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Of course the legalese can be hard to parse for the lay person, but fear not — here are some video primers on what the ruling means.
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When the Fashion and Design Council of the Philippines decided to revive its design tilt this year, it wanted to make sure of one thing: that the competition won’t end up like a beauty contest.
In beauty pageants, the beauty queen is stale news soon after the crown is transferred to a new winner, signaling the end of her year-long reign. “It ends there, and we don’t want that,” said FDCP president JC Buendia.
Ergo, the 20 finalists (10 for apparel and 10 for accessories), which were named recently, were asked to present a business plan along with the sketches of their contest collection. Fashion designers are artists who often don’t know how to run a business, Buendia said. The finalists will also receive mentoring from School of Fashion and the Arts to improve on their skills, he added.
…The finalists are paired with select communities who will produce for them a variety of raw fabrics and indigenous materials.
…Designers have long lamented the absence of a sustainable local fabric industry.
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Remembering Jeff Buckley on His 45th Birthday | Open Culture
The gifted guitarist, singer and songwriter Jeff Buckley would have turned 45 years old today. …To learn more about this remarkable artist you can watch the 2002 BBC documentary, Jeff Buckley: Everybody Here Wants You. (See below.) The one-hour film features rare footage of Buckley’s early performances and interviews, along with commentary by Jimmy Page, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde and many of the people who were close to Buckley…
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Bombing Continues in Sudan, Creating a Crisis | NYTimes Blog – Donatella Rovera
Once again, hundreds of thousands of civilians in Sudan are at risk of being caught in what could be another protracted war. Their own government is terrorizing them through aerial bombing while blocking food, medicine and other humanitarian aid from reaching them. And the situation may get worse unless the United Nations steps in.
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Parking datapoints of the day | Felix Salmon
…Chris McCahill and Norman Garrick took aerial photographs of New Haven, Hartford, and Cambridge, and started counting up the number of off-street parking spaces over time.There’s a general tendency, in American cities, for the number of parking spots to rise inexorably…Parking lots are — with only a handful of exceptions — the best possible way of destroying a city’s soul. …[And yet when one lives/drives in an area with too little parking, one cannot help but long for more. -L]
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French in Action: Cult Classic French Lessons from Yale | Open Culture • Dan Colman
The program follows the adventures of Robert Taylor, an American student, and Mireille Belleau, a young French woman. And each 30 minute episode provides a context for learning new words and expressions. (A couple of episodes generated a little controversy, we should note.) The show is conducted entirely in French.
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Women’s Health Policy Report: Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Challenge to Health Care Reform Law
In a surprise to lawyers on both sides, the court also agreed to hear arguments over whether the law’s Medicaid expansion is constitutional.
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Women’s Health Policy Report: Medical Students Receive Little Training on LGBT Issues
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Obama never secretly killed the public option. It’s a myth. – The Plum Line – The Washington Post
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Occupy Wall Street After 2 Months: A Scorecard – BusinessWeek
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Being Poor in America Really Sucks | Mother Jones – Kevin Drum
The chart on the right compares four big English-speaking countries on a single measure: vocabulary test scores of five-year-olds. You’d expect that children of highly educated parents would do well and children of poorly educated parents would do badly. And you’d be right. On average, the children of poorly educated parents have both genetic and environmental disadvantages, so it’s no surprise that they do worse than average.
But in the United States they do a lot worse. The Pew chart is normalized so that children of middle-educated parents score in the 50th percentile and other children are compared to that standard. In Canada, the least-advantaged kids manage to score at the 37th percentile. In the United States they score at only the 27th percentile.
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Buffett Says Investor Returns ‘Terrific’ as U.S. Workers Suffer – Businessweek
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…the fact that the Secret Service has found no connection to the Occupy movement hasn’t stopped Fox from calling him “the Occupy shooter.”
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Gallup polled 1,000 Americans and found 50 percent believe the federal government has a responsibility to make sure everyone has health coverage.
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Watch The NYPD Beat, Kick, and Bloody OWS Protester During Day of Action
Several members of the NYPD formed a circle to keep the protesters away while another group of officers held a protester down and took turns beating and kicking him. …
The NYPD has been roughing up and arresting both journalists and protesters all day. Journalists have reported that they are being told that their NYPD issued press credentials, which are supposed to allow them to be in the park, are no good.
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Aronowitz: Occupy Movement Needs Both Audacity and Long-March Strategy – Working In These Times
“The dismantling of Zucotti Park’s encampment by [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg’s riot police is another indication that the state resorts to violence when it can’t win the debate,” says Aronowitz…
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It’s really not complicated; the Fed is run by creditors…
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Women in the Air: Weekly Women’s History Image | About.com Women’s History
The history of women in the air begins in the late 18th century with hot air balloons, and continues into women flying in space.
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Senate Hearing Room Erupts Into Chant: ‘We Are the 99 Percent!’ | AFL-CIO NOW BLOG • Adele Stan
In a packed hearing room at the U.S. Senate, participants in a “Jobs, Not Cuts!” rally keynoted by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), erupted into the chant that has come to identify the Occupy movement: “We are the 99 percent!” Most of the chanters bore little resemblance to the stereotyped image of an Occupy protester–many were senior citizens, and the young people in the audience bore a distinctly clean-cut look.It all served to prove Sanders’ point that mainsteram American wants the wealthiest Americans to pay more taxes, and they want Congress not to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicate [sic].
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Tweet Forensics: Occupy v. Tea Party | Mother Jones • Julia Whitty
Here’s an interesting analysis…of the difference between Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party tweeters. The above image shows the OWS network. Here’s how it’s described on Marc Smith’s Flickr page:…As you can see, the OWS network is bigger, more diffuse, more active, and less centered on already established Twitter relationships. Basically, it’s more viral.
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Jay Smooth: How to Talk About Race, Take Two | The Pursuit of Harpyness • annajcook
In this TEDx talk, Jay flips the coin and talks about how to be an engaged receiver of critique over ideas and actions in the social justice sphere. While he doesn’t get into details about how to get beyond hearing initial feedback to a more give-and-take conversation, I do think his basic tenants of how not to be an ass are damn good reminders to us all….”We are not good despite our imperfections, it is the connection we maintain with our imperfections that allows us to be good …”[Links to Ill Doctrine, which reportedly doesn't have a transcript yet, but I bet the version on the TED site has a transcript. -L]
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The most common reasons for using birth control pills other than to prevent pregnancy were to reduce menstrual cramps and to regulate periods, which for some women can reduce menstrual-related migraines. Other women use the drugs to reduce bleeding from uterine fibroids or to control endometriosis, a condition that occurs when uterine tissues grow outside the uterus.
…the study comes amid debate over HHS’ decision to include contraception among the preventive health services that health plans must cover under the federal health reform law…
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Women’s Health Policy Report: Judge Suggests Ariz. Tax Credit Law Restricts Free Speech
Federal Judge Roslyn Silver on Wednesday signaled that she might rule against an Arizona law (HB 2384) prohibiting residents from claiming tax credits for donations to charitable organizations that directly or indirectly support abortion rights, the Yuma Sun reports. However, Silver said she would take the state’s arguments under advisement and decide at a later date whether to temporarily block the law while the legal case continues…
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NEWS BRIEF: Only 50 Percent of U.S. First-Time Mothers Receive Paid Leave : Ms Magazine Blog
Keep in mind, too, that these numbers are pre-recession. Many of the jobs lost [PDF] during the recession were middle-class jobs such as teachers and managers, which are relatively likely to provide paid leave for soon-to-be and new mothers. The jobs added during the recovery process have been largely low-wage, far less likely to offer such paid leave.
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Mega-Mom Michelle Duggar’s “Reproductive Choice?” | RH Reality Check
The idea that God created women for the specific purpose of being fruitful and multiplying is heavily promoted as part of the “Pro-Life” teachings among Evangelical Christian believers.
As a teenager, I was introduced to the Pro-Life movement via Randall Terry’s “Operation Rescue.” Led by charismatic Mr. Terry, our church staged a “rescue” at the Emma Goldman Clinic in Iowa City. I was horrified by the ministry’s literature which showed graphic pictures of butchered babies. How could anyone make a “choice” to murder their own tiny, precious pre-born baby? …
Quiverfull is mainly a women’s movement …it is older women teaching younger women that God’s best plan for their lives includes bearing a “quiver full” of children – training their sons to be “mighty warriors” in the battle for God’s Kingdom and their daughters to be “suitable help meets” for their future husbands.
[Quotes chapter and verse, literally, from the Bible and from Quiverfull leaders. -L]
Yes – of course, Michelle Duggar has a right to utilize her own womb however she likes. But, I don’t agree with Williams’ premise that Michelle Duggar’s choice to have 20 babies is “just another side of reproductive choice.”
[Well. I think *protecting her legal right* to have 20 babies is another side of reproductive choice. But I haven't heard that her rights are under attack, so... -L.]
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Commentary: Putting religious group’s campaign against contraception into context | McClatchy
In any other context, we would be shocked at the suggestion that an organization’s religious affiliation should take precedence over an individual’s health care needs. Unfortunately, we have become so accustomed to religious objections to women’s health needs that they can seem commonplace.
It is important to remember, however, that many laws — including those we consider core to America’s values — initially confronted religiously-grounded opposition.
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Stopping Police and DAs from Using Condoms to Convict Sex Workers — Feministe
…New York…permits the use of condoms as evidence of prostitution, resulting in their collection and confiscation from women who are detained by the police. This practice is an outright slap in the face to the decades of hard work that public health advocates have undertaken to increase safe sex, decrease HIV and create a positive shift in the cultural acceptance of condom use. This policy discourages a stigmatized and marginalized group of sexually active people from carrying the tools they need to be healthy and safe. And this occurs despite the fact that the New York City itself runs a free condom distribution program…
…police reports of arrested sex workers [have been listing] the possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution for some time. Many of the arrests were not of even sex workers, but, rather, incidents of profiling transgender individuals as sex workers — their personal condoms were confiscated and used as “evidence” of prostitution. …
A criminal record is a major hurdle to joining the mainstream job force. Many jobs require disclosure of crimes or out-and-out disqualify people who have such records. When hired despite their records, those with prostitution-related crimes on their record often face discrimination on the job; others encounter sexual harassment when arrests for prostitution are disclosed.
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Is Prepping a Patient “Assisting In An Abortion?” | RH Reality Check
The recent legal case of a group of anti-choice nurses who claim they had their rights violated when the hospital forced them to participate in performing abortions became a bit of a head-scratcher when both sides claimed the other was lying.
…the real issue might be that the nurses and the hospital have two entirely different definitions of “participating” in a procedure.
…to the nurses, being asked to have any contact with the women, even as much as taking a temperature or helping her down the hall once she has recovered, is “participating in an abortion procedure.”
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Women’s Health Policy Report: D.C. Officials Reject Budget Autonomy Bill Over Abortion Provision
Washington, D.C., officials on Wednesday came out in opposition to draft legislation that would grant the district budget autonomy in exchange for a permanent ban on using its own money to pay for abortion services for low-income women…
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In some of the best-documented cases to date, the study shows the elephant population in the Okapi Faunal Reserve – one of the last strongholds of forest elephants in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – saw a 50 per cent decline in the last decade due to civil war and ivory poaching, from 6,439 to 3,288. In other parks in eastern DRC, the decimation was even greater.
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Revolutionary ultrasonic nozzle that will change the way water cleans :: University of Southampton
Currently, industry uses excessive water, power and additives for cleaning. For example, it can take up to 100 tonnes of water to produce 1 tonne of clean wool after shearing. Many industrial processes also generate large quantities of contaminated run-off. The water from hosing down an abattoir represents a real health risk and cannot be allowed to enter the water supply. Purifying run-off is costly – each cubic metre of water used for cleaning in the nuclear industry can cost around £10,000 to subsequently treat.
Professor Tim Leighton and Dr Peter Birkin’s device works with cold water, minimal additives and consumes as much electrical power as a light bulb. Its application will be wide – licenses have already been sold to a number of industries to look at cleaning in food preparation, hospitals, manufacturing and the home.
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Astronomers find clouds of primordial gas from the early universe, just moments after Big Bang
For the first time, astronomers have found pristine clouds of the primordial gas that formed in the first few minutes after the Big Bang. The composition of the gas matches theoretical predictions, providing direct evidence in support of the modern cosmological explanation for the origins of elements in the universe.
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Discovery of two types of neutron stars points to two different classes of supernovae
evidence that neutron stars, which are produced when massive stars explode as supernovae, actually come in two distinct varieties. Their finding also suggests that each variety is produced by a different kind of supernova event.
Neutron stars are the last stage in the evolution of many massive stars. They represent the most extreme form of matter: the mass of a single neutron star exceeds that of the entire sun, but squeezed into a ball whose diameter is smaller than that of London.
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Lost city from ancient civilisation discovered in Libya — University of Leicester
…structures built by the Garamantes in what is now Libya’s south-western desert wastes – challenging prevailing views of this little-known ancient civilization.
The fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya has provided archaeologists with the opportunity to explore the country’s pre-Islamic heritage fully for the first time.
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UCSB Press Release: “‘Fishy Lawnmowers’ Help Save Pacific Corals “
Can fish save coral reefs from dying? UC Santa Barbara researchers have found one case where fish have helped coral reefs to recover from cyclones and predators.
…protection by parrotfish and surgeonfish that eat algae, along with the protection of reefs that shelter juvenile fish.
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Russia Mars probe considered lost: report
“All attempts to obtain telemetric information from the Phobos-Grunt probe and activate its command system have failed. The probe must be considered lost,” Interfax quoted a source in the Russian space sector as saying.
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Solar System May Have Lost Fifth Giant Planet | Wired Science | Wired.com
Astronomer David Nesvorny from the Southwest Research Institute in Texas believes that the solar system might have once contained a fifth gigantic planet, which was ejected deep into the galaxy in a moment of cosmic turmoil.
[Even stars have angst, okay? -L]
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BBC News – Why is Google in love with Bletchley Park?
Technology giant Google normally has its eyes fixed firmly on the future. But it has turned its attention to an old house in England to help preserve a slice of computing history. …
For reasons of national security, a veil of secrecy shrouded Bletchley Park. Only in the last 20 years has the extraordinary story of breaking the code of the German Enigma machine finally become well-known.
The secret work there had, it is believed, shortened the war by two years.
But the veil of secrecy came at a cost, not just to the physical fabric of the site, but also, some believe, to Britain and its ability to build on its achievements in computer technology.
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BBC News – Jupiter moon Europa ‘has shallow lakes’
Analysis of the moon’s surface suggests plumes of warmer water well up beneath its icy shell, melting and fracturing the outer layers.
The results, published in the journal Nature, predict that small lakes exist only 3km below the crust.
Any liquid water could represent a potential habitat for life.
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BBC News – Germany to set up neo-Nazi registry after ten murders
Hans-Peter Friedrich said the registry could be similar to one created for Islamist extremists after 9/11.
Germans are shocked that a suspected neo-Nazi cell went undetected for a decade during which it allegedly killed nine immigrants and a policewoman.
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Penn State, my final loss of faith – Guest Voices – The Washington Post
Think of the world our parents’ generation inherited. They inherited a country of boundless economic prosperity and the highest admiration overseas, produced by the hands of their mothers and fathers. They were safe. For most, they were endowed opportunities to succeed, to prosper, and build on their parents’ work.
For those of us in our 20s and early 30s, this is not the world we are inheriting.
We looked to Washington to lead us after September 11th. I remember telling my college roommates, in a spate of emotion, that I was thinking of enlisting in the military in the days after the attacks. I expected legions of us — at the orders of our leader — to do the same. But nobody asked us. Instead we were told to go shopping.
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New York Town Pulls Funds From Big Bank : NPR
Nearly a third of local residents are underwater on their mortgages, six times the state average. Mayor Wayne Hall says he heard story after story from local residents who tried to get banks to refinance their loans but couldn’t. Finally, Hall got fed up.
“Since Chase was bailed out like all the other banks by our money … then they could at least help our citizens out by modifying their loans,” Hall said. “So we decided that if they can’t help them, then we don’t need to keep our money there.”
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France summons Israeli envoy over Gaza attack – Middle East – Al Jazeera English
Paris summons Israel’s ambassador after French consul and his family were injured in a missile attack on the Gaza Strip.
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A Federalist Society dinner honoring Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas is getting some attention in the press because of the law firm sponsors.
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Imam Khalid Latif: A Muslim Wedding at Occupy Wall Street | Huffington Post – 16 Nov 2011
A lot of people will tell you that weddings are supposed to be about the bride. When I asked Micha about her wedding and why she wanted it to be at Zuccotti Park, she said she wanted it to be not just about her and Emery, but about people.
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Cigarettes Do Have Free Speech Rights – Miller-McCune
A federal judge says tobacco companies’ complaints about the heavy hand of government forcing them to gainsay their own products have merit.
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Righting the Voting Income Gap – Miller-McCune
The “motor voter” law, an almost decade-old federal effort to encourage voter registration among Americans receiving public assistance, is bearing fruit.
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Ocean Health Index Accounts for Human Benefits – Miller-McCune
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Tim Dickinson: The Tax Policies That Increased Economic Inequality : NPR
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95 Arrested after Protesters Pitch Tent in Bank – The Bay Citizen
San Francisco police arrested 95 people, including three minors, after protesters took over a Bank of America branch Wednesday afternoon.
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CSU Tuition to Rise Again – The Bay Citizen
Amid a violent protest, the California State University Board of Trustees voted Wednesday to raise next year’s tuition by 9 percent. The hike, which will increase undergraduate tuition $498 to $5,970, marks the third board-approved increase in a just over a year.
Board members, who met in Long Beach, moved to a second location for the vote after demonstrators tried to enter the meeting room, shattering a glass door. CSU spokeswoman Liz Chapin said four students were arrested…
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Clinton Reaffirms Military Ties With the Philippines – NYTimes.com
The visit comes at a time of heightening tensions in the South China Sea related to the oil-rich Spratly Islands, which are the subject of disputed claims by China, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations. By some estimates, the energy reserves in the areas being disputed by the various countries could rival those of Kuwait.
“We are making sure that our collective defense capabilities and communications infrastructure are operationally and materially capable of deterring provocations from the full spectrum of state and nonstate actors,” Mrs. Clinton said aboard the guided missile cruiser U.S.S. Fitzgerald.
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