Category: News

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

Now with World and U.S. News.  42 Story Final.

1 Britain to send 500 extra troops to Afghanistan

by Katherine Haddon, AFP

2 hrs 13 mins ago

Wednesday Morning Science Supplement is an Open Thread

1 Fight over future of Kashmir’s iconic Dal Lake

by Izhar Wani, AFP

36 mins ago

About the Afternoon Edition–

I feel there are some meta aspects about how I choose and present my stories that will enhance your understanding of what you are reading and how you can use it.

I am not Magnifico

News Digest was not my idea and I was but a reluctant contributor and still am.  To me it is a mere chore and my real challenge is to systematize my data collection to a sufficient extent that I can concentrate on content, presentation, and organization.

Those of you who have actually been able to experience a real programming environment will appreciate the combination of brief, visual c++, and some useful tools like the greenleaf window (character based) libraries.

Pretty easy to do some data management and prototyping; less so using Microsoft tools if you ask me, but the market has spoken.

In any event by limiting myself to one source of pretty uniform content I’m usually able to reduce my hand formatting and data collection times to a little over 2 hours daily for an output of 30 to 60 stories.

The reason I cut it off at 60 is because as JekyllnHyde has observed there is a limit on essay size, though you can always revise and expand through comments and traffic here has not yet reached the extent that you can’t duplicate the effects of pre-posting through pre-organizing (which I have demonstrated on numerous occasions Watson).

Magnifico disagrees with me about the number of stories to present you.  He thinks it’s distracting and provides more commentary to focus your attention on particular issues.

I think it’s more important to keep you in touch with events you’re not seeing.

On being a filter

I look at over 500 stories an essay.  I choose those I think will interest my audience or outrage them.

One of the reasons I use this source is it’s predictive of the content on your typical dead tree daily.

Out of that I deselect the too short to quote and the done to death.  If the take of each wire service is significant I include them all without apology.  I also follow the forgotten.

Of the categories I originally included I’m no longer tracking the ‘mosts’ (popular, emailed, and viewed).  Science gets it’s own section when I remember I’m supposed to do it (like today).  Politics is virtually entirely bullshit and you have to harvest your Business section after 6 pm (or better yet between midnight and 6 am) if you want topicality.

And you run out of room.

Presentation and Organization

Oh for HTML Pagemaker.

The colors are rotated to visually distinguish each story for your eyes and draw your attention!  They are not at all related to topic.

To the extent that things are organized it’s mostly by the order in which they were captured and where.  Those are the pink headlines and more importantly the source attributions.

Now if I were more efficient I might improve my organization… or not.

How to use this

Hopefully as illumination!  Each selection is intended to inspire it’s own essay.  Failing that to make you aware of something you’ve not seen elsewhere or remind you of conventional wisdom.

Sometimes I can’t restrain myself, but the commentary is not the message.

Link the source and not me.  My reward is the “heh, scooped” I utter whenever Rachel or Keith or any of the Usual Suspects cover my clues.

And don’t think I don’t gloat.

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

Now with World and U.S. News.  46 Story Final.

1 Romanian govt falls on no confidence vote

by Mihaela Rodina, AFP

Tue Oct 13, 11:24 am ET

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

Now with World and U.S. News.  36 Story Final.

1 41 dead as suicide blast hits northwest Pakistan

by Lehaz Ali, AFP

Mon Oct 12, 10:12 am ET

A weekly roundup of the news made by of, by and for the active engaged progressive people of the world.  

HEAD LINES

Canada:  Nickel Mine Strike

libcom:

After months of unresolved bargaining a strike began on July 13th at the Sudbury mine in northern Ontario, Canada, after employers Vale Inco refused to alter its original demands for concessions. United Steel Workers union members (USW Local 6500) in Sudbury and Port Colburne in Ontario and Voisey Bay in Labrador responded by voting 85% in favor of strike action.

The strike affects 3,073 employees at Vale’s integrated mining, milling, smelting and refining operations in Sudbury, 116 employees at the Port Colborne refinery and over 200 at Voisey Bay. The concessions demanded by the company include a drastic change in pension benefits for new hires (the pension Fund is $725 million in deficit), changes to seniority rights and a cap on the “Nickel Bonus”. “This bonus was negotiated in earlier years to allow the company to benefit from relatively lower wages when nickel prices were depressed and workers to benefit when the price was high. Nickel bonuses – once used to placate underpaid unionised workers – in recent years suddenly paid off ‘big’

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

Now with World and U.S. News.  57 Story Final.

1 Canadian ‘space clown’ returns to Earth

by Alexander Osipovich, AFP

Sun Oct 11, 8:33 am ET

I got all over the place yesterday, talking to people who blog here; about difficult and highly confrontational subjects.

I’ve done that before, on other blogs.

But what I’m seeing here, is that we don’t lie here.

The more I read people who don’t lie here, the more happy I get about blogging in a community comprising people who do not lie.

So thanks, everyone; for your honesty.

I needed this; starting back when I was involved as a kid, with the Advisory for Open Education, etc. The adults in my life were running that when I was in my early adolescence.

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

29 Top Story Final Edition.

1 Clown beams message of water conservation from space

AFP

Sat Oct 10, 1:00 am ET

Aunty Mame is a big fan.

The Morning News is an Open Thread

34 Top Stories.  You know you want to.

1 Reality TV shifting focus to everyday life

by Audrey Stuart, AFP

Wed Oct 7, 2:09 am ET

hopiness?

What has gotten much attention the past few days is the hypocritical Republican response to the United States losing a bid to host the Olympic Games.  What is not being discussed is why it is, in my opinion, altogether fitting and proper that Rio de Janeiro and South America won the right to host the games.  If we believe in any such thing as fairness and equality, we would concede that it is time that a country beyond our own receive some positive publicity and be able to showcase its strengths for once.  It is not as though we haven’t had our time in the sun many times before and I believe that giving this privilege to other deserving cities is worthwhile.  In instances like these, those of us who believe that world harmony involves giving every country a seat at the table can find much in the decision upon which to rejoice.  

If, however, you are so tactless as to mention this notion in conservative circles, prepare to have your patriotism questioned.  If you dare to believe that this country ought not to bill itself or carry itself as the epicenter of everything, they’ll claim you’re trying to give away our political power on a world stage out of misguided guilt.  This fact, above all others is what enrages me most about the Right.  The fear of losing something intangible and poorly understood at best is what has driven so much invective recently.  It would seem that the party of no is also the part of me first.  

Specifically regarding developing nations, we rarely see much news or attention devoted to their affairs beyond natural disasters, instances of shocking social injustice which we have long set aside, or the occasional eccentric spectacle.  We enjoy the sensationalist aspect of the man with four wives and twelve children, for example, but almost never are we informed about any good, meaningful news that occurs in a developing nation.  Those who spread, make, and shape information dispersal never feel much of a compulsion to explain or cite the style of governance and policy matters of other countries, unless, of course, it’s meant to provide some needed contrast to our own system and our own way of doing things.  To wit, issues of dire importance to Brazil frequently never make it into the American consciousness.  As a result, the view we hold of most countries besides our own is a romanticized one full of as much fiction as fact.  Frequently, it is also years out of date.  Due to our own response and to the way that substantive concerns of other nations are summarily placed at the bottom of the deck, it is hardly surprising that, with time, resentment has built.  

I feel as though I understand this attitude somewhat.  As a native Southerner, it wasn’t until I traveled North and West that I realized how much of our national discourse and national identity is formed by the large cities found up and down the East and West Coast.  One rarely sees much news or attention devoted to the South beyond natural disasters, instance of shocking social injustice supposedly long put aside, like racism, and the occasional eccentric spectacle.  Those who spread, make, and shape media rarely feel any compulsion to broadcast good news about the region.  Unless meant to provide some sort of needed contrast to the rest of the country, Southern policy decisions or viewpoints rarely find their way into substantive conversation.  As a result, the view we hold of the South is a romanticized one, likely forty to fifty years out of date, and comprised as much of fiction as it is of fact.  And again, because of this, resentment has built.

Our attitudes may be frequently thoughtless and condescending, but they are not deliberately malicious.  We don’t mean to snub other countries of the world or regions of our country, for that matter, but we get caught up in our self-importance and inadvertently leave others out in the process.  When major challenges arise, they are those of misunderstanding and ignorance first, not of destructive intent.  They could be corrected so long as we made a concerted effort to get out of our own head space and take into account that being truly fair and balanced means a little additional legwork on our part.  With as much going on in Washington, DC, or New York City, or Los Angeles, it is easy to merely frame the context and the debate based on our largest metropolitan areas.  In doing so, however, we leave out the contributions of those without the economic or political clout or population size to suck up enough of the air in the room.  If we collectively did our homework and examined areas not particularly well-examined, we might even shockingly concede that people in other countries and even in other parts of our own aren’t really that different from us after all.    

If we believe that the phrase “Citizen of the World” is more than just a smiley-faced, feel-good platitude, then it might be wise to devote more of our increasingly divided attention to other areas.  If we believe that “United Nations” is what its name says it is, we’d take care to live it in our waking existence.  In saying this, I do recognize that it would be unnatural for any country to not devote most of its focus on itself, but what I do notice when I survey the news of other countries is how predominate our presence is and how it exists, a bit uneasily at times, equally and at times with frequent dominance alongside their own native concerns.  I’m not sure the American ego will be quite so gracious if someday we are no longer Number One.  That would definitely be a humbling experience, one which I have no desire to neither prophecy nor to propagate.  Ultimately, if we were a world community, that fear among many would be irrelevant anyway.      

This is a roundup of news and commentary regarding prisons and prisoners. I have focused to a fair extent (though not entirely) on stories where there is some question of prisoner abuse, or miscarriage of justice.