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.
A Cultural Clash Over the Bad Old Days
By DAMIEN CAVE
TIJUANA, Mexico — Men and women, young and old, all walk slowly now by the empty lot at Eighth and Constitución. Everyone stares. Some stop. Many point or shake their heads with surprise.
“It’s really gone, wow, La Ocho,” they say, referring to the old, wretched jail where drunk Americans and hardened Mexican criminals huddled behind bars amid the stench of vomit and corruption. But was the demolition, which took place last month, good or bad for Tijuana?
Few cities would even ask, in the face of such civic filth. La Ocho, after all, was a holding pen where American teenagers who were caught with a joint or had too much to drink often had to pay a $2,000 bribe for freedom. It was prison on prime downtown property, where gang leaders roamed free on the top floor as peons suffered below in tiny cells with useless toilets.
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Saving Lives or Photographing Them?
By KERRI MACDONALD
Misha Friedman’s photographs of tuberculosis are dark, black-and-white glimpses of passing lives. In many of the frames — shot in Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Russia — there is a wandering, ghostly presence.
The visual conceit is apt.
“Most of the people you see here are dead,” Mr. Friedman said last week, looking through the photographs. “My images have not really helped them. Maybe they’ll help people in the future. Maybe they’ll help with fund-raising here and there. But to these particular people, they did not help.
“So that part is harder, being kind of just a photographer.”
His perspective comes from having worked for N.G.O.’s since 2003, much of that time as a logistician for Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières. He had not been working as a photographer for the organization, but he had begun taking photos as a hobby while working in Darfur in 2005, photographing life, work and “pretty things.”
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Questions Raised in Afghan Detainee’s Case
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — On the night of July 20, 2002, about two dozen American Special Forces soldiers raided a house in a village near Khost, Afghanistan. The unit was acting on a tip from an informant who said someone living there was hiding antitank mines for an insurgents’ cell.
They found a cache of mines buried in a field. They also found a young man named Obaydullah, who was carrying a notebook with several pages of diagrams for wiring improvised explosive devices. Of 220 Afghans sent to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he is among the 18 who remain.
Mr. Obaydullah is not, however, among the five senior Taliban prisoners who might be transferred to house arrest in Qatar if an agreement can be reached in connection with talks to end the war. Like some of the other Afghans at Guantámano, he is not an important enough figure to be a bargaining chip.
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Russia Plans to Retry Dead Lawyer in Tax Case
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
MOSCOW — The police in Russia plan to resubmit for trial a tax evasion case in which the primary defendant died in detention more than two years ago, his former employer said Tuesday.
The trial of the defendant, Sergei L. Magnitsky, would be the first posthumous prosecution in Russian legal history, according to a statement by the former employer, Hermitage Capital.
The death of Mr. Magnitsky, a lawyer, in November 2009 drew international criticism over Russia’s human rights record, especially after accusations arose that he had been denied proper medical care. The State Department has barred officials linked to Mr. Magnitsky’s prosecutions from entering the United States. Parliaments in nine European countries are considering similar bans.
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The Church That Politics Turned Into a Mosque
By SUSANNE GUSTEN
ISTANBUL — As worshipers knelt to face the Qiblah for noon prayers in the Hagia Sophia of Iznik last week, a caretaker beckoned to a couple of tourists tiptoeing around behind them.
“Look,” he whispered, pointing to a faded fresco on the wall, as the imam intoned the prayer and the worshipers faced Mecca. “It’s Jesus, Mary and John the Baptist.”
The caretaker, Nurettin Bulut, a Culture Ministry employee, has been showing visitors around the ancient church in northwestern Turkey for three years, pointing out its Byzantine mosaics and relating its history as the venue of the seventh Ecumenical Council of Christendom and, later, as an Ottoman mosque.
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Obama to seek more Alzheimer's research money
AP.com
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is increasing spending on Alzheimer's research -- planning to surpass half a billion dollars next year -- as part of a quest to find effective treatments for the brain-destroying disease by 2025.
In a two-part plan announced Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health immediately will devote an extra $50 million dementia research, on top of the $450 million a year it currently spends. The boost opens the possibility that at least one stalled study of a possible therapy might get to start soon.
Next week, President Barack Obama will ask Congress for $80 million in new money to spend for Alzheimer's research in 2013.
"The science of Alzheimer's disease has reached a very interesting juncture," with promising new findings to pursue after years of false starts, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told The Associated Press. "We would love to be able to come up with a way of bringing forward an even larger amount of support."
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Ohio building with ties to Wright brothers eroding
Associated Press
CINCINNATI (AP) — An Ohio structure containing remnants of a building where the Wright brothers rented space for their first bicycle shop has been declared a public nuisance and may eventually be demolished despite residents' efforts to preserve it.
Orville and Wilbur Wright, who became famous for making the first airplane flight on Dec. 17, 1903, sold, built and repaired bicycles in their hometown of Dayton and had several shop locations through the years.
The brothers rented space for their first shop from 1892 to 1893 at the site where a vacant building now stands. The city-owned structure, known as the Gem City Ice Cream Co. building, contains three exterior walls of the building that once housed the brothers' shop.
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GOP targets child tax break for illegal immigrants
By Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Republicans are looking to deny child tax credits to illegal immigrants — refund checks averaging $1,800 — in an effort that has roused anger among Hispanics and some Democratic lawmakers.
The proposal, which would require people who claim the federal credit to have Social Security numbers to prove they’re legal workers, is being offered as a way to help pay for extending the Social Security tax cut for most American wage-earners. It would trim federal spending by about $10 billion over a decade.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada says the proposal unfairly goes after the children of poor Hispanic workers. Such kids often are U.S. citizens, even when their parents aren’t, because they were born in this country.
Says Leticia Miranda, senior policy adviser of the National Council of La Raza: "People who are making close to the minimum wage and are raising children in this country — and we’re asking them to pay for the payroll tax cut?" She says, "It’s outrageous and it’s crazy."
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FEMA rolls out plan to waive Katrina victim debts
AP
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Federal Emergency Management Agency is beginning a plan to waive debts for thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters.
An aide to Sen. Mary Landrieu who has been briefed by FEMA says the agency will mail out roughly 90,000 letters next week to inform disaster victims that they may be eligible for waivers.
Last year, the agency sent out debt notices in an effort to recover more than $385 million it says was improperly paid to victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005.
Officials said people are eligible for waivers if they earn less than $90,000 a year and a FEMA error was responsible for the improper payment.
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Man admits to part of New York to San Francisco art-theft spree
Associated Press
NEW YORK -- A wine steward who plucked artwork off hotel and gallery walls in a bicoastal spree admitted Tuesday to stealing a $350,000 drawing in New York, resolving charges here after serving jail time in California.
An art-loving thief who stole to decorate his own apartment, according to prosecutors, Mark Lugo pleaded guilty to grand larceny in the New York case.
He admitted he took the pricey sketch by the Cubist painter Fernand Leger from a lobby gallery at Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel on June 28 -- one of the New York thefts prosecutors said Lugo accomplished by lifting art off hotel walls and walking off with the works in canvas tote bags. Besides the Leger, he was charged with stealing five works by the South Korea-born artist Mie Yim from another hotel on June 14.
Lugo, 31, is set to be sentenced Feb. 28 to one to three years in prison. His lawyer, James Montgomery, noted that Lugo could get out in less than a year if he succeeds in a boot-camp-style prison program.
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Instead Of Bail, Fla. Judge Orders Man To Take His Wife To Dinner, Bowling
by Eyder Peralta
Domestic abuse cases are never easy. But one in Florida has gotten a different kind of attention, today, because of a judge's ruling that instead of bail, called for a man to treat his wife to flowers and dinner and then take her bowling.
During a bail hearing, yesterday, Joseph Bray faced Judge John "Jay" Hurley. Bray had ended up in a Broward County jail after a domestic altercation that started after Hurley's wife called him out for not wishing her a happy birthday. According to the The Sun Sentinel, the judge said "Bray pushed his wife onto their couch and put his hand on her neck. He held up his fist to hit her, but never struck her."
The judge was tasked with deciding whether to free Bray or keep him locked up. You can watch the conversation the judge had with Bray and a woman who identified herself as Hurley's wife in this video:
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