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.
It's here! The bumper sticker message for Obama 2012: Forward(VIDEO) - Take a look at the new Obama 2012 campaign video, and the final tagline that distills the Democratic presidential re-election campaign in one word: Forward.
The new campaign message, all 7 minutes of it, is upbeat and touts a litany of President Obama's accomplishments.
It contrasts his foward work to Republicans, whom it paints as as the party of no, (and, without actually saying it, the backward folks.)
--Carla Marinucci, sfgate
Indian ferry capsizes; 41 dead, 150 missing - An overcrowded ferry boat capsized in heavy winds and rain in remote northeastern India late Monday, killing at least 41 people and leaving at least 150 others missing, police said.
Divers and rescue workers with rubber rafts scoured the Brahmaputra River early Tuesday in the search for survivors amid the floating debris, which was all that remained of the ferry.
A passenger, Hasnat Ali, told local television that about 200 people were packed inside the boat along with cargo. He was riding on the roof along with about 150 other people when a storm hit as the boat was heading to the shore to dock. The boat was tossed about and many of those on the roof were thrown off and managed to swim to shore before the ferry was dashed to pieces, he said.
--WASBIR HUSSAIN, AP via sfgate
The First Nations News & Views Sunday weekly series is one element in the "Invisible Indians" project put together by navajo and Meteor Blades, with assistance from the Native American Netroots Group. Â The OND periodically prints excerpted items on Monday nights.
First Nations News Bullets
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Ojibwa 'Adopt' Catholic Archbishop in Reconciliation Ceremony: Archbishop James Weisgerber, head of the Archdiocese of Winnipeg, was adopted in a traditional rite as a step toward healing old wounds. From 1884 to 1948, First Nations children were legally forced to leave their kin and attend residential schools where their religion, culture and language were systematically stripped away. Many of the schools were run by Catholic religious communities, in which physical and sexual abuse took place. The last residential school closed in 1996. “In so many ways, our presence here has damaged the aboriginal people—their culture, their language, their communities—and they are the ones who are asking us for reconciliation,” Weisgerber said in a speech after the ritual conducted by Ojibwa tribal elders. A Canadian government Truth and Reconciliation Commission is gathering stories of survivors, as many former students of the residential schools call themselves. It has also established a $5 billion compensation fund.
—Meteor Blades
• Former Landfill Operator Hopes to Make Big Bucks on White Buffalo: Lynn Pollard, who has been raising buffalo for two decades, has had his ups and downs with the animals. But now, after buying a white buffalo cow and successfully breeding her to produce another white one as well as buying a white bull, he hopes to do well all the time. Fully grown brown buffalo go for $1000 apiece, but a white can bring two to five times more. White buffalo are sacred to the Lakota and other Plains tribes. Pollard says he's aware of their significance to those tribes but is himself only interested in the financial aspect.
—Meteor Blades
• Ojibwe Professor Helps Bridge Cultural Gap in Bemidji: In this town between Minnesota's three largest Indian reservations, nearly a third of the people are Ojibwe and racial tensions have always been high. But, Anton Treuer (Ojibwe), a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and editor of the Oshkaabewist Native Journal, and Michael Meuers, a white resident, came up with a simple way to start breaking down barriers—putting up bilingual signs in public buildings such as schools and hospitals.
—Meteor Blades
• Manuals Being Developed for Ethical Health Studies of Indians: American Indians have profound health problems that could be aided by research. But Arizona State University's use of blood samples taken from the tiny Havasupai tribe "put genetic research on the front burner," says Ron Whitener, executive director of the University of Washington’s Native American Law Center in Seattle. He is working with the National Institutes of Health to put together manuals to help the tribes control research through methodical reviews of study proposals and by establishing protections both for human subjects and the tribal communities. Use of the blood samples for studies the Havasupai had not given their consent to led to a public apology and a $700,000 settlement from ASU. “Probably most offensive [of those uses],” Whitener said was ASU research and publication in journals of articles “looking at inbreeding among this very small tribe located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.”
—Meteor Blades
• Klamaths Win Big on Water Rights: An administrative law judge on April 16 gave a resounding victory to the Klamath Tribes’ efforts to secure their treaty-reserved water rights. Water from the Klamath River and Klamath Lake was confirmed in the amounts claimed by the tribes and the Bureau of Indian Affairs as trustee for the tribes. Specifically, the judge ruled that the tribes' water rights are the most senior in the Klamath Basin, seniority being one of the key factors in U.S. water law. The tribes were guaranteed their traditional rights to hunt, fish, trap and gather plants in the area in an 1864 treaty. But for 36 years, they have been in litigation to secure the water rights necessary to ensure the health of the game and plant life in the basin. The Native American Rights Fund, the nation's oldest non-profit firm working for Indian rights, has been involved for the entire process.
—Meteor Blades
West Point to display Bin Laden trove - U.S. officials say the public will soon be able to read some of Osama bin Laden's last written or typed words â made available by the U.S. Army's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point military academy this week.
Navy SEALs gathered the documents when they raided bin Laden's compound ...
--KIMBERLY DOZIER, AP Intelligence Writer, sfgate
Super PACs gear up for Calif. congressional races = The redrawing of California's congressional districts has set off intense fundraising competition between Democrats and Republicans, with both parties gearing up super PACs to raise and spend millions of dollars targeted exclusively for races in the state that could be key to control of the House of Representatives.
Several of the state's 53 congressional districts are competitive for the first time in years, prompting the parties to turn their attention to the political action committees. The groups are allowed to raise unlimited donations and are likely to fund campaigns that will be nastier than usual in an attempt to sway six to 10 congressional races in the state, party observers told The Chronicle.
--Carla Marinucci,Joe Garofoli, sfgate.com
Calif. poll finds disconnect on school cuts, taxes - Nearly 80 percent of Californians oppose $5 billion in so-called trigger cuts to state schools this fall, but only a slight majority of voters support the governor's tax plan to stop it, according to a survey of 2,000 voters released Wednesday.
At this point, 54 percent of likely voters said they'd vote for Gov. Jerry Brown's ballot measure to temporarily boost sales tax and income tax on wealthy California residents, the Public Policy Institute of California poll found.
If it doesn't pass, Brown's plan calls for school budget cuts to be triggered. Supporters of the tax hike measure expect to submit enough signatures to qualify for the Nov. 6 ballot sometime next month.
Jill Tucker, sfgate
Women in Brazil Turn to Eco-Friendly Farming in Wake of Storms
Rosana Nogueira surrounded by lettuce in her greenhouse.
Credit:Fabíola Ortiz/IPS
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BONSUCESSO, Brazil, Apr 30, 2012 (IPS) - In the green belt of market gardens that feeds the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, women farmers are learning environmentally friendly techniques in response to extreme weather events and their effects on the land.
In the hilly Serrana region of the southeastern state of Rio de Janeiro, where many women are small-scale farmers, violent storms in January 2011 caused floods and mudslides that destroyed practically the entire production of vegetables in the area.
The producers are now back to their normal activities, but with greater concern for a less invasive type of agriculture that is better adapted to the new realities of climate change in their lives, 38-year-old Rosana Nogueira, who runs a small family farm, told IPS.
Her 24-hectare farm is in Lúcios, an area that is home to 400 families in the Formiga river basin in the rural district of Bonsucesso, near the city of Teresópolis, one of the zones worst hit by last year's storms in which 916 people died state-wide.
--Fabíola Ortiz, IPS News
NYTIMES: Op-Ed Contributor
The C.I.A.’s Misuse of Secrecy
By JAMEEL JAFFER and NATHAN FREED WESSLER
Published: April 29, 2012
IN Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere the C.I.A. has used drones to kill thousands of people — including several Americans. Officials have aggressively defended the controversial program, telling journalists that it is effective, lawful and closely supervised.
But in court, the Central Intelligence Agency refuses even to acknowledge that the targeted killing program exists. The agency’s argument is based on a 35-year-old judicial doctrine called Glomar, which allows government agencies to respond to requests under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, by refusing to confirm or deny the existence of the records that have been requested.
The doctrine sometimes serves a legitimate purpose, but the C.I.A. has grossly abused it, in cases relating to the targeted killing program and other counterterrorism operations. It is invoking the doctrine not to protect legitimately classified information from disclosure, but to shield controversial decisions from public scrutiny and to spare officials from having to defend their policies in court.
Texas: Judge Prevents Ban on Funds to Planned Parenthood - A federal judge in Austin on Monday prevented Texas from enforcing a rule that would have banned Planned Parenthood from participating in a health care program for low-income women. Nine Planned Parenthood clinics sued the state, saying that the rule, requiring all those in the program to certify that they do not affiliate with entities that perform or promote abortions, was unconstitutional.
MANNY FERNANDEZ, nytimes