1 Second shooting raises US racial tension (Chris
McGreal & Rory Carroll in The Guardian) Racial tensions in Missouri were
stoked again on Tuesday when police killed another African American man as the
authorities struggled to quell the nightly confrontations over the shooting of
an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson last week.
Angry residents of a black neighbourhood in St
Louis, not far from Ferguson, accused the police of excessive force after two
officers fired several bullets into a 23-year-old man described as carrying a
knife and behaving erratically. The man has not yet been named but he was well
known in the area and was said to have learning difficulties.
Brown’s parents said they believed the unrest would
be alleviated if Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed their son was
prosecuted. “Justice will bring peace I believe,” Lesley McSpadden, Brown’s
mother, said. “Him being arrested, charges being filed and a prosecution. Him
being held accountable for what he did.”
In Ferguson, leaders of the overwhelmingly white city
administration urged people to stay at home to “allow peace to settle in” and
pledged to reconnect with the predominantly black community. According to a
statement, officials have been exploring how to increase the number of African
American applicants to the law enforcement academy and raise funds for cameras
that would be attached to patrol car dashboards and officers’ vests. “We plan
to learn from this tragedy,” the leaders said in the statement.
The death of Brown has stoked 10 days of unrest in
Ferguson and the surrounding area. The latest police killing took place a few
miles away in a predominantly black neighbourhood. Doris Davis, who saw the
shooting from an upstairs window in her house, said she looked out when she
heard the man shouting. “He said: No, no, no. Then they shot him from the
front,” she said. Davis, 66, said she saw two policemen open fire together and
shoot several bullets each in rapid succession.
2 Moody’s downgrades
four SA banks (Johannesburg Times) Ratings agency Moody’s has downgraded four
South African banks and put them on review for further cuts, saying there was a
lower likelihood of support from the central bank to protect creditors after
African Bank’s debt crisis. Moody’s cut by a notch the long-term local currency
deposit ratings for Standard Bank of South Africa, FirstRand, Nedbank and Absa
Bank, the local operation for Barclays Group Africa.
The ratings agency said
it was adjusting its view following the $1.6bn bailout of African Bank by the
South African Reserve Bank (SARB). Moody’s said while SARB’s actions mitigated
the risk of contagion across the banking sector, the Bank had indicated by its
actions that it was willing to impose losses on creditors.
The ratings change
comes days after a downgrade of smaller lender Capitec, prompted by the bailout
for unsecured lender African Bank. SARB said at the time that it disputed the
downgrade of Capitec because the lender had a different model to African Bank. Some
analysts believe the latest wave of downgrades may be an overreaction. Moody’s
also downgraded long-term national scale deposit ratings for the four lenders
and placed foreign-currency ratings for the four and smaller lender Investec on
review.
3 The reason we yawn
(Jonathan D Rockoff in The Wall Street Journal) Researchers are starting to
unravel the mystery surrounding the yawn, one of the most common and often
embarrassing behaviors. Yawning, they have discovered, is much more complicated
than previously thought. Although all yawns look the same, they appear to have
many different causes and to serve a variety of functions.
Yawning is believed to
be a means to keep our brains alert in times of stress. Contagious yawning
appears to have evolved in many animal species as a way to protect family and
friends, by keeping everyone in the group vigilant. Changes in brain chemistry
trigger yawns, which typically last about six seconds and often occur in
clusters.
"What this tells
us is it's a very complicated system, and there are probably many different
roles for yawning," says Gregory Collins, a researcher at the University
of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio who has identified some of the
chemical processes at work in the brain.
To unravel the mystery
of yawning, scientists built upon early, observed clues. Yawning tends to occur
more in summer. Most people yawn upon seeing someone else do it, but infants
and people with autism or schizophrenia aren't so affected by this contagion
effect. And certain people yawn at surprising times, like parachutists who are
about to jump out of a plane or Olympic athletes getting ready to compete.
A leading hypothesis is
that yawning plays an important role in keeping the brain at its cool, optimal
working temperature. The brain is particularly sensitive to overheating, according
to Andrew Gallup, an assistant professor of psychology at the State University
of New York at Oneonta. Reaction times slow and memory wanes when the brain's
temperature varies even less than a degree from the ideal 98.6 degrees
Fahrenheit.
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