News Nuggets 764

Mother and baby one-horned rhinoceroses at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo. From ZooBorns.

Drones Are Death Warrants: Can the U.S. Send Drones to Execute American Citizens Like Anwar al-Awlaki Without Trial? You Bet (William Saletan) from Slate
"If a U.S. citizen fighting alongside al-Qaida poses an imminent threat and can’t feasibly be arrested, we can send a drone to kill him."
The original New York Times piece upon which some of this article is based is HERE.

Frontier of Frugality: Retailers Face Reality That Many People Can't Trade Back Up from the Wall Street Journal
"Retailers are coming to terms with a new reality: the consumer who traded down during the recession and never came back. Buffeted by high unemployment, heavy debt loads, falling home values and high food and gas prices, these shoppers have been whipped into a permanent state of consumer caution. They buy only what they need, avoid premium labels, clip coupons and scour sales."

Wall Street Protesters Hope to Plant Seeds of a National Cause from the Washington Post
"New York’s budding anti-capitalism protest movement began last month with a vague sense of grievance over the widening gap between the rich and poor in America. ... Now similar protests are springing up in Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago, and organizers in Washington plan a march at Freedom Plaza on Thursday to “denounce the systems and institutions that support endless war and unrestrained corporate greed.”"

Top 5 Reasons Why The Occupy Wall Street Protests Embody Values Of The Real Boston Tea Party from Think Progress
"In the last two weeks, as protesters have gathered from New York to Los Angeles to protest corporate domination over American politics, a true Tea Party movement may be brewing:"

Occupy Wall Street coming to Pittsburgh from the Pittsburgh Business Times
"The organizers of Occupy Wall Street, the protest movement that led to mass protests and mass arrests in and around the New York City financial district, plan a Pittsburgh demonstration. There will be a planning meeting Oct. 5 at 6:30 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh on Morewood Avenue in Shadyside, according to the Occupy Pittsburgh Facebook page."

Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales from the Bloomberg News Service
"In May 2008, a unit of Koch Industries Inc., one of the world’s largest privately held companies, sent Ludmila Egorova-Farines, its newly hired compliance officer and ethics manager, to investigate the management of a subsidiary in Arles in southern France. In less than a week, she discovered that the company had paid bribes to win contracts. “I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova- Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.”"

House GOP Freshmen Have No Safe Seats from Politico
"The 87 House freshmen who helped the GOP seize the majority by capitalizing on a deep reservoir of anti-establishment resentment are discovering that anger hasn’t gone away — and it could even threaten their fledgling careers. Some tea party darlings from 2010 are fearful of tea party challengers in 2012, facing charges they’ve turned their backs on the movement’s small-government beliefs."

MEDICAL NUGGET [of a sort]!!
A 'Stay-Sober' Pill: Coming to a Pharmacy Near You? from The Week
"Korea already sells supposedly hangover-free alcohol, but what if a pill could stop you from getting drunk in the first place? That's the premise of a new "stay sober" tablet reportedly under development in Australia."

LEGO NUGGET!!
Mathematician Uses Thousands of Lego Bricks to Recreate Escher's Gravity-Defying Images from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"For decades people have wondered how master graphic artist MC Escher played with perspective to create his clever optical illusions. Now a British mathematician who created these 3D Lego replicas including a gravity-defying piece featuring figures climbing stairs in his attic has offered yet another take on the artist's baffling visual puzzles using real Lego blocks."