- UN to declare famine in parts of Somalia – Africa – Al Jazeera English
- In all, more than 10 million people are affected and need emergency help, including 2.85 million in Somalia, where one in three children is suffering from malnutrition, the UN said.
- Famine is defined as a mortality rate of more than two people per 10,000 per day and muscle wasting rates of above 30 per cent in children under five years old across an entire region, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
- Restaurant Can Be Sued For Serving Meat To Vegetarians
- The customers were devout Hindus. They did not eat meat for religious reasons, so they made sure to ask Moghul Express several times whether the samosas had meat in them. The person taking their order told them Moghul Express didn’t even make meat samosas…
- …a New Jersey Appellate Court decided to allow the suit to go forward. This does not mean that the suit will be successful. It just means that the three-person Superior Court found that the plaintiff’s case met the basic prima facie qualifications for it to proceed.
- Obama backs “Gang of Six” deficit plan – Americas – Al Jazeera English
- The US president has announced his support for a bipartisan deficit-reduction proposal aimed at averting a debt default, saying time was running out for an agreement to raise the US borrowing limit.
- Barack Obama said the ambitious budget plan brought forward on Tuesday by the “Gang of Six” group of senators could provide new ideas for breaking the impasse in Congress over raising the federal government’s credit limit by August 2.
- He said the proposal was broadly consistent with his approach on reducing debt and deficits. Obama urged congressional leaders of both parties to start discussing it.
- Arrest of ex-CIA lawyer sought over drone use – Central
- Human rights lawyers in the UK and Pakistan are seeking the arrest of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) former legal director for approving drone strikes that killed hundreds of people.
- How William Shatner Got Banned From Google
- …took to the social networking site early, and has even been sending personal greetings to each of his new followers. But all that politeness is precisely why he was banned from the site for a bit.
- The personal messages, in their bulk, were read by Google ’s automatic spam filter as a threat, and his account was suspended.
- …his account has been cleared and is up and running again. It has also been rumored that fans reporting his account as a possible impostor is what did it in in the first place. Google is still a baby, though, so things like these will probably continue and be fixed through trial and error.
- How noun and verb shortages could predict the next stock market crash | io9 • by Alasdair Wilkins
- When a stock market bubble is about to burst, financial experts start using all the same words to describe what’s going on, even if – especially if – those words are positive. …
- That’s the finding of computer scientists at University College Dublin, who went through 18,000 articles by the Financial Times, New York Times, and the BBC…
- Wild Parrots Get Names From Parents | Wired: Science • by Danielle Venton
- Before a green-rumped parrotlet is even able to chirp and squawk, mom and dad teach it a distinct series of sounds used by parrots to recognize a specific individual. …
- Among other animals known to imitate the sounds of others and give each other unique names are dolphins and humans (and, possibly, whales.) Like humans and dolphins, parrots are highly social. Using names makes it easier to keep track of relationships and individuals. …
- “One developmental milestone is when infants begin to relate adult sound patterns to specific meanings… an individual’s own name is one of the earliest adult words for which infants show evidence of acoustic pattern recognition. Our study suggests that at least a moderately convergent process may occur in parrots.”
- Solar-Charged Nanotube Fuel May Replace Batteries | Wired: Science • Ars Technica by Yun Xie
- …photoactive molecules could be the ideal solar fuel, as the right material should be transportable, affordable, and rechargeable.
- …tetracarbonly-diruthenium fulvalene, requires the use of ruthenium, which is rare and expensive. Furthermore, the ruthenium compound has a volumetric energy density (watt-hours per liter) that is several times smaller than that of a standard lithium-ion battery.
- Alexie Kolpak and Jeffrey Grossman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology propose a…design [that] combines an organic photoactive molecule, azobenzene, with the ever-popular carbon nanotube.
- …there are potential drawbacks, and the fact that they haven’t actually created the substance isn’t even the most substantial.
[My bookmarks live at delicious.com/camryl. In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. Also, signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
The Of interest (Tue, Jul 19th, 12pm) by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.