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's jobs package may include school renovations and a tax break for hiring
By Peter Nicholas, Christi Parsons and James Oliphant
The jobs package that President Obama plans to unveil shortly after Labor Day could include tens of billions of dollars to renovate thousands of dilapidated public schools and a tax break to encourage businesses to hire new workers, according to people familiar with White House deliberations.
As aides work to put together the proposal, they are also hammering out a companion plan to reduce federal budget deficits over the next decade, which Obama would share with the 12-member congressional "super committee" charged with finding long-term fixes for the growing national debt.
The deficit reduction plan would rely on some of the ideas Obama worked on in private negotiations with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) this summer, aides said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a proposal that is still taking shape.
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Latinos protest deportations at Obama campaign HQ
By Eunju Lie
Latino activists held a protest outside President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign headquarters on Tuesday to ask him to end a criminal deportation program they say is snaring large number of illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, established the Secure Communities program in partnership with local law enforcement agencies as well as the FBI to deport unauthorized immigrants with criminal convictions.
"They're saying it is to deport criminal immigrants, but in reality, that's not happening," said Xochitl Espinoza, of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities activist group, which took part in the protest on Tuesday.
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Howard Schultz: Obama, Congress Should Not Vacation During a Crisis
By Sharon Waxman
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said he has been “stunned” by the response to his call for a boycott on political donations in response to Washington’s poor handling of the debt-ceiling issue.
“We’ve touched a nerve,” said the CEO of the coffee behemoth on Wednesday in an exclusive interview with TheWrap. “There’s such a groundswell of disappointment and concern with regard to the leadership in Washington and crisis of confidence that we have.”
He called for a suspension of donations to all incumbents, including President Obama, until a proper deal on the debt is achieved. He said he would announce a list of corporate leaders who had signed on to the no-donation pledge next week.
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Texas drought takes toll on farms, ranches
By Barry Shlachter
Texas farmers and ranchers, hit by a crippling 10-month drought covering more than three-quarters of the state, have suffered losses of $5.2 billion, the worst on record and easily topping the $4.1 billion agricultural loss in 2006, Texas A&M economists said Wednesday.
Hardest hit were livestock operations, reeling from a $2.06 billion loss. And it will get even worse if rain doesn't come soon to establish the upcoming winter wheat crop and grazing, said David Anderson, an AgriLife Extension Service livestock economist. Lost hay production value was put at $750 million.
"It's been brutal," said Floyd Sincannon, 69, of Morgan Mill, 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth and just north of Stephenville. "We ran out of grass, and we just about ran out of water and that's why we started selling off our cattle."
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Obama Administration's Biofuels Announcement Encouraging, But Fraught With Challenges
Tina Casey
In the middle of his much-publicized bus tour into the nation's agricultural heartland on Tuesday, President Obama announced a new initiative to kickstart the U.S. biofuel industry, which among other things would create more jobs for rural communities in the biofuel production chain. The announcement is the latest in a closely timed-series of three, all related to federal biofuel policies that would benefit rural economies.
The stage was set on July 26 with the administration's expansion of the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, which reserves acreage for growing non-food crops that produce liquid biofuels. One example is the weedy plant camelina, which can produce a drop-in replacement for aviation fuel.
The expanded program is expected to create more than 3400 jobs in agriculture, biofuel refineries and related sectors such as transportation.
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San Francisco's BART transit system has a website hacked for 2nd time
By Michael Martinez
A hacker publicly posted Wednesday the home addresses and other information of all 102 police officers with San Francisco's Bay Area Transit system, the second hacking incident against one of its websites since Sunday, a spokesman said.
The website for the BART Police Officers Association was broken into Wednesday morning, and the names and phone numbers of its entire membership were also posted publicly on the Internet, BART spokesman James K. Allison said.
The officers association, or union, took down their website after the hacking incident, Allison said.
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America can’t afford complacency on China
Ian Bremmer
In China, as we learned last month, there are Apple Stores and then there are “Apple Stores.” Both sell Apple computers, iPads, cable adaptors, etc. But while Apple’s official beachhead store in Shanghai Pudong attracts mega-sized crowds, about 900 miles west of Shanghai in the city of Chongqing, some entrepreneurial types brazenly knocked off the Apple store concept. Enter one of these stores and you’d find the familiar t-shirt clad friendly geek, the clean (though not as minimalist) Apple aesthetic, and a full stock of real-deal Apple computers. Employees in the store actually believed they were working for Apple and Steve Jobs until press accounts of the knock-off began appearing last month.
This story tells us two things: First, China isn’t yet on the cutting edge of innovation. But second, its imitations are improving and its people are learning fast. In other words, the gap between China and America remains wide, but the narrowing is beginning to gather speed. We won’t wake up tomorrow to discover that China surpassed America to become the world’s leading economy. But there’s a Great Rebalancing underway, one that will fundamentally reorder the relationship that these two economies have with one another and with the world.
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Americans love teachers but split over teachers’ unions, poll shows
By Amanda Paulson
Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, have at least a few things they can agree on in education reform, according to a new poll released Wednesday: They have confidence in teachers – and believe the nation should be doing its utmost to recruit and encourage good ones – and they want more choice in what public schools or charters their children can attend.
In other areas, particularly when it comes to unions and collective bargaining, their attitudes are more split.
This year, among other topics, the poll plumbed people’s opinions on teachers, unions, and how teachers should be evaluated and compensated – all issues in the news. This is the 43rd year that Phi Delta Kappa International (PDK) and Gallup have conducted the survey of Americans’ opinions on public schools, including both new and old questions each year
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The bully the GOP has been waiting for
By Gene Lyons
Now that he’s declared his candidacy, odds are Republicans will nominate Texas Gov. Rick Perry for president. They won’t be able to help themselves. If Hollywood put out a casting call for an anti-Obama, Perry would get the role.
Democrats have been chortling about running against yet another swaggering Texas governor. Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum explains why Perry can’t win:
"He's too Texan...Even in the Republican Party, not everyone is from the South and not everyone is bowled over by a Texas drawl. Perry is, by a fair amount, more Texan than George W. Bush, and an awful lot of people are still suffering from Bush fatigue."
I think this is wrong. The cowboy archetype runs so deep in American culture that even George W. Bush couldn’t ruin it. Besides, the Connecticut rancher was a trust fund poser who rode bicycles, not horses. Deep down, everybody knew that. Now that he’s no longer president, Republicans no longer have to pretend they believe the brush-cutting charade.
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Jihadist calls for Letterman's assassination
By Anna Chan
Late-night host David Letterman is the target of an online jihadist, according to the website SITE Intelligence Group.
Adam Raisman, an analyst at SITE, told EW.com that the threat was posted on a website called Shumukh-al-Islam, and is used by al-Qaida.
“It’s a clearing house for al-Qaida material, it gets the most al-Qaida supporters,” he told EW.
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Facebook and Yahoo set out to prove ‘six degrees of separation’
Lesley Ciarula Taylor
You and the rest of the 750-million global Facebook army might finally be able to prove if “six degrees of separation” is real.
A social experiment devised by Yahoo Labs using Facebook’s vast web of connectivity is designed to come as close as possible to the truth of the elusive “six degrees” idea.
Popularized in a film and proved by actor Kevin Bacon, the theory says everyone in the world (or at least in Hollywood) is just six social connections away from everyone else.
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'Flash mob' robs Maryland 7-Eleven in less than a minute, police say
CNN Wire Staff
A "flash mob" believed to have been organized on the Internet robbed a Maryland convenience store in less than a minute, police said Tuesday, and now authorities are using the same tool to identify participants in the crime.
Surveillance video shows a couple of teens walking into the Germantown 7-Eleven store Saturday at 1:47 a.m. Then, in a matter of seconds, dozens more young people entered and grabbed items from store shelves and coolers. Police said the teens left the store together, without paying for anything.
"At least 28 different individuals" have been confirmed on the video, Capt. Paul Starks told CNN Tuesday.
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Credibility of NCAA enforcement will be tested by Miami allegations
Stewart Mandel
Reading through Yahoo! Sports' bombshell expose about former Miami booster Nevin Shapiro, my blood boiled thicker with every paragraph. But who exactly was I angry at?
Strangely, it wasn't Shapiro, the jocksniffing, 5-foot-5 sleazebucket with one hell of a Napolean complex. The man comes off mostly pathetic for thinking the 18- and 19-year-olds whom he took to nightclub VIP rooms, bought prostitutes for and handed over the keys to his yacht were actually his friends -- the kind of friends, mind you, who inexplicably abandoned him when he got sent to jail for his part in a $930-million Ponzi scheme.
Certainly it wasn't the players, who, though they knowingly jeopardized their eligibility and flaunted their status as football players, could no more resist the temptations of South Beach than any other 18- or 19-year-old. We didn't get mad at Ohio State players for getting free tattoos; we got mad at their coach for finding out and doing nothing about it.
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U.S. para-swimmer breaks another world record
CNN.com
A para-swimmer featured in a CNN.com story last week has broken another world record, making her the world record holder or current world champion in all individual swimming events to be held in her class at next year’s Paralympics.
One of her U.S. teammates also made a historic splash at the Pan Pacific Para-Swimming Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, setting four world records of her own in a separate physical ability class.
Mallory Weggemann (pictured), 22, of Eagan, Minnesota, and Jessica Long, 19, of Baltimore, Maryland, each collected eight gold medals at the event – one of the last major meets before the 2012 Paralympics – from Wednesday to Sunday.
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Libyan rebels embrace U.S. and its flag
By David Zucchino
Omar el Keish wanted to make a strong statement when he headed out with his wife and daughter recently for a revolutionary rally here in the de facto rebel capital.
Keish decided to bring along a flag. It wasn't the ubiquitous Libyan rebel flag that flutters at every downtown rally. He chose the American flag - the Stars and Stripes - on a long, heavy pole.
The 57-year-old airline pilot waved the big fluttering fabric with both arms, and rallygoers smiled and flashed the V for victory sign at the sight of Old Glory.
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In Syrian Conflict, Tactics Grow Increasingly Brutal
by Kelly McEvers
Syrian tanks and gunships are attacking neighborhoods in towns and cities around the country that have been hotbeds of anti-government protest, as the government pushes ahead with what's being called a Ramadan offensive.
Activists say the latest, most grisly trend is to detain protesters, torture them to death, then release their bodies for all to see. Activists say of the 70 deaths in detention they've documented so far, nearly 40 have been in the central city of Homs.
In one case, about two weeks ago, two men in Homs had just finished praying at the mosque. One stopped his car and offered another a ride. Witnesses told activists that security forces surrounded the car, ordered the men out and beat them on the head with the butts of rifles. The men were then taken to the local intelligence headquarters.
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Woman's rape case shows pitfalls of Chinese justice
By Tom Lasseter
In March 1997, Jia Hongling was raped by a low-level manager of a mining company in Henan Province. The 28-year-old daughter of a farmer and a construction worker, Jia reported the sexual assault to the police in her hometown of Jiyuan in central China.
That July, the policeman assigned to investigate her allegations invited Jia to a room and then, with two men standing watch outside, raped her, according to Jia's account.
It took Jia eight years of filing complaints in Jiyuan and making trips to Beijing to beg for justice before the first man was sentenced to five years in prison. The policeman in the second incident, however, was never brought to trial — despite a report from the Jiyuan prosecutor's office saying there was "strong evidence" a rape had occurred.
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Kenyans unite to raise funds for citizens battling drought
By Faith Karim
A campaign to raise funds for starving Kenyans has galvanized the nation as families battle a devastating drought in the nation's northern region.
The effort, dubbed "Kenyans for Kenya," has raised about $7.6 million so far. Hundreds of thousands answered the call to help fellow citizens, with some donating their entire monthly salaries.
"I was watching television one night when I saw a rail thin baby suckling on her mother long after she was dead," said Hashim Elmoge, a police officer in the capital, Nairobi.
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