Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, rfall, and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw. The guest editors are Doctor RJ and annetteboardman.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
The Guardian
White House officials are setting the scene for a confrontational state of the union address on Tuesday night, claiming that President Barack Obama is preparing to “bypass” Congress with executive action on divisive issues such as economic inequality.
However, in a flurry of last-minute appearances, advisers also hinted at a growing sense within the administration that the president's chances of securing more ambitious legislative reform before November's midterm elections may already have passed.
In an interview on Sunday and in an email to supporters on Saturday Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's senior adviser for strategy and communications, struck a defiant tone. “We need to show the American people that we can get something done; either through Congress or on our own,” Pfeiffer told CNN. “The president is not going to tell the American people he will wait for Congress.”
Reuters
President Barack Obama may not say it in his State of the Union speech this week, but part of his underlying message will be: Please vote for Democrats in the November elections.
Obama's big speech on Tuesday will be his sixth foray into the House of Representatives chamber to lay out his policy priorities for the year.
This year's address is critical to forming a narrative on which Democrats can campaign this year. And Obama wants to bolster his standing after a rocky end-of-the-year controversy over the botched rollout of his signature healthcare law, and the tumult surrounding a government shutdown.
Obama has seized on income inequality in America as the main theme of his State of the Union speech, which went through its usual draft process over the weekend.
He will promote his demand that Congress raise the minimum wage and call for steps to increase jobs at the lower rungs of the economic ladder at a time when the stock market is soaring, but overall job growth is tepid.
USA Today
Amazing how one little constitutional requirement has become such a multimedia extravaganza.
When President Obama delivers his annual State of the Union address Tuesday to a joint session of Congress — as well as a global television and Internet audience— he'll be fulfilling a presidential duty defined in Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1787-88:
"He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."
McClatchy DC
House Speaker John Boehner made what Jay Leno called his first and last (Leno's leaving Feb. 6) appearance on his show Thursday night--and said being a regular guy was more important to him than being president.
Leno has often joked about Boehner, and before the speaker came out, Leno joked it was so cold that instead of looking orange, Boehner looked blue.
Leno showed a photo of Boehner's family, talked about his upbringing, talked his darker complexion.
"Never a spray tan?" Leno asked.
"Nothing," Boehner said.
He joked about how his name is often mispronounced, saying he was happy his name wasn't Weiner.
Al Jazeera America
A 19-year-old’s brave steps into independence after so many foster homes, she lost count
Growing up in foster care, Janey Batiste craved independence.
As she moved from home to home, she wanted the freedom to make choices for herself, tired of taking orders from social workers and foster parents who would leave her life as quickly as they entered it.
In her mind, Batiste was alone, so she lived that way, which meant she might run away or strike out impulsively. She imagined her grown-up emancipation from the system as a time when she would be accountable to no one but herself.
Al Jazeera America
State attorney general continuing pursuing case, after initial jurors reject manslaughter charge against policeman
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — Following a grand jury’s refusal to indict a white Charlotte policeman in the shooting death of an unarmed black man, prosecutors from the North Carolina attorney general’s office are headed back to court on Monday to start trying again with new jurors.
The Mecklenburg County Grand Jury declined last week to indict Charlotte police officer Randall Kerrick with voluntary manslaughter for the September shooting death of Jonathan Ferrell, recommending instead that the charges be reduced.
Last September, Kerrick was one of several officers responding to a 911 call placed at around 2:30 a.m. by a homeowner who reported an attempted burglary after hearing Ferrell knocking loudly on her door. Ferrell had been in a car accident and is believed to have been seeking help. The responding officers quickly located Ferrell near the residence and say he ran toward them. Kerrick drew his service revolver and shot a dozen rounds, hitting Ferrell 10 times.
Spiegel Online
America's rise to superpower status began with its 1917 entry into World War I. President Woodrow Wilson had grand visions for the peace that followed, but failed. The battle he started in the US between idealists and realists continues to this day.
"Sarajevo, 21st-century version." This is how political scientist Anne-Marie Slaughter, the director of policy planning under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, refers to what is currently brewing off the Chinese coast, where the territorial claims of several nations overlap.
The analogy to the period prior to the outbreak of World War I is striking. China, "the Germany of (that) time," as American historian Robert Kagan puts it, is the emergent world power still seeking to define its role within the global community. At the same time, China is staking its claim to natural resources, intimidating its neighbors and developing massive naval power to secure its trade routes.
CNN
Authorities in Pennsylvania arrested a 19-year-old Russian man Friday and charged him with possession of a weapon of mass destruction, Altoona police said in a written statement.
Police officers were investigating a reported marijuana-growing operation when they discovered a homemade bomb and bomb-making materials in a suitcase, the news release said.
Vladislav Miftakhov, a Russian citizen, was arrested and charged with possessing a weapon of mass destruction, risking a catastrophe and drug-related offenses. He was arraigned Friday and bail was set at $500,000, Blair County corrections officer James McMahon said Sunday.
According to a criminal complaint, police found one pound of atomized magnesium and one pound of Chinese potassium perchlorate along with a package labeled potassium nitrate powder. They also found fuses and several containers of compressed air.
NPR
A couple weeks ago, Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin spoke to Rachel Garlinghouse, a white adoptive mother of three African-American children. Our conversation on transracial adoption drew a lot of responses, so we decided to follow up with another perspective.
Chad Goller-Sojourner is African-American. In 1972, when he was 13 months old, he was adopted by white parents in Tacoma, Wash. He and his siblings are all different races than their parents.
They were raised in a white suburb, but worked hard to expose them to other people who looked like him, and checked out every library book with a black author they could find. They even sent them to a more diverse school in a different neighborhood.But Goller-Sojourner, now a writer and solo performer based in Seattle, says there was a limit to what his parents could provide.
"One of the things I think was hardest for me is I didn't have any independent relationships with black people, especially adult black people, till I was an adult," he says. "I was 25 before I saw a black doctor."
BBC
A brain-dead woman kept alive by a hospital in Texas because she was pregnant has been taken off life support.
A court had ruled that John Peter Smith Hospital must stop life-saving measures for Marlise Munoz by Monday.
Mrs Munoz, 33, was 14 weeks pregnant when she fell unconscious in November. It is believed she had a blood clot.
Her family wanted to let her die, but the hospital had argued it had a legal duty to protect the unborn child.
'Against her wishes'
Her life support was turned off at 11:29 local time (17.29 GMT) Sunday, family members told News 8.
"May Marlise Munoz finally rest in peace, and her family find the strength to complete what has been an unbearably long and arduous journey," lawyers for the family said in a statement.
CNN
Police say the man arrived at a busy mall in Columbia, Maryland, in a cab, about an hour before he walked into a small shop and fired a shotgun at least half a dozen times, killing two people who worked there.
Why Darion Marcus Aguilar shot two people to death and then killed himself is still a mystery to police. They're investigating who the 19-year-old man was and whether he even knew the people he shot Saturday.
Police said Sunday that Aguilar showed up at The Mall in Columbia in a taxi and stayed in a "generally confined area" before going to Zumiez, a shop that caters to skaters, on the second floor.
There he fired six to nine shots, killing 21-year-old Brianna Benlolo and 25-year-old Tyler Johnson before turning the shotgun on himself.
The shootings, which left five other people injured, ended a violent week which saw shootings or gun scares at American schools or shopping centers -- ordinary places where people once felt safe.
Reuters
Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden told German TV on Sunday about reports that U.S. government officials want to assassinate him for leaking secret documents about the NSA's collection of telephone records and emails.
In what German public broadcaster ARD said was Snowden's first television interview, Snowden also said he believes the NSA has monitored other top German government officials along with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Snowden told ARD that he felt there are "significant threats" to his life but he said that he nevertheless sleeps well because he believes he did the right thing by informing the public about the NSA's activities.
"I'm still alive and don't lose sleep for what I did because it was the right thing to do," said Snowden at the start of what ARD said was a six-hour interview that was filmed in a Moscow hotel suite. ARD aired 40 minutes of the six-hour interview.
"There are significant threats but I sleep very well," he said before referring to a report on a U.S. website that he said quoted anonymous U.S. officials saying his life was in danger.
Reuters
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said China's continued economic growth will require building trust, not tensions, with other countries, according to an interview broadcast on Sunday.
A steady Chinese military buildup over the last 20 years is a serious concern for countries in the region, Abe said in a CNN interview from Davos, Switzerland, where tensions between Tokyo and Beijing were on display at the World Economic Forum last week.
"For China to continue to enjoy economic prosperity, it needs to foster trusting international relationships, not tensions," Abe said on the "Fareed Zakaria GPS" program. "And it is important for China to understand this."
"Military expansion will contribute nothing to China's future, its economic growth or prosperity."
Reuters
Face-to-face talks between Syria's warring parties stalled on Sunday over easing the humanitarian crisis, opposition delegates said, deepening doubts over tougher political negotiations which are due to follow.
Government and opposition delegations discussed aid and prisoner releases during a morning session in Geneva which had aimed to build some kind of trust between the sides who are implacably at odds over the fate of President Bashar al-Assad.
However, they disputed even the basic facts, and the opposition delegate told Reuters that international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi met the two parties separately later in the day. These sessions would prepare for the more contentious political talks on Monday on the 2012 "Geneva 1" accord, the delegate, Ahmad Ramadan, told Reuters.
DW
Further protests have unfolded across Ukraine after the opposition shunned government concessions. Clashes were reported in Kyiv, while blockades have been set up outside administrative buildings in over a dozen cities.
Thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets on Sunday to mourn the death of a protester shot dead during clashes earlier this week.
Mourners chanted "Hero!" and sang the national anthem, as the coffin of 25-year-old Mikhail Zhiznevsky was carried through the streets.
Zhiznevsky, a student from Belarus, was one of three people shot dead when protests turned fatal for the first time on Wednesday. Sunday would have been his 26th birthday.
The government has said he died of gunshot wound was but has denied that security forces were responsible. It contends that Zhiznevsky and another activist were killed with hunting rifles, saying police did not carry such firearms. It has not commented on how the third protester died.
Al Jazeera America
The Syrian government has agreed to allow women and children in besieged parts of the central city of Homs to leave immediately, peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said on Sunday.
The government has asked that the opposition provide names of other civilians who wish to leave the area that is under siege by government troops amid the country’s grueling civil war, Brahimi said at a news conference in Geneva. Homs has been besieged for a year and a half, and residents are becoming desperate for food and supplies.
"They (government authorities) are asking for the names of civilians to make sure they are not armed people," Brahimi said, after the third day of negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition.
But in most other respects, the talks between the opposition groups and the government of President Bashar al-Assad stalled Sunday, as both sides sat with a United Nations mediator in separate rooms.
Al Jazeera America
A Thai anti-government protest leader was shot and killed amid escalating political tensions in Bangkok on Sunday, when violence erupted as demonstrators blocked early voting in many parts of the capital ahead of a disputed election next week.
It brings the death toll to 10, with scores wounded, since protesters took to the streets in November, vowing to shut down the capital and force Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra from office.
A spokesman for the national police, Piya Utayo, identified the dead man as Suthin Tharatin, one of the protest leaders. "Suthin was shot in the head and in the chest," he said.
The scuffle also left 11 people wounded, and isolated street brawls broke out in several parts of Bangkok as anti-government demonstrators swarmed polling stations. They chained doors shut and blocked voters in a move that seemingly contradicted an earlier pledge not to obstruct advance voting for next week's contentious general election.
Spiegel Online
German Central Bank head Jens Weidmann has developed a reputation in Europe for saying no to everything. He is skeptical of efforts to save the euro and isn't shy about saying so. But is he right?
In Jens Weidmann's world, the cup is almost always half-empty. As much as he doesn't like hearing about it, he is a man who can even find fault with a rare moment of winter sun shining through his office window in Frankfurt.
"Big windows are nice," Weidmann says, referring to the view, "but the sun heats up the room very quickly." The president of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, then shuts the blinds. His office on the building's 12th floor becomes as dark as though it were in the basement.
NPR
China's government has recently jailed officials and issued a slew of new rules to curb corruption, but it's apparently not an effort that independent citizens groups are welcome to join.
On Sunday, a Chinese court sentenced Xu Zhiyong, a leading proponent of civil society, to four years in jail. Police have also arrested around a dozen other members of his group, called the New Citizens' Movement.
The court found 40-year-old Xu Zhiyong guilty of assembling a crowd to disturb public order during protests he organized outside the Ministry of Education in 2012, pressing for migrants' equal access to education. Prosecutors say the protesters obstructed police and made a racket.
Xu's lawyer, Zhang Qingfang, says that's not true.
"The protests were perfectly orderly," he says. "The police couldn't find a single citizen who said the protests disturbed their lives."
Xu is a soft-spoken legal scholar and activist, who has campaigned for families of children sickened by tainted milk. He's spoken out for citizens caught in extra-legal detention centers. Most recently, he's called for officials to publicize their assets.
BBC
Ten people are confirmed dead after Thursday's blaze in L'Isle Verte, north-east of Canada's Quebec City. Twenty-two are missing.
Search teams brought in new equipment - designed mainly for de-icing ships - as temperatures hovered around -10C (14F).
Police are examining the theory the fire was started by a cigarette.
However, spokesman Lt Guy Lapointe told a news conference on Saturday that it was one possibility among many.
The ruins of the Residence du Havre have collapsed and are frozen over with a thick layer of ice from fire hoses.
"The conditions are very, very difficult," Lt Guy said on Saturday. "Our people are exhausted."
He said the ice was as thick as 60cm (2ft) in places.
About 20 elderly residents survived the fire, officials say.
Reuters
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will insist that Jewish settlers in the West Bank have a right to remain under Palestinian rule in any future peace deal, a government official was quoted as saying on Sunday.
The apparent trial balloon, reported on the English-language Times of Israel website, drew a no-comment from a spokesman for Netanyahu and angry words from Naftali Bennett, a key pro-settlement partner in his governing coalition.
"The idea of Jewish settlements under Palestinian sovereignty is very dangerous and reflects an irrationality of values," Bennett wrote on his Facebook page.
The Israeli report quoted an official in Netanyahu's office as saying he did not intend to uproot Jewish settlements anywhere in the West Bank, land that Palestinians seek for a state under U.S.-brokered peace talks showing few signs of progress since they resumed in July after a three-year break.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
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Ol' blue eyes: the gene analysis suggests the mutation for blue eye colour appeared earlier than had been thought, with light skin evolving later. Illustration: CSIC
The Guardian
DNA taken from the wisdom tooth of a European hunter-gatherer has given scientists an unprecedented glimpse of modern humans before the rise of farming. The Mesolithic man, who lived in Spain around 7,000 years ago, had an unusual mix of blue eyes, black or brown hair, and dark skin, according to analyses of his genetic make-up.
He was probably lactose intolerant and had more difficulty digesting starchy foods than the farmers who transformed diets and lifestyles when they took up tools in the first agricultural revolution.
The invention of farming brought humans and animals into much closer contact, and humans likely evolved more robust immune systems to fend off infections that the animals passed on. But scientists may have over-estimated the impact farming had in shaping the human immune system, because tests on the hunter-gatherer's DNA found that he already carried mutations that boost the immune system to tackle various nasty bugs. Some live on in modern Europeans today.
NPR
Pork producers across the country are grappling with a virus that's going after piglets. Livestock economists estimate the porcine epidemic diarrhea, or PED, virus has already killed about 1 million baby pigs in the U.S. since it was first found in Iowa last spring.
Canada reported its first case Thursday, and the disease shows no sign of abating. That has veterinarians worried.
"It's easy to imagine that we could have lost a million pigs, and before the winter is over I wouldn't be surprised if that impact would be maybe three, four times that," says Rodney Baker, a professor of veterinary medicine at Iowa State University. Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Kansas are the hardest hit, but the disease has appeared in 23 states.
So what's a pork lover to think? Is this going to send the price of bacon sky high?
The good news is: not yet.
The Times of India
NEW DELHI: Global medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres slammed on Friday a statement by Bayer's chief executive that the giant German firm only developed its cancer drug Nexavar for people who could afford the medicine, not "for Indians".
India's controller general of patents angered Bayer in March 2012 when he authorized a local drugmaker to produce a generic copy of Nexavar, saying the German company charged a price that was too costly for most Indians.
"We did not develop this medicine (Nexavar) for Indians," ?Marijn Dekkers said at a little reported pharmaceutical forum last month, according to the January 21st edition of Businessweek.
"We developed it for western patients who can afford it," Dekkers said, and called the Indian regulator's action "essentially theft".
Bloomberg
Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCL) said one of its ships will return home from the Caribbean two days early after hundreds of passengers and crew became sick.
Officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control boarded the Explorer of the Seas in the Virgin Islands today to assess the situation. The agency said in a report on its website last week that 281 of 3,050 passengers aboard the ship had gastrointestinal illnesses such as diarrhea. Twenty-two of the vessel’s 1,165 crew members also were sick.
“We think the right thing to do is to bring our guests home early, and use the extra time to sanitize the ship even more thoroughly,” the cruise operator said in a statement. While new reports of illnesses declined, “we were unable to deliver the vacation our guests were expecting.”
The ship left Cape Liberty, New Jersey, on Jan. 21 for a 10-day cruise in the Caribbean and now will return Jan. 29. Royal Caribbean said the ship, once home, will undergo a complete sanitization, its third since the outbreak began.
“Our doctors tell us symptoms are consistent with that of norovirus, but that they are awaiting the results of tests to confirm that diagnosis,” the company said in the statement.
Bloomberg
Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA)’s Elon Musk said the electric-car maker has expanded its U.S. network of rapid chargers to let owners of battery-powered Model S sedans drive their cars from coast to coast for the first time.
Musk, Tesla’s chief executive officer and co-founder, said last year the company would set up “Superchargers” in most major U.S. and Canadian cities to permit long-distance trips solely on electricity provided at no charge. The carmaker has more than 70 stations in North America, according to Tesla’s website.
“Tesla Supercharger network now energized from New York to LA, both coast + Texas!” Musk said in a Twitter post today. “Approx 80% of US population covered.”
Tesla, seeking to be the world’s leading maker of all-electric autos, needs the broader network of charging stations to address the limited driving range and long charge times of battery cars. Without the stations, Tesla drivers are limited by the estimated 265-mile (426-kilometer) range of a Model S battery, which can take as long as 9 hours to repower.
Musk has said the chargers, which the company says are the fastest available, are installed near major highway interchanges on properties close to restaurants, cafés or shopping to allow drivers to take breaks while their vehicle are repowered.