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.
For Some Sandy Survivors, Medicine's The Big Worry
By Reema Khrais
In Coney Island, on the southern end of Brooklyn, long lines of EMS trucks and buses of National Guardsmen rolled down the roads this week — trekking from residential building to building.
Since Friday, dozens of troops and officials from the City Health Department have been dropping in at the hardest hit areas of New York, making sure all residents are equipped with the essentials: Do they have food? Water? Do they need medical attention?
At one building where they stop, most of the power is back on. But John Twomey, the physician on site, says power's not the biggest issue for some people.
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No answers from drug executive at hearing on meningitis
By Paul C. Barton
Barry Cadden, owner of the New England company whose contaminated drugs have sickened patients nationwide, repeatedly cited the Fifth Amendment on Wednesday, declining to answer lawmakers' questions about unsterile conditions at his plant and its culpability in recent meningitis-related deaths.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee's investigations subcommittee held the first in what is likely to be several hearings on the 461 cases of fungal meningitis tied to contaminated steroid drugs from the New England Compounding Center (NECC) in Framingham, Mass.
Thirty-two people have died.
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Always faithful: Marine veterans tend to hero's grave, cemetery
By Phil Gast
A smiling likeness of legendary soul singer Otis Redding greets visitors to the city clerk's office in this central Georgia city. Down the hall, inside the mayor's office, is a portrait of another Macon legend: Rodney M. Davis.
Both men were African-Americans of about the same age. Both men died in 1967. Both men are city heroes.
Redding and his music are famous worldwide. The story of Davis, who gave his life in Vietnam and became Macon's only recipient of the Medal of Honor, is not so well known, despite two monuments in the city and a U.S. Navy frigate bearing his name.
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Obama: 'I Didn't Get Re-Elected Just To Bask In Re-Election'
By Mark Memmott
Eight days after his re-election — with the fiscal cliff looming, questions being raised about the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and a scandal having forced the director of the CIA to resign — President Obama today told reporters "I didn't re-elected just to bask in re-election. I got re-elected to do work."
In his first full-scale Q&A with White House reporters since March, the president signaled there may be some room for compromise on taxes. While he repeated that the wealthiest Americans must be asked to do more and that the middle class can't be left footing any such bill, Obama also did not insist on raising tax rates for the wealthiest to Clinton-era rates.
He said that "comprehensive" immigration reform legislation will be on Capitol Hill soon after Inauguration Day.
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Scientists identify new risk gene for Alzheimer's
By Julie Steenhuysen
Two international teams of scientists have identified a rare mutation in a gene linked with inflammation that significantly increases the risk for the most common form of Alzheimer's disease, the first such discovery in at least a decade.
The findings, published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, offer new insights into the underpinnings of Alzheimer's, a deadly, brain-wasting disease that robs people of their memories, their independence and their lives.
In separate studies, teams led by privately held deCode Genetics and John Hardy of University College London found that people with a mutation in a gene called TREM2 were four times as likely to have Alzheimer's as people who did not have the gene.
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Curate Your Own Adventure
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
WHEN it comes to happiness, social scientists say it’s not glossy, tangible objects that give us lasting joy — it’s experiences, be it wine tasting in Tuscany or snowshoeing in Vermont. A new crop of travel Web sites is making it easier to book those kinds of experiences — and even give them to someone else. After all, nothing says “I love you” like a gift certificate to swim with sharks. |
Spacing out with Google's spectacular map of 100,000 Stars
By Deborah Netburn
Wow.
That pretty much sums up our reaction to 100,000 Stars, the newest Chrome Experiment from Google.
It's sure to amaze stargazers, art lovers, and anyone who is dazzled by the power of technology and the vastness of the universe.
This latest addition to Google's collection of Chrome Experiments is essentially a 3-D map of the 100,000 stars closest to our sun. Using 100,000 Stars you can zoom in and out and around our galaxy, and even spin it around to enjoy it from different angles.
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US cybersecurity report points accusing finger at China
By Mark Clayton,
The sheer volume of Chinese cyberespionage directed against the United States, together with its increasing sophistication, "make China the most threatening actor in cyberspace," concludes a new government report released Wednesday.
While it is still unknown who in China, specifically, is doing the hacking, technical gains are helping trackers trace cyberespionage "campaigns" back to the country. Among the culprits, according to the annual report to Congress of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission... |
U.S. stops short of recognizing Syrian opposition body
By Mariam Karouny
The United States declined to follow France in fully recognizing a fledgling Syrian opposition coalition on Wednesday, saying the body must prove its worth, after its predecessor was dogged by feuding and accusations of Islamist domination.
Syria decried the new grouping, which it said had closed the door to a negotiated solution with President Bashar al-Assad.
"The whole world, and Syria too, says the problem in Syria should be solved in a peaceful framework and through a national dialogue, (but) the first decision taken after forming the coalition in Doha was to reject dialogue and to continue the war," Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said.
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Workers exhuming Yasser Arafat's body in probe of death
CNN Wire Staff
Work began Tuesday to exhume the body of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat amid an investigation of his 2004 death.
The exhumation process, which started with the removal of the mausoleum's glass and its marble tombstone, could take up to two weeks due to the delicate work that needs to be done by hand, a Palestinian source said.
The exhumation comes after French authorities opened a murder inquiry into his death this year after high levels of a radioactive substance were found on some of his personal belongings.
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