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1. Ebola gets political
Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Thomas Frieden leaves today's House hearing on the Ebola outbreak. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
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Over 40 members of Congress (most of them Republicans) have called for a ban on travel between West Africa and the US.
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The calls came up in a House hearing featuring CDC chief Tom Frieden today; Frieden said he's leaving the option open, even though just last week he wrote an op-ed for FoxNews.com on why such a ban might actually increase the disease's spread by denying West African countries access to US medical expertise.
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For the record, Frieden was right the first time around — a travel ban is a really bad idea.
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NIH director Francis Collins says if his agency hadn't seen its budget cut, we'd have an Ebola vaccine by now. Fat chance, says Sarah Kliff.
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Some schools in Texas and Cleveland closed in response to the revelation that a person infected with Ebola flew from Cleveland to Dallas; public health officials face-palmed in response.
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It shouldn't surprise us that Ebola became a partisan issue: shark attacks in New Jersey had a big impact on the 1916 presidential election, so we can politicize more or less anything.
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A Yale grad student who recently came back from Liberia is being treated for "Ebola-like symptoms."
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The UN needs $1 billion for its Ebola trust fund, and only Colombia has ponied up its share so far.
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Here's where to donate if you want to fight the outbreak in West Africa; also consider donating to efficient charities working on other issues.
2. 5-O factor authentication
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey wants backdoors for accessing people's online communications. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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FBI director James Comey is continuing his push for companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook to create backdoors making it easier for authorities to spy on people.
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Outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder has also has argued for this and the FBI has wanted it for a few years now.
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Under a 1994 federal law, phone companies have to make their systems capable of setting up wiretaps quickly, a requirement that was later extended to ISPs.
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That law was related to a broader fight known as the Crypto Wars that pitted the Clinton administration against privacy advocates. Most notably, the administration unsuccessfully pushed the "Clipper chip," a NSA-designed device to give the government a backdoor for breaking encryption, that turned out to have huge technical flaws.
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Julian Sanchez wrote the definitive case against these backdoors; among other issues: if the government can break in, so can hackers. See also Conor Friedersdorf.
3. TV, unbundled
Soon, even people without cable will be able to enjoy the soul-crushing depression of The Leftovers. (Paul Schiraldi/HBO)
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Within days of each other, HBO and CBS have announced online subscription-based plans that let you view their shows live without cable.
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Verizon, Sony, and Dish Network are trying to build similar services (with more channels, obviously); Verizon, like HBO/CBS, wants you to be able to pick and choose channels à la carte.
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A bipartisan bill that would mandate à la carte cable failed in the Senate last month.
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But some critics argue à la carte channel-buying won't actually make TV cheaper.
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And other critics argue à la carte cable would have made TV's Golden Age impossible.
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Internet TV also won't necessarily weaken cable companies — who's providing the broadband it would stream on, after all?
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Then again, government-provided broadband, most likely offered at the municipal level, could make it possible to ditch Comcast and Time Warner Cable altogether.
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Before channels like HBO and CBS got in on it, Aereo was trying to make streaming TV a reality on its own, only to be beaten by broadcasters at the Supreme Court.
4. Misc.
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Your cat doesn't love you, just FYI.
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Scientists have figured out how to Incept rats, more or less.
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What if the minimum wage just doesn't do much of anything, good or bad?
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The president of evangelical Patrick Henry College ("God's Harvard") resigned after The New Republic published an exposé on how the school treated handle sexual assault on campus.
5. Verbatim
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"There’s a Trader Joe’s in Vancouver, now?" "No, there's a Pirate Joe's in Vancouver."
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"Some two dozen other matriculating students at Wellesley don’t identify as women."
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"The odds of this country returning to a draft are almost zero, but the price for failure to register is high and is largely born by the men who can ill afford to pay it: high school dropouts, disconnected inner city residents, ex-offenders and immigrants — legal and unauthorized — who do not know that failure to register can jeopardize citizenship."
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"Jimmy John's workers have to promise not to take any of the trade secrets they learned assembling subs to any nearby sandwich shop for at least two years."
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"If we try to escape, and we get killed, at least our parents will be able to see our bodies."
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In This Stream
Vox Sentences
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- Vox Sentences: We did it, folks. We politicized Ebola
- Vox Sentences: How did Texas Presbyterian screw up this badly?
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