Overnight News Digest, aka OND, is a community feature here at Daily Kos. Each editor selects news stories on a wide range of topics.
The OND community was founded by Magnifico.
Welcome to all, join us in the comment section to share a news articles and jump into the community chat. News is not required to pull up a chair and chat, just be kind to ceiling cat.
Obama to announce new fuel economy standards Friday
By Ayesha Rascoe and Deepa Seetharaman
The Obama administration has reached a compromise with automakers on the target for significantly boosting fuel efficiency for cars and light-duty vehicles by 2025, ending months of negotiations on this pivotal mandate for the auto industry.
Automaker fleets will have to average 54.5 miles a gallon by 2025, according to a source familiar with the plan. U.S. President Barack Obama will officially announce the new guidelines on Friday, the White House said.
The compromise would be slightly less than the administration's original proposal, but a major step up from current standards that require automakers to achieve 35.5 mpg by 2016.
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Girlâs Birthday Wish Granted After Death: Thousaands Raised for Clean Water
Voice of America
Rachel Beckwith's wish for her 9th birthday was to raise $300 for a charity that funds clean water projects in developing countries.
One month later, after her death in a car accident, that wish has been granted more than 1,500 times over.
Donations to the young girl's Internet fundraising page totaled more than $450,000 by Wednesday evening, with gifts pouring in from more than 12,000 people.
Rachel Beckwith's wish for her 9th birthday was to raise $300 for a charity that funds clean water projects in developing countries.
One month later, after her death in a car accident, that wish has been granted more than 1,500 times over.
Donations to the young girl's Internet fundraising page totaled more than $450,000 by Wednesday evening, with gifts pouring in from more than 12,000 people.
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Train carrying hazardous materials derails in California
By Alex Dobuzinskis
A Union Pacific freight train carrying more than 60 cars, some loaded with hazardous substances, derailed on Friday in a desert town north of Los Angeles, prompting evacuations of nearby homes, fire officials said.
However, there was no sign of fire, and no injury or damage to surrounding buildings was reported.
About 30 of the train's 63 cars left the tracks, many of them overturning, at 1:25 p.m. local time in the rural community of Littlerock, Los Angeles County Fire Department Inspector Matt Levesque said.
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Mountain lion killed in Connecticut prowled east from S. Dakota
By Lauren Keiper
A mountain lion killed on a Connecticut highway in June was a wild animal from South Dakota that prowled more than 1,500 miles eastward before meeting his death 70 miles from New York City, genetic tests confirmed this week.
The big cat with a long tail and an even longer tale was determined to have travelled through Minnesota and Wisconsin in late 2009 and 2010 before arriving in the posh suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut, according to DNA testing of the animal and his scat.
The cougar was struck and killed on a commuter roadway, the Wilbur Cross Parkway, on June 11.
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Gay couple asked to reverse shirt at Dollywood
By KRISTIN M. HALL
A lesbian couple is asking for changes at Dollywood after an employee asked one of the women to turn her T-shirt reading "marriage is so gay" inside-out to avoid offending others on a recent visit to the Tennessee theme park complex.
Olivier Odom and Jennifer Tipton told The Knoxville News Sentinel they want the park to be more inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families after Odom was asked to reverse her shirt when they visited Dollywood Splash Country next to the Pigeon Forge amusement park. The story was first reported by WBIR-TV in Knoxville....
Odom said that they visited the water park July 9 with friends and their friends' children when she was asked by a person at the ticket booth to turn her shirt inside out because it was a family park.
Odom said she complied so as not to make a scene in front of the children, but felt offended
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Montana launches $85 million carbon storage project
By Laura Zuckerman
The federal government has given final approval to an $85 million, eight-year pilot project to inject a million tons of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, into underground rock formations in Montana for storage.
The Montana State University project seeks to determine whether carbon dioxide emissions from sources such as coal-fired power plants and cement production can be safely and economically captured and stored instead of being released into the atmosphere.
The Big Sky Sequestration Project comes as the U.S. Energy Department is underwriting numerous carbon capture and storage experiments aimed at reducing greenhouse gas output associated with climate change, government officials said in a statement on Tuesday.
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Job listings say the unemployed need not apply
By Liz Goodwin
Hundreds of job opening listings posted on Monster.com and other jobs sites explicitly state that people who are unemployed would be less attractive applicants, with some telling the long-term unemployed to not even bother with applying.
The New York Times' Catherine Rampell said she found preferences for the already employed or only recently laid off in listings for "hotel concierges, restaurant managers, teachers, I.T. specialists, business analysts, sales directors, account executives, orthopedics device salesmen, auditors and air-conditioning technicians." Even the massive University of Phoenix stated that preference, but removed the listings when the Times started asking questions.
The concerted shunning of unemployed Americans by prospective employers was a common theme that cropped up in the thousands of responses that poured in when we asked Yahoo! readers to share their experiences of unemployment for our "Down But Not Out" series.
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Home-Buying Regrets: Two Military Families' Sagas
by Tamara Keith
It's lunchtime, and Sarah Bullard and her four kids gather around the island in the kitchen of their Bristol, R.I., home. Her husband, a Navy officer, is out of town.
This kitchen is what sold her on the house on a snowy December day.
"We walked through, and it was a cluttered mess," Bullard says. "And we sort of looked at each other and walked through into the kitchen, and my husband looked at me and was like, 'Uh-oh. This is it. It's a beautiful kitchen.' "
Now Bullard wishes she had never seen that kitchen. Buying the house turned out to be a huge mistake.
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Five myths about canning
eatocracy.cnn
You say you want a can-volution? Well, you need to know Sean Timberlake.
Timberlake is a professional writer and author of the blog Hedonia. He's also the founder of Punk Domestics, a Web site devoted to all things do-it-yourself food - from pickles and jams to goodies in cans.
When it comes to preservation, Timberlake admits even learned people and accomplished home cooks are oftentimes stymied by the fear of poisoning their loved ones with a tainted jar of fig jam (Mmm...botulism!).
While there are real risks, follow a few rules and Sean assures you'll be safely jamming in no time.
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Walmart video rental service takes on Netflix
By Dawn C. Chmielewski
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has added streaming movies to its website as the world's largest retailer attempts to grab a bigger share of the online movie market from rival service Netflix Inc.
The decision to offer movie sales and rentals through Walmart.com comes just two weeks after Netflix raised prices for the majority of its customers. The price increase provoked howls of protest from consumers and led to disappointing subscriber growth projections in Netflix's earnings report released late Monday, causing a 5 percent drop in the company's stock Tuesday.
Wal-Mart, long the nation's leading seller of DVDs, signaled its intent to double-down on digital movie distribution in February 2010, when it spent a reported $100 million to acquire online video service Vudu, a Silicon Valley startup that was gradually being added to home entertainment devices.
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Britain recognizes Libyan opposition, unfreezes millions
By Karla Adam
Britain has officially recognized Libyaâs rebel opposition as the countryâs sole government authority and expelled all of the remaining Libyan diplomats loyal to Moammar Gaddafi, Foreign Secretary William Hague said Wednesday.
The decision reflects the Transitional National Councilâs âincreasing legitimacy, competence and success in reaching out to Libyans across the country,â Hague said.
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Torture still rampant in post-revolution Egypt, activists say
By Mohannad Sabry
Egyptian human rights activists say they've documented hundreds of cases of civilians tortured by police and army forces since the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak, but that none have yet gone to trial.
Under former President Mubarak, the security services were notorious for abuses, but since he left office in February dozens of cases have been filed to the general prosecutor's office accusing police and military authorities of torture and other crimes against anti-government protesters.
For activists, that's a sign that the interim military government hasn't reined in the security forces, which were all-powerful during the Mubarak era. The only difference in post-revolution Egypt, they say, is that victims empowered by the uprising are speaking publicly of their brutal experiences.
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Rains, mudslides submerge SKorean capital, kill 36
By SAM KIM and HYUNG-JIN KIM
Walls of mud barreling down a hill buried 10 college students sleeping in a resort cabin and flash floods submerged the streets and subway stations in Seoul, killing at least 36 people Wednesday in South Korea's heaviest rains this year.
The students were engulfed by a landslide in Chuncheon, about 68 miles (110 kilometers) northeast of Seoul, said fire marshal Byun In-soo. A married couple and a convenience store owner also died.
Witnesses interviewed on television said the landslide sounded like a massive explosion or a freight train. They described people screaming as buildings were carried away by rivers of mud.
About 670 firefighters, soldiers, police and others rushed to rescue those trapped
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Crime Writers Expose Scandinavia's Dark Side
By Sylvia Poggioli
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg expressed confidence Wednesday that his country's open, democratic society will not be intimidated by a right-wing extremist's brutal twin attacks that killed at least 76 people.
But questions are being raised about authorities' failure to recognize the potential threat from the ultra-right â a threat that has been clearly described by some of the country's leading crime writers.
Five days after the bombing at the government district and the killing spree at a youth camp, a mood of collective sorrow still grips Norway.
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South African man wakes after 21 hours in morgue fridge
NASTASYA TAY, Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG â A South African man awoke to find himself in a morgue fridge â nearly a day after his family thought he had died, a health official said Monday.
Health department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said the man awoke Sunday afternoon, 21 hours after his family called in an undertaker who sent him to the morgue after an asthma attack.
Morgue owner Ayanda Maqolo said he sent his driver to collect the body shortly after the family reported the death. Maqolo said he thought the man was around 80 years old.
"When he got there, the driver examined the body, checked his pulse, looked for a heartbeat, but there was nothing," Maqolo told the Associated Press.
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Somalia Urges Humanitarian Groups to Expedite Aid to Refugees
Peter Clottey
Omar Osman, a spokesman for Somaliaâs Transitional Federal Government (TFG), described his visit Wednesday with Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali to three refugee camps in the capital Mogadishu.
âThe conditions Mohamed Ali saw were appalling,â said Osman, âand he could not believe that some of the UN agencies had not reached those camps. At one of the camps we went to, we were informed that a child had died, just minutes before we visited.â
Relief workers say the Horn of Africa is experiencing the worst drought in six decades. The U.N. and the U.S. Agency for International Development says more than 11 million people are in need of food aid. Last week, the UN declared that famine has struck two regions in southern Somalia, which is under the control of the Islamic militant group, al-Shabab.
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If you were blessed enough to eat then please take a time to support the Ecojustice group who put a lot of heart and time into covering the famine.
Tens of Thousands Dead in East African Famine, the latest diary posted by boatsie, is a must read.
As the UN officially announced yesterday the deaths of tens of thousands due to the worst drought in 60 years in East Africa, the World Food Programme today begins airlifting highly nutritious foods into the two districts in Somalia where famine has been declared, according to Al Jazeera's Horn Of Africa Drought Coverage.
Al Jazeera also reports that the International Red Cross has successfully delivered 400 tonnes of food to areas of southern Somalia which are controlled by al-Shabab fighters, who are still denying famine exists in the region.
According to World Vision, meteorologists forecast no substantial rainfall well into 2012; and the drought, with an epicenter in Somalia, has now spread to a fourth East Africa country: Tanzania. Kenya and Ethiopia have for some time been identified as major drought regions. Drought conditions are also present in Eritrea and Djibouti.
Here is a donation link to Médecins Sans Frontières