. Tax evasion harms the ability of a country to raise cheap debt in the international financial markets. This in turn can have damaging effects across the economy, including public spend and services, corporate investments, jobs, price levels, availability and cost of mortgages and consumer debt.
"In modern economies, everything is strongly related to the creditworthiness of the country you live in. If someone is not paying taxes, they are not only free-riding on public services but they are ultimately hurting the credit score of others."
Prof Schneider added: "Those countries involved in the debt crisis in recent years have all had a high level of tax evasion, suggesting that this is likely to be part of the problem and of the solution. However, we should not ignore the possibility that stamping out tax evasion may also have negative side-effects for vulnerable parts of society and the economy, especially during times of crisis."
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Fourth industrial revolution set to benefit richest, UBS report says
By Jill Treanor
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. . .
Axel Weber, the chairman of UBS, said: “Inequality increases not just between developed and developing and emerging countries. It’s also within our society. It will have an impact not only between the rich and the poor but also the young and the old.”
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The theme of this year’s gathering of business leaders and policymakers in Davos is the introduction of new technology. The WEF organisers have already predicted that 7 million jobs could go in five years, with women losing out the most.
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“Many labour-intensive firms should be able to boost profit margins as they substitute costly workers for cheaper robots or intelligent software ... For nations, the largest gains from the fourth industrial revolution are likely to be captured by those with the most flexible economies, adding a further incentive for governments to trim red tape and barriers to business.
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“Automation will continue to put downward pressure on the wages of the low skilled and is starting to impinge on the employment prospects of middle-skilled workers. By contrast, the potential returns to highly skilled and more adaptable workers are increasing.”
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International |
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Turkey Accuses Scientists of Supporting Terrorism
By Quirin Schiermeier
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Turkey’s government has previously clamped down on scientists and students who question its policies, imprisoned scientists charged with terrorism offenses, and restricted the freedom of funding agencies and scientific academies. But the number of arrests and investigations makes the current episode one of the larger Turkish attacks on freedom of expression in recent years, prompting outrage among human-rights advocates.
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Scientists had hoped for more liberal policies after parliamentary elections last June stripped Erdoan’s increasingly repressive Justice and Development Party (AKP) of an outright majority — but the president re-established his party’s grip after a second round of elections in
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“As academics and researchers of this country, we will not be a party to this crime,” signatories declared. Several hundred western scientists and intellectuals, including linguist Noam Chomsky and gender theorist Judith Butler, have also publicly supported the petition.
In an January 12 speech (made in the wake of terrorist attacks in Istanbul) Erdoan accused signatories of spreading and supporting Kurdish terrorist propaganda and undermining Turkey’s national security. “I call upon all our institutions: everyone who benefits from this state but is now an enemy of the state must be punished without further delay,” he said.
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USA |
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Study: End-of-Life Care in US Is About Average
By Kevin Drum
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Here's a cheeful headline over at Wonkblog:
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The U.S. is not as bad at end-of-life care as most people think
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Oddly enough, this article bothers me not for any personal reasons, but because it's the second time in the last few months that I've seen a disturbing phenomenon: reporting of scientific papers that passes along the author's spin uncritically. We saw this recently with the Case/Deaton paper, which was widely reported as showing a specifically middle-aged problem even though that's not what the paper demonstrated. But Case and Deaton spun it that way, so that's what showed up everywhere. This time it's a paper that shows only a bit of modestly good news on the end-of-life front, but it's getting reported as a mythbusting finding because that's how one of the authors is spinning it.
In this case, there's another piece of badly misleading data: that the US spends about as much on end-of-life care as other countries. But the study includes only hospital costs, which are obviously lower in the US if we hospitalize less than other countries. What's more, the study also omits physician costs in the US. If that were included, and if hospice costs were included, US spending would look a lot higher.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
. . .
Hearing Bob Dylan for the first time changed his life. The 18-year-old Georgiou began playing London coffeehouses under the name Cat Stevens and penning future classics like "The First Cut Is the Deepest." A case of tuberculosis in 1968 nearly killed him, but his career exploded in 1970 when "Father and Son" and "Wild World" hit radio. It was the era of the sensitive singer-songwriter, and Stevens fit right in on the airwaves next to James Taylor and Carly Simon.
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Everything changed one day in 1976, when Stevens went for a swim in the ocean near Malibu. As he tried to swim back to shore, he realized the current was too strong to fight, and after struggling for a time he found himself on the verge of drowning. "I didn't have any strength left," says Yusuf. "There was only one place to go, and that was God. I never doubted God's existence, but I never called on him because everything had seemed all right in my life. This was life-and-death."
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Within two years, Cat Stevens had become Yusuf Islam. He devoted himself to Allah, deciding all forms of music were against the faith. He walked away from a record contract and sold all of his guitars. His sole income came from publishing, but he gave away royalties from any song he declared anti-God: "Anything that encouraged love without marriage or was too specific in the sexual region went." It amounted to about 40 percent of his catalog. "Take 'The Boy With a Moon and Star on His Head.' You might think it's OK, but the guy makes love to a farmer's daughter on the way to his wedding. So, no. . . ." . . . Yusuf quietly began gigging around Europe and played a couple of tiny showcases in America. He didn't face a big crowd until Jon Stewart invited him to appear at 2010's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Yusuf was taking part in a hilarious bit – he performed "Peace Train" while Ozzy Osbourne performed "Crazy Train" – but it also reignited a controversy that's been haunting Yusuf for a quarter-century.
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After the Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against author Salman Rushdie in 1989, Yusuf had told a crowd at London's Kingston University that "[Rushdie] must be killed. The Quran makes it clear: If someone defames the prophet, then he must die." Yusuf later partially walked the comments back, but the issue refused to die. When Rushdie heard about Yusuf goofing around with Osbourne, he phoned Stewart in a huff. "It became very clear to me that [Yusuf] is straddling two worlds in a very difficult way," Stewart said two years ago. "I wouldn't have done [the bit], I don't think, if I had known that. . . . Death for free speech is a deal-breaker."
Back to what's happening:
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Environmental |
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Overfishing causing global catches to fall three times faster than estimated
By Damian Carrington
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The official catch data, provided by nations to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), rarely includes small-scale, sport or illegal fishing and does not count fish discarded at sea. To provide a better estimate, more than 400 researchers around the world spent a decade finding other data to fill in the gaps.
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“Our results differ very strongly from those of the FAO,” said Prof Daniel Pauly, at the University of British Columbia in Canada and who led the work. “Our results indicate that the decline is very strong and is not due to countries fishing less. It is due to countries having fished too much and having exhausted one fishery after another.”
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But Pauly said: “I expect a continued decline because I don’t expect countries to realise the need to rebuild stocks. I don’t see African countries, for example, rebuilding their stocks, or being allowed to by the foreign fleets that are working there, because the pressure to continue to fish is very strong. We know how to fix this problem but whether we do it or not depends on conditions that are difficult.”
A 2015 study showed nearly 500 Chinese fishing vessels operating off west Africa, with scores of cases of illegal fishing, according to Greenpeace. Large European vessels also operate in the region. In April 2015, the EU threatened Thailand with a trade ban over illegal fishing, while in September, Greenpeace said it had identified significant pirate fishing for tuna in the Pacific.
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Bauxite in Malaysia: The environmental cost of mining
By (BBC)
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. . .
It is an aluminium ore and the world's main source of aluminium. . . .
The little country roads winding through the hills were suddenly clogged with huge lorries carrying the ore to the port in Kuantan. The rivers ran red with bauxite sediment, staining the sea as they flowed out. Some of the mines had licences; many did not.
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The lesson has perhaps been learned. The federal government has ordered a halt to all mining while it rethinks the regulation of the industry. Seven people have been detained on suspicion of corruption. But the damage to the environment and future health risks remain unknown, and worrying. . . .
Che Long bin Che Ali is one of the residents in the bauxite zone who refused to lease out his land, where he cultivates fruit trees. He worries about the impact on the health of future generations.
But his house is right next to one of the roads used by the ore lorries; everything inside and outside his home was covered by a thick film of red dust, and the trees started to die.
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Science and Health |
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Your home is full of creepy crawlies
By Suzanne Jacobs
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Remember that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where Willie had to wade through a tunnel of insects in order to save Indie and Shorty and ended up covered in bugs, while you ended up mildly traumatized? Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news: Your house doesn’t look like that. The bad news: It is covered in bugs.
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The researchers didn’t look behind walls, under heavy furniture, or in drawers and cabinets. And they only sampled within two meters of the entrances of attics and crawl spaces (you know, because ghosts). So there’s a good chance that their bug count is short.
That said, here are some of the most prominent interlopers: Cobweb spiders, carpet beetles, gall midge flies, and ants showed up in every home. Book lice and dark-winged fungus gnats showed up in 98 percent and 96 percent of the homes, respectively. In all, there were 12 families of arthropods that showed up in at least 80 percent of homes. Here are some representative pictures to fuel your nightmares: . . .
Fortunately, a lot of the creepy crawlies that the researchers found were harmless, while the more “pestiferous” kinds that we usually associate with indoor buggery were much less prevalent. German cockroaches, for example, were only in 6 percent of the homes; subterranean termites in 28 percent; fleas in 10 percent; and bed bugs in zero.
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Technology |
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It's a 3-D printer, but not as we know it
By (ScienceDaily)
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3D printing techniques have quickly become some of the most widely used tools to rapidly design and build new components. A team of engineers at the University of Bristol has developed a new type of 3D printing that can print composite materials, which are used in many high performance products such as tennis rackets, golf clubs and aeroplanes. This technology will soon enable a much greater range of things to be 3D printed at home and at low-cost.
The study published in Smart Materials and Structures creates and demonstrates a novel method in which ultrasonic waves are used to carefully position millions of tiny reinforcement fibres as part of the 3D printing process. The fibres are formed into a microscopic reinforcement framework that gives the material strength. This microstructure is then set in place using a focused laser beam, which locally cures the epoxy resin and then prints the object.
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This approach allows the realisation of complex fibrous architectures within a 3D printed object. The versatile nature of the ultrasonic manipulation technique also enables a wide-range of particle materials, shapes and sizes to be assembled, leading to the creation of a new generation of fibrous reinforced composites that can be 3D printed.
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Cultural |
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Aztec Gold: Watch The History And Science Of Popcorn
By Adam Cole
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Popcorn is a truly ancient snack. Archaeologists have uncovered popcorn kernels that are 4,000 years old. They were so well-preserved, they could still pop.
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"It acts as a pressure cooker," says David Jackson, a food scientist at the University of Nebraska. He says the durable kernel keeps water and starch sealed inside. When a kernel is heated, the starch liquefies and the pressure builds until the seed coat breaks.
"The pressure cooker essentially fails, and it explodes outward into a popped kernel," Jackson says.
The liquefied starch froths outward, cooling and solidifying in a fraction of a second. If you look at a popped kernel under the microscope, you can actually see the bubbles that were formed by the expanding steam. That's why popcorn is so light and fluffy — it's made of bubbles.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already.