Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, August 23, 2011.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
---
This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: L.E.S. Artistes by Santogold
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
---------------------------------------
|
|
Top News |
|
Taxpayer Film Subsidies Promote Youth Smoking, Researchers Find
By (ScienceDaily)
|
State governments, including California as well as others in Canada and the United Kingdom, pour hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into major motion pictures that depict smoking -- leading to thousands of new teen smokers every year, a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) researcher has found.
. . .
In California, approximately 70 percent of all released PG-13 movies subsidized under the state's program depict smoking, researchers have independently found.
"California's state film subsidy program is undermining its longstanding tobacco control efforts," said lead author Stanton Glantz, PhD, UCSF professor of medicine and director of the Smoke Free Movies Project based at UCSF. "These activities never made sense, but are even more remarkable at a time when health and education programs are being slashed."
. . .
In Canada and the United Kingdom, however, most of these movies are re-rated as appropriate for teens or children, largely because of more permissive attitudes toward language and sex. As a result, youths in these countries experience greater exposure to onscreen smoking, suggesting that more Canadian or British youths may begin to smoke due to smoking in films than youths in the United States, the researchers conclude. In 2010, 45 percent of films with smoking were rated for youth in the United States, 93 percent in the UK, and 82 percent in Canada.
|
Climate scientist exonerated over research
By (UPI)
|
climate scientist at the center of the climate-change debate has been exonerated of allegations of research misconduct, Penn State said in a statement.
Michael C. Mann, director of Penn State's Earth System Science Center, has been a target of climate change skeptics who have accused him of manipulating data, Chemical & Engineering News reported Tuesday.
. . .
Mann was one of a group of scientists whose e-mails were hacked from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and made public in late 2009 as alleged evidence of manipulated data.
|
Two U.S. nuclear reactors shut down by quake
By (RIA Novosti)
|
Two nuclear reactors shut down automatically in the state of Virginia after a 5.9-strong earthquake hit Washington on Tuesday and tremors reached New York, federal officials said.
The nuclear fuel containers at the North Anna Power Station are being cooled off by four power generators.
Media reports said earlier in the day that the state of Virginia, including Washington D.C., had been struck by the earthquake. Some State Department officials were evacuated along with staff in the Pentagon, some ministries and Congress.
|
House is in session for minutes a day, to thwart Obama
By Mike Doyle
|
Freshman Rep. Jeff Denham, a Republican from Atwater, Calif., will briefly sit in a very special chair Tuesday for a several-minute skirmish in a long-running war.
By presiding over a ridiculously short House session, Denham is helping his fellow Republicans block President Barack Obama from making appointments while Congress is in recess. It's a bipartisan tactic, as are the recess appointments it's designed to frustrate.
"Stopping the president from bypassing the constitutional screening process and making a unilateral appointment is one way that I can ensure … accountability to the people of California,” Denham declared Monday.
|
Standard & Poor's president Deven Sharma steps down
By (BBC)
|
Standard & Poor's (S&P) president Deven Sharma has stepped down just weeks after the agency downgraded its credit rating of the US.
He will be replaced by Douglas Peterson, chief operating officer of Citibank with effect from 12 September, the agency said.
. . .
Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, in an interview with NBC said the agency had shown terrible judgement and handled themselves poorly.
. . .
The company is also reported to be under investigation by the US Department of Justice for AAA-ratings that it assigned to complex mortgage investments during the housing boom that later lost money for investors.
|
Libyan rebel leader calls for national unity
By (Al Jazeera)
|
A senior member of Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) has urged all Libyans to come together to rebuild the country.
Addressing a press conference in the Qatari capital Doha on Tuesday, Mahmoud Jibril said "Libyans need to heal and be united together, from every city and every neighbourhood".
"After the transition and elections, people who suffered injustices will regain their rights," he promised.
Jibril urged the victims of Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule to exercise restraint, saying "justice will restore your reputation, to show the world you can build a modern nation; we should prove that we are up to this revolution and are able to build a modern country".
|
|
|
|
International |
|
Riots: Conservative MP warns of 'rushed justice'
By Polly Curtis and Adam Gabbatt
|
People arrested on riot-related offences could face "rushed justice" because of the pressure on police and the courts after the UK riots, the Conservative MP and senior member of the Commons home affairs committee James Clappison has warned.
His comments follow the disclosure that Scotland Yard adopted a policy of remanding in custody everyone arrested in relation to the riots, regardless of the severity of the charges they face or their criminal record, and comes as a Guardian poll reveals there is public support for the tough stance taken by the courts.
The Metropolitan police said the policy was necessary to prevent further public disorder as violence spread through the capital. But the document also acknowledged that the force was so stretched at the height of the riots that it was "impractical" to bail people while they conducted "protracted" investigations, suggesting that investigating officers use special rules to fast-track cases to the courts with less evidence than is normally required.
|
A New Libyan Leadership Could Recover Billions
By Alan Greenblatt
|
. . .
The U.S. froze some $30 billion worth of the country's assets after leader Moammar Gadhafi launched a harsh crackdown on his opponents earlier this year. With Gadhafi's rule now near or at its end, U.S. officials and their European counterparts are prepared to quickly unfreeze those funds for a new Libyan leadership.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told CNN on Tuesday that she hoped at least some of the money could be freed "within days" for use by the Transitional National Council, the rebel group that the U.S. recognized as Libya's legitimate government last month. Many European countries have also recognized the council, known as the TNC.
. . .
Meanwhile, the fact that the U.S. has already recognized the TNC should expedite the process of freeing frozen assets. Federal law requires that a formally recognized government be in place before foreign assets that have been frozen can be released.
|
Left and right join forces against Glenn Beck's Western Wall rally
By Oz Rosenberg
|
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck is scheduled to hold a widely advertised rally Wednesday at 5 P.M. near the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
Beck, a former commentator for Fox News, expresses resounding support for Israel at all times, and the rally, entitled "Restoring Courage," is expected to include nationalistic Israeli sentiments as well as Christian content.
The combination of Israeli nationalism and Christian subject matter has led to a surprising alliance against Beck. His critics include Israelis who normally oppose each other, including religious figures and political personalities from both ends of the spectrum.
"We all have the same reasons for opposing Glenn Beck," said Etai Mizrav of Peace Now. "This is a person who seems to support Israel, but he is a fanatic. I don't know how the right wing intends to protest, but if they want to join us they are welcome," he told Haaretz. Supporters of Peace Now wrote a letter to the cantorial star Dudu Fisher urging him to cancel his performance at Beck's rally Wednesday night. "The area near the Western Wall is no place for a political event. We call on you not to lend your rare voice to such an unclean event."
|
India: Corruption chaos
By Jason Overdorf
|
Tens of thousands of protesters rallied across India on Monday, as social activist Anna Hazare's indefinite fast against corruption entered its seventh day and the government scrambled for forge a compromise.
But by focusing so narrowly on the nuts and bolts of the bill, the protest leaders, and the politicians they oppose, appear to be missing the forest for the trees.
No law will ever be enough to root out corruption from Indian society. But the mass movement itself — whether it is democratic or anti-democratic — may offer the germ of the broad cultural change needed to accomplish what no supercop could do. That is: Make corruption, which has always been illegal, also socially unacceptable.
|
|
|
|
USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
|
U.S. funds broadband in rural areas
By (UPI)
|
The U.S. Agriculture Department says it will provide $103 million to fund 23 projects for broadband services to unserved and underserved rural communities.
"Without broadband, rural communities, agricultural producers and business owners face a substantial challenge," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.
. . .
In June, President Obama signed an executive order establishing the first White House Rural Council, chaired by Vilsack, to create policies to promote economic prosperity and a high quality of life in rural communities, a USDA release said Tuesday.
|
Clergy Sues To Stop Alabama's Immigration Law
By Debbie Elliott
|
. . .
At First United Methodist Church in downtown Birmingham, clergy from around the city take turns leading a prayer service called in response to the new immigration law.
Episcopal priest Herman Afanador, Baptist pastor Amanda Duckworth, and Methodist minister Melissa Self Patrick are part of a growing chorus of critics who say the Alabama law goes too far, criminalizing all kinds of contact with undocumented residents. It's illegal, for example, to knowingly enter into a contract with, to rent to, to harbor or to transport illegal immigrants.
. . .
"This new legislation goes against the tenets of our Christian faith — to welcome the stranger, to offer hospitality to anyone," she says.
|
Kansas Sen. Moran calls Congress 'dysfunctional'
By Fred Mann
|
U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran said Monday that being a member of Congress is embarrassing because it isn't doing anything.
The first-year senator told about 250 members of the Wichita Downtown Rotary Club during a lunch at Botanica that Congress hasn't passed a budget in two years, leading to uncertainty for local businesses to plan their own budgets.
. . .
He proposed growing the economy by starting over with the tax code, changing the regulatory environment for businesses that he says currently “nit-picks” employers, and creating an energy policy that helps develop Kansas’ and other states’ domestic energy resources to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
|
|
Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
Hello Santogold. Are you enjoying the privileges of being signed to a major label?
It's a machine. You get in and they are ready to go. It was easier for me because I didn't have to make the record, it was pretty much done and they already loved it. They asked me not to change anything on it - if anyone had tried to get in my way I'd have been like 'fuck it, I don't need your stupid record deal'.
. . .
How did Ashlee Simpson get so many amazing people working on her new album?
Come on. It's just money. I go into the studio, everything you order comes on a silver platter - and I'm not kidding. They bring you chocolate chip cookies on a silver platter. A REAL silver platter. On the business side of things and from an experience side of things, you're not going to turn down situations like that. It's a formula, for all that type of music you hire the same producers and you get a certain level of quality because you pay for it. But it's a different thing entirely - it's not the same as artistic music. That's not the sort of pop music I talk about. It's a different world and it's for different people and for me the experience of doing that is very important.
. . .
What do we need to know about your amazing 'LES Artistes' single?
Well, it's 'L-E-S Artistes' and it stands for Lower East Side. It's not a French thing, it is playing on the fact that everyone tries to make things fancy and it's really pretentious. The song is about me moving back to New York, feeling really vulnerable, wanting to be an artist soaking up all simulation creatively but at the same time staying introverted and in my own mind. At the same time, it's about being accosted by the New York scene and the scenesters and hipsters, who are really not artists and are just pretending to be. They're all about just being seen.
Read more: http://www.popjustice.com/...
Back to what's happening:
|
|
Environment and Greening |
|
Why A Quake In Virginia Isn't As Rare As It Sounds
By Liz Halloran
|
The earthquake that rattled the East Coast on Tuesday afternoon — from its Virginia epicenter to Washington, D.C., and the islands off Massachusetts — was, indeed, rare, geologists say.
. . .
"Earthquakes in central Virginia are not very unusual," says David Spears, Virginia's state geologist. "We have them every few years, but they're usually in the 2-to-4 magnitude range."
. . .
Virginia sits about smack in the middle of the North American plate, where "intra-plate seismicity" — that is, seismic activity within a plate itself, rather than at a plate boundary — causes the occasional earthquake.
. . .
East Coast earthquakes are typically felt in a wider area than those in California. That's because the Earth's crust is more solid in the East, and it carries seismic waves better than in the more fractured West Coast crust.
|
The Ever Changing Science of Global Warming
By Kevin Drum
|
Speaking of science, Brad Plumer points out today that scientists do change their minds from time to time. That's science! And they've been changing their collective minds on global warming recently too:
Much of the climate science that’s been published since 2007 appears to have strengthened the consensus, not weakened it. A report published last May by Britain’s Met Office, looking at more than 100 peer-reviewed post-IPCC studies, found that the case for human influence has been bolstered: “We can say with a very high significance level that the effects we see in the climate cannot be attributed to any other forcings.”
. . .
Anyone who reads this blog regularly already knows this, but as climate models have gotten better the consensus estimates of future warming have been going up, not down. A rise of 2°C over the next century is now a certainty, 4°C is pretty likely, and 6°C is hardly out of the question. And anyone who thinks 6°C isn't something to at least consider insuring against just isn't paying attention.
|
Popularity threatens to turn a once romantic destination into a sewer
By Julien Bouissou
|
Before managing the Barracuda diving club in Goa's Sun Village resort, Venkatesh Charloo worked on a trading desk in a Hong Kong bank. After watching a Cousteau film he decided to quit the world of finance and get into deep sea diving. Now, 15 years later, he is very angry. "The islands off Goa are covered in garbage, and there are fewer and fewer fish." Part of his job is to clean up diving sites at the beginning of the tourist season.
Goa survived four centuries of Portuguese colonisation and an influx of hippies in the 1960s, but today it is threatened by mass tourism. More than 2.5 million tourists visit this small state in south-west India every year, twice as many as 10 years ago, with a local population of just 1.5 million. National Geographic has ranked Goa's beaches among the worst in the world.
. . .
However, the proliferation of faecal coliform bacteria may well disturb the promised idyll. According to a study by the Goa based National Institute of Oceanography, levels of potentially dangerous bacteria, such as salmonella, rose sharply between 2002 and 2007. The report, published last July in the journal Ecological Indicators, concluded that increasingly strong concentrations of faecal coliform and other pathogenic bacteria in the coastal waters were a threat to the environment as well as to human health. In some places, swimming could lead to disease .
|
NYT green-jobs story ignores ‘explosive growth’
By Joseph Romm
|
Imagine if, in 1963, two years after JFK's famous speech to Congress, The New York Times had run a story titled "Space program fails to live up to promise." That will give you some idea of how bad a recent NYT story on the clean energy economy was: "Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises."
The story is triply terrible: It's incorrect, premature, and misleading. So of course it has been quoted endlessly by the right-wing media. It's sad when the U.S. press isn't any better than the U.K. press.
. . .
The clean economy is real. It's going to be the biggest job-creating sector in the coming decades because of peak oil and climate change. Of course, it's possible that most of the jobs will be created overseas if the GOP and the fossil-fuel-funded denier-industrial complex continues to succeed in its effort to strangle it -- and if the media keeps misreporting the story.
|
Zimbabwean farmers grow Nigeria's green revolution
By Jonah Fisher
|
Seven years ago a small group of Zimbabweans were invited to lead Nigeria's green revolution. Forced off their farms by Robert Mugabe's land reforms, this was their chance to start again.
The offer from the west Nigerian state of Kwara was an attractive one. Fertile land, generous loans and political backing in return for their expertise.
The Zimbabweans needed work and the Nigerians wanted to show that Africa's economic giant could move from importing almost all of its food to feeding itself. On paper at least it appeared a good match.
|
|
|
|
Science and Health |
|
Why Celebrating With Gunfire Is Really Stupid
By Kelly Hodgkins
|
Libyan rebels are rejoicing in Tripoli by firing their guns in the air. Little do they know, this is one of the dumbest ways they could celebrate.
It all comes down to our good friend gravity. When a bullet goes up, it must come down and you have little control where it's going to land. Though a falling bullet is estimated to have only 10% of its original muzzle velocity, it still has a good chance of injuring and possibly even killing you.
|
Men and Women Differ in the Way They Anticipate an Unpleasant Emotional Experience, Research Finds
By (ScienceDaily)
|
Men and women differ in the way they anticipate an unpleasant emotional experience, which influences the effectiveness with which that experience is committed to memory, according to new research.
In the study, supported by a grant from the Wellcome Trust, women showed heightened neural responses in anticipation of negative experiences, but not positive ones. The neural response during anticipation was related to the success of remembering that event in the future. No neural signature was found during anticipation in either positive or negative experiences in men.
. . .
In the time period between the participant being given the cue and being shown the image, scientists measured their electrical brain activity. After a 20 minute delay participants in the study undertook a memory task about the images they had seen. The results showed that when the cue signalled an imminent negative image, brain activity following the cue could predict if the image would be remembered or not. This was shown in women, but not in men. Neither women nor men showed any difference in electrical brain activity before seeing neutral or positive images
|
Sexist men and women made for each other
By (UPI)
|
Men who prefer "one-night stands" are apt to use aggressive courtship strategies that sexist women who favor casual sex respond to, U.S. researchers say.
Jeffrey Hall and Melanie Canterberry of the University of Kansas say men with negative sexist attitudes toward women compete with other men who show an interest in a woman, tease the woman and isolate her from her friends.
. . .
The study, published in the journal Sex Roles, found that men with negative, sexist attitudes toward women -- justifying male privilege -- were more likely to use assertive strategies, which may serve to "put women in their place" in a submissive or yielding role during courtship.
|
DNA study deals blow to theory of European origins
By Paul Rincon
|
A new study deals a blow to the idea that most European men are descended from farmers who migrated from the Near East 5,000-10,000 years ago.
The findings challenge previous research showing that the genetic signature of the farmers displaced that of Europe's indigenous hunters.
The latest research leans towards the idea that most of Europe's males trace a line of descent to stone-age hunters.
. . .
Their results, based on a sample of more than 4,500 men from Europe and western Asia, showed no geographical trends in the diversity of R-M269. Such trends would be expected if the lineage had expanded from Anatolia with Neolithic farmers.
|
Cooking may be 1.9m years old, say scientists
By Ian Sample
|
Early humans cooked up their first hot meals more than 1.9m years ago, long before our ancient ancestors left Africa to colonise the world, scientists claim.
Researchers at Harvard University traced the origins of cooking back through the human family tree after studying tooth sizes and the feeding behaviour of monkeys, apes and modern humans.
They concluded that cooking was commonplace among Homo erectus, our flat-faced, thick-browed forebears, and probably originated early in that species' reign, if not before in more primitive humans. "This is part of an emerging body of science that shows cooking itself is important for our biology; that is, we are biologically adapted for cooking food," said Chris Organ, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard.
|
|
|
|
Technology |
|
Facebook changes how photos are tagged and shared
By Jemima Kiss
|
Facebook has moved to address one of its biggest privacy challenges by finally giving users more control over photos tagged and shared on their profile.
Facebook users could previously be tagged in any pictures uploaded by their friends to the biggest photo-sharing site on the web, which hosts an estimated 100bn photos.
Acknowledging one of the most common requests from users, one of a new swathe of feature improvements being rolled out by the site in the next few days a new drop-down menu will now allow users to request their friend remove the photo or even block that friend. Users will also be able to chose to approve or reject any photo they are tagged in before it goes live.
Two further changes will be seen as responses to Twitter and Google's surging social networking tool, Google+.
|
China Brazenly Brags About Internet Attacks on U.S. in Leaked Video
By Jason Mick
|
It seemed like just another Chinese propaganda video, designed to promote the fighting spirit of soldiers in China's People's Liberation Army and rouse anti-American sentiments. The Chinese narrator boldly proclaimed, "America is the first country to propose the concept of a cyberwar, and the first country to implement it in a real war."
But, as first noted by TheEpochTimes, the Chinese government unwittingly dropped a bomb shell when it used a clip of what it must have thought was stock footage.
Between 12:57 and 13:05 in the video, the B-roll clip rolled, revealing what is most westerners' first glimpse at a live Chinese cyber-attack on the U.S. Videographic proof that recent cyber-attacks were indeed the work of the Chinese government had never been found -- until now.
|
Torture of dissidents in Bahrain enabled by Nokia Siemens, charges Bloomberg report
By Xeni Jardin
|
In Bloomberg Magazine, a damning report that links surveillance and torture of dissidents in Bahrain with Siemens AG and Nokia Siemens Networks. The report focuses on the interrogation and brutal abuse of Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar:
. . .
The answer: Computers loaded with Western-made surveillance software generated the transcripts wielded in the interrogations described by Al Khanjar and scores of other detainees whose similar treatment was tracked by rights activists, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue.
The spy gear in Bahrain was sold by Siemens AG (SIE), and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks and NSN’s divested unit, Trovicor GmbH, according to two people whose positions at the companies gave them direct knowledge of the installations. Both requested anonymity because they have signed nondisclosure agreements. The sale and maintenance contracts were also confirmed by Ben Roome, a Nokia Siemens spokesman based in Farnborough, England.
|
|
|
|
Cultural |
|
Rising number of squatters in Detroit
By (UPI)
|
Detroit officials say complaints about squatters have tripled in recent years but Michigan law makes it difficult to remove illegal residents.
There are more than 100,000 vacant properties throughout Detroit, many of which are increasingly being taken over by squatters, The Detroit News reported Tuesday.
. . .
Gretchen Barrow, who fought for months to remove two squatter families from her neighborhood, said her area "has been hit with a number of abandoned houses and foreclosures, and that's a major concern for us. I wish I knew how to tackle that, but I don't have a clue."
. . .
"We should look at it both ways: How do we embrace it and turn the negative into a positive?" said Quincy Jones, head of the Osborn Neighborhood Alliance. "All these homes are sitting and it's an open invitation for squatters. It helps prevent homes from being stripped."
|
All charges dismissed against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn
By Geraldine Baum and Tina Susman
|
A judge Tuesday dismissed all charges against former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a day after prosecutors said the hotel maid who had accused him of trying to rape her could not be trusted.
A total of seven charges - four felonies and three misdemeanors - were dropped and Strauss-Kahn was a free man for the first time since May 14, when he was taken off of a jet about to leave New York for Paris and put in jail. He left the courtroom smiling after Tuesday's hearing, which lasted about 13 minutes.
. . .
Obus also said his decision was contingent upon an appellate court upholding his decision handed down earlier Tuesday to reject demands that a special prosecutor be assigned to the case. The attorney for the alleged assault victim filed a motion Monday accusing the district attorney of being biased against his client. Obus turned down the motion; a request for it to be reviewed by an appellate court was considered a formality and was not expected to affect the eventual outcome of the case.
|
Less educated, less attending services
By (UPI)
|
Less-educated white Americans are dropping out of the religious sector, similarly to the way they left the labor market, a U.S. researcher says a study shows.
Using data from the General Social Survey and the National Survey of Family Growth, the study found in the 1970s, among those ages 25-44, 50 percent of moderately educated whites and 38 percent of the least educated whites attended religious services but in the 2000s, among the same age group, 37 percent of moderately educated whites and 23 percent of the least educated whites attended services.
Lead researcher W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia says the study focused on whites because black and Latino religiosity is less divided by education and income.
|
|
Curious about which Editor is scheduled for the next OND? Check the
OND Calendar!