The Overnight News Digest is an ongoing evening series dedicated to chronicling the day's news that the editor de la nuit finds of import or interest. Everyone is welcome to add their own news items in the comments. Tonight, I am featuring news from around the world.
Still the Top Story
- UC Berkeley - Scientists uncover evidence of impending tipping point for Earth
A prestigious group of scientists from around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation.
“It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,” warns Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of a review paper appearing in the June 7 issue of the journal Nature. “The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations.” …
The result of such a major shift in the biosphere would be mixed, Barnosky noted, with some plant and animal species disappearing, new mixes of remaining species, and major disruptions in terms of which agricultural crops can grow where. |
USA
- NYT - Texas Race for Senate Reveals Rift on the Right
At the opening ceremony of the Texas Republican Party’s convention here — typically a time for delegates to show unity for their party and principles — thousands of conservatives cheered and rose from their seats as Gov. Rick Perry took the stage on Thursday. But a few minutes into his speech at a downtown arena, many in the crowd nearly drowned him out with boos.
The reaction had nothing to do with the governor’s role as a former presidential candidate, but everything to do with his support for a fellow Republican, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who is locked in a fierce race with a former Texas solicitor general, Ted Cruz, to determine the Republican nominee for the state’s open United States Senate seat…
The race to succeed Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is retiring, has transformed Republican politics in the state, pitting Tea Party-backed activists against the Texas power structure, which is led by longtime incumbents like Mr. Perry and Mr. Dewhurst, both of whom have taken stands that have riled grass-roots Republicans and opened them to criticism that they have not been conservative enough on some issues. |
- Denver Post - Colorado wildfire: High Park fire now 20,000 acres, being fought from air and ground
The High Park Fire swept across 20,000 acres with a roar and by Sunday had destroyed at least 18 structures, forced hundreds to flee and spewed smoky plumes that turned the sun blood red and blotted out the Rockies.
But even as more than 250 firefighters battled the blaze northwest of Fort Collins, local officials expressed worries that resources were being stretched thin with fires raging in Wyoming and New Mexico.
"We're definitely competing with fires in New Mexico and other areas," said Nick Christensen, an executive officer with the Larimer County Sheriff's Office. |
- StarTribune - Minneapolis battling a bumper crop no one wants
The warm and early-starting spring has meant a healthy crop of invasive aquatic weeds and new techniques for removing them from lakes in the metro area and across Minnesota.
In Minneapolis, the park district's mechanical harvester -- a sort of floating combine that's been a familiar summer sight for two decades -- has been mowing Eurasian water milfoil in the Chain of Lakes since before Memorial Day, several weeks earlier than usual, said Deb Pilger, director of environmental operations. The harvester got an assist this year from scuba divers, who yanked weeds by hand underwater at Wirth Lake and Lake Nokomis.
The divers pulled up the milfoil by the roots, unlike the mower, which cuts only the top 4 feet of weeds beneath the surface; the divers are also able to clear targeted areas more exactly, Pilger said. |
- NYT - Approval Rating for Justices Hits Just 44% in New Poll
Just 44 percent of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing and three-quarters say the justices’ decisions are sometimes influenced by their personal or political views, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News.
Those findings are a fresh indication that the court’s standing with the public has slipped significantly in the past quarter-century, according to surveys conducted by several polling organizations. Approval was as high as 66 percent in the late 1980s, and by 2000 approached 50 percent.
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Europe
- Guardian - Spanish PM claims bank bailout 'triumph' amid eurozone crisis
Spain's prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, on Sunday made a desperate attempt to portray a €100bn (£81bn) bailout of his country's banking system as a triumph at the start of a week which could determine the future of the single currency.
Speaking hours before flying to Poland to watch Spain's World Cup-winning soccer team play its first match of Euro 2012, Rajoy proclaimed that the "credibility of the euro won" following Saturday's bank bailout, funded by eurozone countries…
Rajoy, speaking for the first time since the bailout was agreed, is embarking on a concerted campaign to present the deal as a national victory, with Spain receiving a cheap loan after European partners asked for little in return beyond regular interest payments. |
- RIA Novosti - Medvedev: Giving Key Posts to United Russia Loyalists Normal
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday that offering key posts in the government and companies to the ruling United Russia party supporters is normal practice.
“It was impossible in the past to build your career without being a [Communist] party member. Today people make careers without joining the United Russia party,” Medvedev said. “But on the other hand, we should honestly and openly say that if our party holds power, we will hire people who support our ideals and not our opponents, to the government and management of major companies.”
A political party would look ridiculous if it cooperated with its opponents, he added. |
- BBC - French election: Socialists and allies win first round
President Francois Hollande's Socialists and their allies are set for a majority following the first round of voting in French parliamentary elections, final results show.
Left-wing and green parties won a total of more than 46% of the vote compared to 34% for the centre-right UMP party, interior ministry figures showed. The outcome of the polls is expected to determine the extent and pace of reform under the newly-elected French leader.
Run-offs are to be held next week. The turnout nationwide was a modest 57%. |
- Business Week - Greek Vote to Give First Test of Spanish Firewall
The future of the euro may be determined in the coming weeks, as Greek voters decide whether to honor the country’s international bailout and create a first test for Spain’s newly built 100 billion-euro ($125 billion) banking firewall.
With Greece going to the polls in six days, the last surveys of elector intentions showed the main party opposing the terms of its bailout vying for first place. The government in Athens has “a few weeks” before exhausting its funds, making this is “a make-or-break period,” former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou told Bloomberg Television in a June 8 interview.
The European debt crisis, now in its third year, reached a new milestone after Spain abandoned unilateral attempts to rescue its banks and became the fourth country in the 17-member currency union to seek an emergency bailout. The aid blueprint hammered out in an emergency conference call among euro finance chiefs two days ago is designed to create a line of defense if the Greek voting unleashes a new bout of market turmoil. |
Africa
- Telegraph - Mubarak 'living on liquids' as health weakens
Hosni Mubarak is slipping in and out of consciousness eight days after the ousted Egyptian leader was sent to prison to begin serving a life sentence, according to a security official.
The former president reportedly now lives only on liquids and yogurt and such was the frailty of his health that his wife, former first lady Suzanne Mubarak, and the couple's two daughters-in-law, were granted special permission to visit him in Cairo's Torah prison.
Mubarak's health is reported to have collapsed since his June 2 conviction for failing to stop the killing of protesters during the uprising that overthrew him in 2011. His life sentence saw him transferred immediately to a prison hospital, instead of the military hospital and other facilities where he had been held since his April 2011 arrest. |
- Reuters - Gunmen and suicide bomber attack Nigerian churches
Islamist militants attacked two churches in Nigeria on Sunday, spraying the congregation of one with bullets, killing at least one person, and blowing up a car in a suicide bombing at the other, wounding 41, witnesses and police said.
No one was killed by the car bombing in the central city of Jos, but youths attacked bystanders in retaliation, killing two, police said.
Islamist group Boko Haram's spokesman Abu Qaqa claimed responsibility for both attacks. "Yes, we did both and we will continue until we achieve our goal," he told reporters in a conference call in Maiduguri, the sect's homebase, declining further questions. |
- Guardian - Ivory Coast mercenaries train child soldiers for attacks across Liberia border
Militias loyal to the former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo are recruiting child soldiers in Liberia to launch attacks similar to that which caused the death last week of 15 people, including seven UN peacekeepers.
Child soldiers as young as 14 are being groomed in training camps and used as scouts in increasingly deadly attacks in the volatile west of Ivory Coast, witnesses said. Human Rights Watch said that youths aged between 14 and 17 were being trained.
"They call us 'small boys unit,' and we are always safe when we go to the war zones in Ivory Coast. I don't know the total that we have killed," a child soldier told the campaigning group. |
Middle East
- McClatchy - Survivor says slaughtered Syrian village had been warned not to shelter anti-Assad activists
A massacre that took as many as 80 lives in Qubeir may have had its origins in a warning that government sympathizers issued to the village’s residents against harboring known anti-government activists.
A resident of Qubeir who survived the massacre said Friday that the attack took place shortly after an activist wanted by the government, known as Abu Hassan, went to Qubeir. When an army unit based nearby was notified of Abu Hassan’s presence, it began to shell the village and then sent in six tanks, accompanied by local militiamen, who killed the villagers with gunfire, sticks and knives.
“There had been threats against the village before not to harbor people who are wanted,” said the resident, who used the pseudonym Laith al Hamawy for fear of retaliation from the Syrian government. |
- Gulf News - Black magic gear fails to get past Dubai customs
Customs inspectors yesterday foiled an attempt to smuggle more than 1,200 items associated with the practice of witchcraft and sorcery into the UAE through Terminal 3 at Dubai International Airport…
Ali Al Maghawi, Dubai Customs’ Director of Airport Operations Department, said the two men were apprehended after their bags were scanned. “Two Asian passengers were suspected when their bags passed through the internal inspection machines,” he said. “Their bags were scanned and searched manually.
Inspectors found out a great number of wicca literature, talismans and items which are usually used in witchcraft and sorcery work.” |
- AJE - Saddam's brutality still haunts Iraqi Kurds
In the framed photo Bahar Mohammad holds, her brother Salam is eternally young - smiling against a photo studio backdrop of the Kurdish region's waterfalls, a cartoon bluebird painted in the trees.
Like tens of thousands of other young Kurdish men, his fate was to be shot and buried in the sand - to be unearthed 24 years later from a mass grave in the desert of southern Iraq and brought home…
Forensic experts have extracted DNA from the bones of the victims and blood samples from relatives. But matching them is a massive effort, one neither the Kurdish nor Iraqi government has the resources to do…
Estimates of the numbers of Iraqi Kurds killed range from 50,000 from international human rights groups, to the Kurds' own figure of 182,000. Iraqi security forces destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages and displaced more than a million people. |
South Asia
- LAT - Four seconds in Afghanistan: Was it combat, or a crime?
Sgt. 1st Class Walter Taylor's life collapsed in four interminable seconds in a dusty field in central Afghanistan.
His convoy was reeling from a roadside bomb, his fellow soldiers were engaged in combat with insurgents — and a mysterious black car had just screeched to a stop in the middle of the firefight. Some nine minutes later, a black door opens…
Second 4: Taylor squeezes the trigger on his M-4 carbine. The figure crumples to the dirt.
The figure was not an insurgent, but Dr. Aqilah Hikmat, a 49-year-old mother of four who headed the obstetrics department at the nearby Ghazni provincial hospital. Also dead inside the car were Hikmat's 18-year-old son and her 16-year-old niece. Hikmat's husband, in the front seat, was wounded…
Army prosecutors say Hikmat's killing in July 2011 was not just a casualty of combat, but a crime. |
- Reuters - NATO will not launch air raids near homes, says Afghanistan
NATO will not conduct any more air strikes in residential areas, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said, after 18 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed in a recent raid provoking fresh rage against foreign forces.
The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, has apologized for the killings in Logar province during a joint operation with Afghan forces on Wednesday and promised an investigation into circumstances leading to the air strike.
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- DAWN - Martial law era has ended: Gilani
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said neither the Pakistan People’s Party nor the army has anything to gain from the Arsalan case and urged Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to hear the case of his son, Ali Musa Gilani.
“Neither we nor the army is the beneficiary of this case. And how can we be. The masses have elected us not the judiciary and the army is an institution and it has no role in it,” he said while answering a question during a meeting with newsmen at the State Guest House here on Sunday.
He said his son Abdul Qadir Gilani faced allegations in the Haj scam which could not be proved and the chief justice ordered legal action against those who had levelled false allegations against him (Qadir). |
- Times of India - 'Bhagvad Gita' banyan tree dying in Haryana
The legendary banyan tree under which Lord Krishna is believed to have delivered his message of "Bhagvad Gita" to Arjuna is dying a slow death.
Considered to be more than 5,000 years old, this tree at Jyotisar near Kurukshetra in Haryana is reportedly the only remaining relic from the time of the Mahabharata. Now, a tussle between the two claimants over the holy place on a puerile issue has left the tree completely neglected putting it on the verge of extinction.
TOI found that the area surrounding the tree has been covered with marble pavement and it can't draw nutrients for its growth. Fancy lights and lamps are fitted with nails on the tree for lighting during night and big bells are tied all over it. The 'holy thread' tied by the visitors has covered most of the lower branches. Tying threads is considered to be wish-fulfilling. Sadly, chunks of branches were also chopped off recently by the caretakers without any expert advice. |
Asia
- China Daily - Water plan to take effect by 2012
By the end of 2012, a water resource allocation plan for 25 rivers that flow through more than one province will be put into use, limiting the amount of water that can be taken from the rivers by each of the provinces.
"We are doing our best to accelerate the process," said Chen Ming, deputy head of the Water Resources Department at the Ministry of Water Resources. "Hopefully, the plan will come out by August."
The water resource allocation plan is one of the moves the ministry has taken to promote the implementation of the most stringent regulations in Chinese water resource management. |
- McClatchy - Chen Guangcheng’s mother, brother talk after China pulls security from Dongshigu
With the checkpoints removed and the hired thugs and police gone, it is finally possible to enter the home village of blind Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng.
For 19 months, plainclothes guards had roughed up or chased away journalists and activists who tried to visit Chen. Then in the middle of the night last weekend – June 2, by most accounts -- the sentry huts at the front of the village were torn down and the rings of surveillance dismantled. News of the development, two weeks after Chen had flown to possible exile in the United States, spread several days later.
So with the coast seemingly clear on Saturday morning, a reporter stopped to chat with a farmer on the side of the road in Dongshigu and asked: What do people think of Chen? |
- AJE - Emergency in Myanmar state following riots
President Thein Sein has declared a state of emergency in western Myanmar following deadly clashes between local Buddhists and Muslim Bengalis.
State television on Sunday said a dusk to dawn curfew has been imposed in the Rakhine state capital of Sittwe and three other townships. Public gathering of more than five persons were also banned.
The move follows rioting on Friday in two other areas of Rakhine state that, according to state media, left at least seven people dead and 17 wounded, and saw hundreds of houses burned down. |
Oceana
Americas
- AFP - Chile clashes over Pinochet tribute documentary
Hundreds of protesters clashed violently with police in the Chilean capital as they demonstrated against the screening of a new documentary honoring the late dictator Augusto Pinochet.
"Murderer! Murderer!" chanted demonstrators at Teatro Caupolican in Santiago ahead of the screening of "Pinochet," which celebrates the general's 1973-1990 military dictatorship…
More than 500 police in full riot gear responded by firing tear gas and water cannons to prevent their advance on the theater, where a few thousand Pinochet supporters were gathering for the tribute. |
- MercoPress - Middle class Argentines protest with pots and pans against corruption, crime, inflation and the dollar clamp
For the third night in ten days angry Argentines took to the streets of Buenos Aires and other major cities banging pots and pans to protest corruption, rampant crime and insecurity, inflation and the dollar clamp in the midst of an economy that is showing clear signals of exhaustion and growing questions on the current course of affairs.
Some protestors even marched into the iconic Plaza de Mayo next to Government House and others demonstrated with their pots and pans in front of the presidential residence in Olivos where Cristina Fernandez lives and usually works. Cars passing by expressed support by blowing their klaxons.
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- LAHT - Brazil Resumes Search for Remains of Guerrillas Killed 40 Years Ago
A group of Brazilian experts will resume the search for the remains of about 70 members of the Araguaia guerrillas, the most active of the groups that took up arms against the dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985, Agencia Brasil reported Sunday.
The members of the so-called Araguaia Working Group on Sunday traveled to the southern part of the state of Para, in the Amazon region, where in the late 1960s the guerrilla band operated and was fought and annihilated by the troops of the dictatorship…
To date, 40 years after the guerrilla outfit was destroyed by the military, only the bodies of four of the insurgents have been recovered thanks to the efforts of their own relatives. |
- NYT - Candidates in Mexico Signal a New Tack in the Drug War
The top three contenders for Mexico’s presidency have all promised a major shift in the country’s drug war strategy, placing a higher priority on reducing the violence in Mexico than on using arrests and seizures to block the flow of drugs to the United States.
The candidates, while vowing to continue to fight drug trafficking, say they intend to eventually withdraw the Mexican Army from the drug fight. They are concerned that it has proved unfit for police work and has contributed to the high death toll, which has exceeded 50,000 since the departing president, Felipe Calderón, made the military a cornerstone of his battle against drug traffickers more than five years ago.
The front-runner, Enrique Peña Nieto, does not emphasize stopping drug shipments or capturing drug kingpins as he enters the final weeks of campaigning for the July 1 election. |
- Guardian - Mexicans protest against 'media bias'
Thousands attended a demonstration on Sunday against leading Mexican presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, alleging mass media bias in his favor.
Marches in the capital and other cities took place a few hours before the second and final official debate between the presidential candidates. Polling day is in three weeks.
The demonstrators in the capital ranged from longstanding radical leftwing groups, whose members dressed in identical T-shirts and blared chants through a loudspeaker, to the more spontaneous students who have given the anti-Peña Nieto movement its dynamism in recent weeks. |
- Globe and Mail - Give us facts on Alberta oil spill, locals demand
Four days after a pipeline operated by Plains Midstream Canada spilled an estimated hundreds of thousands of litres of oil into the Red Deer River in central Alberta, local landowners are waiting for answers. “People are tired of hearing platitudes,” said Bruce Beattie, the reeve of Mountain View County, one of the affected communities. “Tell us the facts. Don't try to make a political event out of it.”
Any oil spill in Alberta is a sensitive issue because of the controversy surrounding the debate over the Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines, but Mr. Beattie pointed out there are safety concerns that have to be addressed. “They are going to have to be much more forthcoming about the processes that led up to this spill.”
Alberta Premier Alison Redford held a press conference Friday at the Dickson Dam on the Gleniffer Reservoir, which has been the focus of Plains Midstream's clean-up efforts. Gleniffer Lake provides the water supply for the City of Red Deer and it is a popular recreation area for fishing and boating. The company has been providing bottled water to people who draw their drinking water directly from the river and the reservoir, though the City of Red Deer indicated on its website that it didn't expect the spill to cause any problems. |