Welcome to the Overnight News Digest
(graphic by palantir)
The OND is published each night around midnight, Eastern Time.
The originator of OND was Magnifico.
Current Contributors are ScottyUrb, Bentliberal, wader, Oke, rfall, JML9999 and NeonVincent who also serves as chief cat herder.
Stories and Headlines
Homeless used as wi-fi hotspots: An "experiment" which involved using homeless people as mobile wi-fi hotspots has attracted criticism, forcing the advertising agency behind it to defend itself.
A division of Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) equipped 13 homeless people with 4G mifi devices in Austin, Texas.
It suggested the public pay $2 (£1.30) for 15 minutes access to the net.
Comments posted to the BBH's site accused the project of being "unseemly" and "wrong".
Members of Twitter asked "what has this world come to?" and accused the project of being a "gimmick".
However, others praised the idea as being "inspirational" and a chance to create a "positive interaction between the public" and homeless people.
-- BBC
The New York Times also has a story about this.
Scientists Make Progress In Search For HIV Cure: (Reuters) - Scientists, stymied for decades by the complexity of the human immunodeficiency virus, are making progress on several fronts in the search for a cure for HIV infections, a leading medical research conference was told this week in Seattle.
Promising tactics range from flushing hidden HIV from cells to changing out a person's own immune system cells, making them resistant to HIV and then putting them back into the patient's body.
A major stumbling block is the fact that HIV lies low in pools or reservoirs of latent infection that even powerful drugs cannot reach, scientists told the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, one of the world's largest scientific meetings on HIV/AIDS.
Deena Beasley, Reuters via HuffPo
First Nations News & Views Highlights: Catch
First Nations News & Views every Sunday.
U.S. officials and representatives of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Hidatsa,
Mandan and Arikara)
sign the Garrison Dam pact June 11, 1953.
The officials are not the ones crying. Read the story here.
Carter Camp Tells Why Wounded Knee Siege of 1973 Still Matters Today
'Twilight' Series Fakes Authenticity, Rips Off Quileute Nation
Some Damage of the 125-Year-Old Dawes Act Finally Being Mitigated, But the Scars Will Ever Remain
70 Years Ago This Month the Navajo 'Code Talkers' Were Born
Menominee 7th Grader Suspended for Speaking Her Native Language
Playing pop music via paper posters with conductive ink: Paper posters that play music via printed circuits made with conductive ink have been unveiled.
The prototype "Listening Post" poster is a guide to bands performing locally.
The interactive poster plays a short clip of a band's music when a thumbnail image is pressed. Tickets can also be booked via the poster.
The low cost of printing mean anything that uses paper or card could soon be much more interactive, said the poster's inventors.
It is one of several "paper apps" that have been developed by a consortium of British scientists, musicians and researchers being demonstrated at the South By Southwest Show in Austin, Texas.
-- BBC
Abdul Samad, whose 11 family members were killed in massacre, spoke with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday. (Photo by Anzala Khilji)
An Afghan Comes Home to a Massacre: PANJWAI, Afghanistan — Displaced by the war, Abdul Samad finally moved his large family back home to this volatile district of southern Afghanistan last year. He feared the Taliban, but his new house was nestled near an American military base, where he considered himself safe.
But when Mr. Samad, 60, walked into his mud-walled dwelling here on Sunday morning and found 11 of his relatives sprawled in all directions, shot in the head, stabbed and burned, he learned the culprit was not a Taliban insurgent. The suspected gunman was a 38-year-old United States staff sergeant who had slipped out of the base to kill.
The American soldier is accused of killing 16 people in all in a bloody rampage that has further tarnished Afghan-American relations and devastated Mr. Samad, a respected village elder whose tired eyes poured forth tears one minute and glared ahead in anger the next.
Once a believer in the offensive against the Taliban, he is now insistent that the Americans get out.
-- nytimes
Small-Picture Approach Flips Medical Economics: CHICAGO — Even as she struggled to manage her Type 2 diabetes, Fannie Cline’s condition spiraled downward. It was not uncommon for Mrs. Cline, a 69-year-old retiree, to have dizzy spells, some so bad that they landed her in a hospital emergency room near her home here on the South Side.
But last May, she began to receive extra attention from Gwlie Lloyd, a registered nurse and care manager at Advocate Health Care, which operates a number of Chicago hospitals and clinics. Ms. Lloyd frequently calls to check on Mrs. Cline; she offers advice on diet and exercise, schedules appointments, orders meals for delivery and arranges appointments with a social worker.
As a result, Mrs. Cline’s health has markedly improved. She is more active, the dizzy spells have subsided and she has not been hospitalized since May. Now she spends her days visiting friends ...
... The extra attention Mrs. Cline receives is the result of a radical departure from traditional fee-for-service medicine. Advocate runs one of the nation’s first and largest accountable care organizations, a new kind of health care practice gaining momentum in part because of the Affordable Care Act signed into law two years ago by President Obama.
BRUCE JAPSEN, nytimes
Britain to Join Obama in Discouraging a Strike on Iran: Britain will add its voice to President Obama’s in discouraging an Israeli military strike on Iran when Prime Minister David Cameron begins a three-day visit here this week, a senior British diplomat said Monday.
“The prime minister is pretty clear that he does not think military action against Iran would be helpful,” the diplomat, Peter Westmacott, Britain’s recently appointed ambassador to the United States, told reporters. “We do not regard that as the right way forward in the months to come.”
Mr. Cameron, he said, supports Mr. Obama’s vow that Iran will not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. And, like the president, the prime minister believes military force must be preserved as an option. But an Israeli strike, Mr. Westmacott said, could “unleash a whole variety of different consequences” and might backfire by strengthening the Iranian regime and the resolve of the Iranian people to acquire nuclear status.
MARK LANDLER and JOHN F. BURNS, nytimes
G.O.P. Split Over a Bid to Revise Budget Deal: The House is bracing for a rancorous showdown over a 2013 budget plan that has already divided Republicans because of a push by conservatives to cut spending below the level both parties agreed to in last year’s deal to raise the federal deficit.
Trying to demonstrate anew their push to reduce the size of the government, conservative House Republicans want to cap spending on programs under Congress’s discretion well below the $1.047 trillion cap set by the budget deal last summer. But House Appropriations Committee leaders and Republican moderates, facing tough re-election campaigns, want to stick to the agreement struck with President Obama seven months ago.
“We voted for it. That’s the number we should use,” said Representative Charles Bass, Republican of New Hampshire.
JONATHAN WEISMAN, nytimes
Researchers say long-lost Leonardo may have been found (Florence) - Art researchers and scientists said on Monday that a high-tech project using tiny video probes has uncovered evidence that a fresco by Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci lost for five centuries may still exist behind a wall of Florence's city hall.
"Together with art historians and scientists combining historical evidence and technology, this research team has unlocked a mystery that has been with us for more than 500 years," said Terry Garcia, an executive vice president of the U.S. National Geographic Society, which sponsored the research.
The project to find what has come to be known as the "Lost Leonardo" has been controversial, in part because researchers had to drill several holes into an existing work and because not all agree that the Leonardo fresco is still there.
Philip Pullella, Reuters
Majority of Japanese oppose nuclear plant restarts: poll: A majority of Japanese oppose a restart of nuclear power plants currently shut for maintenance, a poll by the Asahi newspaper showed on Tuesday, reflecting high public distrust towards atomic power after the 2011 tsunami-triggered nuclear crisis.
The government wants to restart some of the nuclear plants to avoid a potential power crunch come the peak summer season, with only two of 54 nuclear reactors generating electricity.
According to the opinion poll conducted over the weekend, 57 percent of people opposed the restart of nuclear reactors with 80 percent not trusting the government's safety measures.
Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Michael Perry, Reuters
Is keeping hens in the city a charter right?: In 2009, Paul Hughes phoned up the city of Calgary to alert officials to six egg-laying hens being kept illegally in an urban backyard coop. Calgary's bylaw services responded by issuing the owner of the chickens a $200 fine for possessing and keeping livestock in a prohibited area inside city limits. Only that person was Hughes, who, in an effort to spark a legal battle with the city, had ratted himself out for owning the hens. And so began a constitutional cockfight that landed Hughes in a Calgary courtroom this week, where he argued city-dwelling Canadians have a Charter right to raise their own food by keeping chickensand potentially other food-producing animalsin their own backyards.
Hughes, an ex-soldier, former weekly newspaper reporter and single father who lives on disability pay of just $12,500 a year, is taking on the complex legal challenge without a lawyer. The Provincial Court of Alberta trial was to wrap up March 9, but a written decision by Judge Catherine Skene isn't expected for several months.
If Hughes wins he'll be the plucky hero of thousands of Canadians nationwide who keep clandestine chicken coops for home-fresh eggs in backyards, garages and even basements. It's estimated Calgary has 300 such urban coops. Yet in many big U.S. cities and some Canadian ones, including Victoria, Vancouver and Guelph, Ont., it's perfectly legal to keep backyard hens (though cock-a-doodling roosters are banned in every city).
Anthony A. Davis, macleans.ca