photo by Eddie C
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors jlms qkw, BentLiberal, wader, Oke, rfall, and JML9999. Alumni editors are palantir and ScottyUrb and guest editors are maggiejean and annetteboardman.
WORLD NEWS
Britain, Scotland sign deal to allow independence vote
Washington Post Europe
“This marks the beginning of an important chapter in Scotland's story and allows the real debate to begin,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said after signing the deal with Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond, the National Party leader. “It paves the way so that the biggest question of all can be settled: a separate Scotland or a United Kingdom? I will be making a very positive argument for our United Kingdom.”
After centuries of bloody battles with the English, Scotland signed away its sovereignty in the early 1700s. By the late 1990s, however, it had won the right to a “devolved” Parliament, and it now has sweeping powers over its judicial system and public spending.
2 From U.S. Win Nobel in Economics
New York Times
Two Americans, Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd Shapley, were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday for their work on market design and matching theory, which relate to how people and companies find and select one another in everything from marriage to school choice to jobs to organ donations.
Their work primarily relates to markets that do not have prices, or at least have strict constraints on prices. In classical economics, prices are the main mechanism through which resources are allocated. The laureates’ breakthroughs involve figuring out how to properly assign people and things to stable matches when prices are not available to help buyers and sellers pair up.
Peace envoy seeks Iranian help for Syria ceasefire
Reuters
International peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi appealed to Iran to help arrange a ceasefire in Syria during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha as rebels and government forces fought street by street and village by village on Monday.
Brahimi made the request in talks with Iranian leaders on Sunday in Tehran, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's closest regional ally in his campaign to crush a 19-month-old uprising.
The veteran Algerian diplomat said the civil war in Syria was getting worse by the day and stressed the urgent need to stop the bloodshed, his spokesman said on Monday.
Philippines signs truce with Muslim rebels
AlJazeera English
The Philippine government and the largest Muslim rebel group have signed a preliminary peace pact that outlines steps to end the conflict in the country's troubled south by 2016.
Chief negotiators from both sides signed the "framework agreement"on Monday, in a nationally televised ceremony at the presidential palace attended by President Benigno Aquino, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chief Murad Ebrahim and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, whose country helped broker the deal.
The framework agreement calls for the establishment of a new autonomous region to be called Bangsamoro, or Muslim nation, in the southern region of Mindanao, by 2016.
The United Nations, the United States and other countries have welcomed the roadmap, achieved after 15 years of on-again, off-again negotiations between the MILF and various Philippine administrations, as a rare chance for peace.
Lithuanians vote out austerity government
AlJazeera English
Opposition populists and leftists in crisis-worn Lithuania have hinted they are prepared to form a government coalition after an exit poll late on Sunday indicated their parties would take first and second place in the country's parliamentary elections.
The exit poll conducted by RAIT/BNS gave the biggest share of the vote, 19.8 per cent, to the Labour Party.
And Labour’s most likely coalition partner, the centre-left Social Democrats, were second with 17.8 per cent with the prime minister's Homeland Union in third place on 16.7 per cent.
The ex-Soviet state, with a population of nealy three million, drastically suffered when the crisis hit four years ago. It was swift to slash spending in response and is now on course to return to economic health - but the belt-tightening failed to win over dispirited voters.
Lithuanian voters threw out centre-right Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, in favour of a coalition of left-leaning opposition parties who promise to alleviate austerity measures, according to the exit poll following Sunday’s parliamentary election.
The fight for education in Pakistan's Swat
AlJazeera English
Mingora, Pakistan - When the local chapter of the Taliban began challenging the state for control of the Swat Valley in 2007, children’s education quickly turned into a battleground issue between the extremist group’s fighters and the local populace.
Between 2007 and 2011, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Swat, led by Maulana Fazlullah, destroyed more than 400 schools, many of them providing education for girls, the local administration says.
Analysts say the focus on educational institutions was because government schools were public vestiges of the state, but were also not as secure as police stations or other government buildings. The Taliban also proclaimed that public and private schools in the area were providing “Western” and “non-Islamic” education to boys and girls, to which they are particularly opposed.
The shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old activist who championed the cause of girls’ education in the valley, by Taliban gunmen last week was a stark reminder of the extremist group’s stance on the issue of education.
Yousafzai studied at the Khushhal Secondary School for girls, an institution that has been providing girls in Mingora, her hometown, with an education since 1994. There are currently 180 students enrolled at the school, where teachers hold classes for girls in grades five and higher. The Khushhal School also has separate branch for boys.
U.S. NEWS
Supreme Court to weigh Arizona voter registration case
Reuters
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether Arizona can demand that voters show proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
The high court will not hear the case before the November 6 U.S. election, ensuring that the disputed registration requirement in Arizona will not be in effect.
The legal dispute over the registration requirement dates back to 2004 when Arizona voters passed a ballot initiative, Proposition 200, designed to stop illegal immigrants from voting. The measure amended state election laws to require voters to show proof of citizenship to register to vote, as well as identification to cast a ballot at the polls.
Arizona residents, Indian tribes and civil rights groups sued to challenge measure.
The registration law requires voters to present "satisfactory evidence" of U.S. citizenship, including a driver's license number, naturalization papers, U.S. birth certificate or passport.
Retail sales point to stronger economic growth
Reuters
Retail sales rose in September as Americans stepped up purchases of everything from cars to electronics, a sign that consumer spending is driving faster economic growth.
Other U.S. data on Monday pointed to an economy feeling the effects of cooling global growth, with New York state factory activity shrinking in October.
But consumer spending remains the U.S. economy's biggest engine, and expectations for third-quarter economic growth improved after the Commerce Department reported a 1.1 percent increase in retail sales during September.
The reading, which beat analysts' forecasts, builds on other signs of growing economic momentum, including a drop in the jobless rate last month and a rise in consumer confidence.
Rising sea levels threaten US coastline
AlJazeera English
Majority of Wis. school districts to lose aid
CNBC
MADISON, Wis. - The majority of Wisconsin public school districts will see less money in state aid this year.
The state Department of Public Instruction said Monday that 64 percent of districts, or 272 out of 424, will get less money than they did last school year.
Even though state aid increased by about $32 million, the amount public schools will get will decrease over the prior year after about $158 million is directed toward private school choice programs in Milwaukee and Racine.
The nearly $4.3 billion spent on school aid this year is down more than 7 percent from what schools received two years ago.
ACLU sues Morgan Stanley for bias in mortgage business
Reuters
The American Civil Liberties Union sued Morgan Stanley on Monday, alleging racial discrimination over packaging subprime mortgage loans into securities.
The suit is the first to directly accuse an investment bank, rather than a lender, of helping to make risky loans that violate federal civil rights laws, the group said at a news conference.
Morgan Stanley encouraged a unit of now-bankrupt New Century Financial Corp to disproportionately target black borrowers with overpriced loans that had a strong possibility of going sour, the suit alleges. The investment bank received significant fees from packaging the loans into securities that were sold to institutional investors, while the borrowers faced high risks of default, the ACLU said.
Kaiser study: Medicare vouchers would mean higher premium costs
The Hill
Converting Medicare to a voucher system would raise premiums for more than half of seniors, assuming they keep their current healthcare plans, according to a new study.
The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation found that about 6 in 10 Medicare beneficiaries would see higher premiums under a generic "premium-support" model, assuming their plan preferences remain the same.
This would include more than half of seniors enrolled in traditional Medicare and nearly all of those enrolled in Medicare Advantage, Kaiser said.
HEALTH AND SCIENCE
HPV vaccine not tied to increased promiscuity for girls
USA Today
12:02AM EDT October 15. 2012 - Preteen girls who received the HPV vaccine were no more likely than unvaccinated girls to get pregnant, develop sexually transmitted infections, or seek birth-control counseling, finds the latest study to discount concerns that vaccination against the human papillomavirus encourages promiscuity.
Other studies, including a report on British teens out last week, also have dismissed the notion. But most relied on self-reporting by girls or their parents, says Robert Bednarczyk, lead author of a study in today's Pediatrics. He is a clinical investigator with the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research-Southeast and an epidemiologist at Emory University in Atlanta.
Meningitis outbreak expands to 15 states with Pennsylvania case
Reuters
A fungal meningitis outbreak linked to contaminated steroid injections expanded to 15 states on Monday as Pennsylvania reported its first case of the disease that has killed 15 people nationwide.
The Pennsylvania patient, who received an epidural steroid injection in July from medications supplied by New England Compounding Center (NECC) of Framingham, Massachusetts, is being treated in a hospital, the Pennsylvania Department of Health said.
The new case means that all but eight of the 23 states that received suspect medications from the Massachusetts specialist pharmacy have reported at least one case of fungal meningitis, a rare and deadly disease that has proven difficult to treat.
Neuroscientists Find the Molecular 'When' and 'Where' of Memory Formation
Science Daily
ScienceDaily (Oct. 15, 2012) — Neuroscientists from New York University and the University of California, Irvine have isolated the "when" and "where" of molecular activity that occurs in the formation of short-, intermediate-, and long-term memories. Their findings, which appear in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer new insights into the molecular architecture of memory formation and, with it, a better roadmap for developing therapeutic interventions for related afflictions.
"Our findings provide a deeper understanding of how memories are created," explained the research team leader Thomas Carew, a professor in NYU's Center for Neural Science and dean of NYU's Faculty of Arts and Science. "Memory formation is not simply a matter of turning molecules on and off; rather, it results from a complex temporal and spatial relationship of molecular interaction and movement."
Protein Could Be Key for Drugs That Promote Bone Growth
Science Daily
ScienceDaily (Oct. 15, 2012) — Georgia Health Sciences University researchers have developed a mouse that errs on the side of making bone rather than fat, which could eventually lead to better drugs to treat inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.
Drugs commonly used to treat those types of conditions -- called glucocorticoids -- work by turning down the body's anti-inflammatory response, but simultaneously turn on other pathways that lead to bone loss. The result can lead to osteoporosis and an accumulation of marrow fat, says Dr. Xingming Shi, bone biologist at the GHSU Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics.
Planet with four suns discovered
BBC
Astronomers have found a planet whose skies are illuminated by four different suns - the first known of its type.
The distant world orbits one pair of stars and has a second stellar pair revolving around it.
The discovery was made by volunteers using the Planethunters.org website along with a team from UK and US institutes; follow-up observations were made with the Keck Observatory.
Computerised attempts to find things [in the data] missed this system entirely. That tells you there are probably more of these that are slipping through our fingers”
The planet, located just under 5,000 light-years away, has been named PH1 after the Planet Hunters site.
It is thought to be a "gas giant" slightly larger than Neptune but more than six times the size of the Earth.
Big Bang and religion mixed in Cern debate
BBC
Some of Europe's most prominent scientists have opened a debate with philosophers and theologians over the origins of everything.
The event, in Geneva, Switzerland, is described as a search for "common ground" between religion and science over how the Universe began.
It will focus on the Big Bang theory.
The conference was called by Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in the wake of its Higgs boson discovery.
Cern is the home of the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator, situated beneath the French-Swiss border region near Geneva.