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.
Exotic animal laws called into question after Ohio killings
By Geraldine Baum, Ashley Powers and Michael Muskal
After the shooting stopped and panic subsided, only a monkey was still at large.
The death toll was 49. The carnage included one baboon, six black bears, eight lionesses and 18 rare Bengal tigers. The owner of the private menagerie was also dead. He apparently shot himself after loosing the wild animals on a small community in rural Ohio.
"It's like Noah's ark wrecking right here in Zanesville, Ohio," said Jack Hanna, a former director of the Columbus Zoo.
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Benefit in Radiation After Breast Cancer Surgery
By DENISE GRADY
Radiation treatment after surgery for breast cancer significantly lowers the risk that the disease will recur in the breast or spread lethally to other parts of the body over the next 10 to 15 years, researchers say.
The new findings mean that radiation prevents recurrences for a longer time and saves more lives than was generally recognized, said Sarah C. Darby, a professor of medical statistics at the University of Oxford and an author of the report.
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Citigroup to pay $285 million to settle fraud case
By Jonathan Stempel and Aruna Viswanatha
Citigroup Inc will pay $285 million to settle charges that it defrauded investors who bought toxic housing-related debt that the bank bet would fail, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday.
The SEC said the bank's Citigroup Global Markets unit misled investors about a $1 billion collateralized debt obligation by failing to reveal it had "significant influence" over the selection of $500 million of underlying assets, and that it took a short position against those assets.
It said one experienced CDO trader called the portfolio "possibly the best short EVER!" while an experienced collateral manager said "the portfolio is horrible."
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Clinton in Afghanistan for Talks on Ending War
Voice of America
Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to discuss peace talks and the security transition in Afghanistan when she meets Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other officials on Thursday.
Clinton arrived in Kabul late Wednesday on an unannounced visit.
U.S. officials say that during talks Thursday, the secretary will press for a binding strategic agreement between Afghanistan and the U.S. that will govern relations after 2015 when American troops are scheduled to return home.
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Bidders balk at Yahoo's "no cross talk" provision
By Nadia Damouni
Some potential buyers of Yahoo Inc are balking at the Internet company's demands for confidentiality that would prevent them from discussing joint bids, according to several people close to the situation.
Yahoo advisers Goldman Sachs and Allen & Co informed interested parties this week of a so-called "no cross talk" provision, which is part of a nondisclosure agreement that they have to sign to gain access to sensitive financial information about the company, the sources said.
The provision irked several potential buyers, including private equity firms that had been planning to team up to bid for Yahoo. They have refused to sign the nondisclosure agreement, and one source went so far as to call the provision a deal-breaker.
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Worry climbs as puzzling bacteria leaves Florida palms withering
By Richard Luscombe
They are as iconic to Florida as sunshine and Mickey Mouse. But now, it appears, the state's famous palm trees are under threat by an interloper from the West.
The curiously named "Texas Phoenix palm decline" has taken root in several populations of trees. The problem has been brought on, say horticultural experts, by a tiny plant-hopping bug that chews into leaves and then vomits on them.
The bacterial condition has already been blamed for destroying thousands of palms in central and western parts of the state. Now, it's raising the unthinkable possibility of tourism magnets such as Disney World or Miami's South Beach losing their trademark trees.
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U.S. deportations reach historic levels
By Jim Barnett, CNN
Nearly 400,000 people were deported from the United States in the past fiscal year, the largest number in the history of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the government announced Tuesday.
The year-end removal numbers "underscore the administration's focus on removing individuals ... that fall into priority areas" such as lawbreakers, threats to national security and repeat violators, the agency said in a news release.
Overall in fiscal year 2011, immigration officials said, 396,906 individuals were removed. Of these, 216,698, nearly 55%, had been convicted of felonies or misdemeanors. That's an 89 percent increase of criminals from three years ago, the enforcement agency said.
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Why The U.S. Needs To Learn More Science
by Marcelo Gleiser
Quite often, people ask me why, as a research physicist, do I bother writing for the general public. "Doesn't that take time away from research?" they wonder. The answer is, yes, it does. However, to me — and I suspect to other practicing scientists that dedicate some of their time to science popularization, like Brian Green, Lisa Randall, Stephen Hawking, Lee Smolin, Steve Pinker, Sean Carroll, Antonio Damasio, my colleagues here at 13.7, and many more — presenting the ideas of science to society is more than just fun and intellectually stimulating: it's part of our duty as scientists. And it's vitally important to our future.
There are different reasons for this. One is that science is part of our culture and helps shape, in major ways, the way we think about ourselves and about the world we live in. Just think that, for Columbus, Earth was static at the center of creation, and we were the chosen ones, made from God's image. As the scientific understanding of the cosmos and of physical reality changed, so did our perceptions of who we are and where we live.
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Viking boat burial site found intact in Scotland
AFP
The first fully intact Viking boat burial site to be found on British soil has been uncovered by a team of archaeologists in Scotland.
The five metre-long (16-foot) grave, thought to contain the remains of a high-status Viking, was discovered at a site estimated to be 1,000 years old.
The Viking was buried with an axe, a sword and a spear in a ship held together with 200 metal rivets.
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Fee-fi-fo-fum: Airline ancillary revenues expected to soar
By Rob Lovitt
A $10 in-flight meal here, a $25 bag fee there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
As in $32.5 billion, which, according to a just-released analysis, is the estimated amount the global airline industry will make in ancillary revenues this year. According to the Amadeus Worldwide Estimate of Ancillary Revenue for 2011, that’s a 43.8 percent increase over the year before.
“Half of the increase is a result of the airlines doing better year over year,” said Jay Sorensen, president of IdeaWorks, which co-authored the report. “The other half is because the airlines are clearly becoming better retailers, increasing revenues of existing activities and adding more of the
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Bamboo bicycle business shoots up in a struggling African country
By Margo Conner
Zambikes has been helping Africans get around on locally made bikes since 2007.
Now they want to get the rest of the world rolling, too, but with a twist: These new cycles are almost 100 percent bamboo.
Zambia, where Zambikes is based, ranks a staggeringly low 150 out of 169 on the UNDP’s Human Development Index. Vaughn Spethmann and Dustin McBride witnessed the country’s dire economic straits and high unemployment rate first-hand during a 2004 university trip and founded Zambikes upon their return to the United States, according to The American.
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Libya forces relaunch Sirte assault after setback
By Rania El Gamal and Tim Gaynor
Libyan interim government fighters have renewed their offensive on the besieged town of Sirte after being pushed back by die-hard Muammar Gaddafi loyalists holed up in the deposed leader's home town.
Hundreds of National Transitional Council (NTC) troops have surrounded the Mediterranean coastal town for weeks in a chaotic struggle to snuff out the last pocket of resistance against the revolution that ended Gaddafi's 42-year rule.
Grad rockets, artillery and tank fire rained down on pro-Gaddafi positions in the center of the town on Wednesday.
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U.S. to renew N. Korea nuclear talks
AP
The Obama administration said Wednesday it would sit down with the reclusive North Korean government for a fresh round of atomic weapons talks and appoint a full-time envoy with the task of persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program.
Disarmament efforts are saddled with a history of deceit and mistrust, but the meetings on Monday and Tuesday in Geneva represent another step forward after last year's military attacks on South Korea that led to threats of war. The coming talks will be the second set of nuclear discussions between the United States and North Korea since July, after a three-year freeze in diplomacy.
"We're looking for more progress," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in Washington. "We're not seeking to reward North Korea in any way by holding these talks, and we certainly don't want to have talks just for the sake of talking. We want to see a seriousness of purpose and a commitment to moving this process forward to taking the steps that they've already committed to take."
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Soldier’s Family Led Campaign for His Release
By ISABEL KERSHNER
The release of Gilad Shalit took years of delicate negotiations at the top levels of the Israeli government and the Hamas militant group. But it also required an extraordinary campaign by his parents, Noam and Aviva Shalit, to build overwhelming support among Israel’s people and its right-leaning government to trade more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some guilty of heinous terrorist killings, for their son.
Their relentless, attention-grabbing effort, perhaps unprecedented for Israel in its scope and endurance, transformed all the Shalit family members, including the grandfather Zvi, from quiet and anonymous citizens into household names, and put their barely known village in northern Israel definitively on the media’s map.
Experienced public relations professionals volunteered their services, and the news media rallied to the cause. Popular musicians composed and performed songs about Gilad. Thousands of citizens became dedicated activists participating in demonstrations and marches, staffing protest tents and trying to block buses taking Palestinians to visit relatives in Israeli jails.
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Yemen's Saleh wants global guarantees to sign deal
Reuters.com
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Wednesday he would sign a Gulf peace deal calling for a transfer of power only if the United States, Europe and Gulf Arab states gave him unspecified guarantees.
Violence in Yemen, where thousands have been demonstrating for months demanding that Saleh end his 33 years in power, has spiked since he returned from Saudi Arabia in September after treatment for injuries sustained in an assassination attempt.
Saleh already has backed down three times from signing the Gulf initiative, and says he will only hand over power to "safe hands."
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