Headlines for November 2, 2011

ANALYSIS: 5 questions Clement must answer on G8 spending

The federal minister responsible for cutting government waste is being called before a parliamentary committee Wednesday to explain how his own Ontario riding became paved in $45 million of political pork.

Treasury Board head Tony Clement certainly has a lot to answer for.

The $45.7-million spending spree was supposed to provide essential facilities to host last year’s G8 summit of world leaders in Clement’s riding in Muskoka cottage country north of Toronto.

Instead, almost all of the money was scattered across Clement’s electoral domain for local pet projects that had little or nothing at all to do with the summit — everything from a $17-million community centre expansion to a $100,000 gazebo in the middle of an empty lot an hour’s drive from the meeting site.

Oakland turns to first general strike in 65 years

Hundreds of teachers have called-in to work. Shops have locked their doors in solidarity. Although the sun is only just rising over Oakland, California, thousands have started taking it to the streets.

Later this evening, today’s events will accumulate with a massive march in the Bay Area this evening.

Oakland has become an unlikely West Coast hub for the Occupy Wall Street movement nearly 50 days after the protests first started in New York City. While other cities across the United States and around the globe have waged Occupy-style demonstrations in the last few weeks, the assault by Oakland police officers on protester and war vet Scott Olsen last week resonated around the world. A non-lethal projectile fired by the Oakland PD left Olsen unable to speak after he suffered a skull fracture while attending last week’s demonstration. While still hospitalized preparing for a serious surgery, marches and protests in solidarity with the injured demonstrator have occurred across the world as protester rally in support of an unlikely icon for the movement. One week later, thousands are expected to show their support for Olsen and the Occupy movement in Oakland today by hosting the first general strike the city has seen in more than half a century.

Humans and climate contributed to extinctions of large ice-age mammals, study finds

Both climate change and humans were responsible for the extinction of some large mammals, like the musk ox in this photo, according to research that is the first of its kind to use genetic, archeological, and climatic data together to infer the population history of large Ice-Age mammals. The large international team’s research, which will be published in the journal Nature, is expected to shed light on the possible fates of living species of mammals as our planet continues its current warming cycle. Credit: Beth Shapiro lab, Penn State University

Cell-Aging Hack Opens Longevity Research Frontier

Research into longevity, that most fundamental and intractable of all human health challenges, is slow moving. It deserves to be described in terms of years, not individual studies. But once in a rare while, a finding has the potential to be a landmark.

Such is the case with a new experiment that flushed old, broken-down cells from the bodies of mice, slowing their descent into the infirmities of age.

The usual caveats that inevitably apply to mouse studies still apply here. But even with those, the findings mark the first time that cellular senescence — its importance debated by biologists for decades — has been experimentally manipulated in an animal, demonstrating a fantastic new tool for studying its role in human aging.

Maddow: Political discourse now linked to ‘Occupy’ protests

After showcasing the ways the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters planned to overcome the winter, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said on her show Tuesday night that the ongoing demonstrations have altered the political discourse of the United States.

The demonstrations across the country “demonstrate why someone like [House Majority Leader] Eric Cantor is all of a sudden for the first time in his life talking about income inequality,” she said.

“Occupy Wall Street has made it possible for even the beltway media to point and laugh at flax tax proposals,” Maddow added. “Occupy Wall Street is how you get into the narrative. So when Bank of America blinks, like it did today about a new big fat fee on its ordinary customers, you can wonder why it happened, but the story is forever linked to the 99 percent.”

China-US Energy Geopolitics: The Battle for Oil in the South China Sea

A new area of potential confrontation is developing between China and the U.S. According to reports, Exxon Mobil which has acquired exploration and production rights from Vietnam has discovered substantial gas reserves in the South China Sea  off the coast of North Vietnam.

Senators Introduce Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United

One of the overarching themes of the 99 Percent Movement is that our democracy is too corrupted by corporate special interests. This corruption was worsened last year by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed for huge new unregulated flows of corporate political spending.

Yesterday, six Democratic senators — Tom Udall (NM), Michael Bennett (CO), Tom Harkin (IA), Dick Durbin (IL), Chuck Schumer (NY), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), and Jeff Merkeley (OR) — introduced a constitutional amendment that would effectively overturn the Citizens United case and restore the ability of Congress to properly regulate the campaign finance system.