Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, rfall, and JML9999. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw. The guest editor is annetteboardman.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
BBC
A senior Chinese official has warned that the "clock is ticking" to avoid a US default that could hurt China's interests and the global economy.
China, the US's largest creditor, is "naturally concerned about developments in the US fiscal cliff", vice finance minister Zhu Guangyao said.
Washington must agree a deal to raise its borrowing limit by 17 October, or risk being unable to pay its bills.
He asked that "the US earnestly take steps to resolve" the issue.
US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has said that unless Congress agrees an increase in the debt ceiling by 17 October, Washington will be left with about $30bn (£18.6bn) in cash to meet its obligations - about half the $60bn-a-day needed.
Bloomberg News
President Barack Obama reiterated that he won’t negotiate with Republicans over the partial government shutdown and the U.S. debt limit as Senate Democrats began preparing for a test vote on a clean debt-ceiling bill.
Many U.S. government services have been shuttered for a week and the country is 10 days away from running out of borrowing authority. Republicans are insisting on changing the 2010 Affordable Care Act, while Obama refuses to engage in discussions about policy conditions tied to opening the government or raising the debt limit.
“We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of economic catastrophe,” Obama said today during a visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington.
New York Times
LONDON — The bitter fiscal stalemate in Washington is producing nervous ripples from London to Bali, with increasing anxiety that the United States might actually default on a portion of its government debt, set off global financial troubles and undercut fragile economic recoveries in many countries
Five years after the financial crisis in the United States helped spread a deep global recession, policy makers around the world again fear collateral damage, this time with their nations becoming victims not of Wall Street’s excesses but of a political system in Washington that to many foreign eyes no longer seems to be able to function efficiency
Reuters
For the 22nd consecutive year, Cuba will ask the United Nations to condemn the United States economic embargo against the island, a top Cuban official announced on Monday, accusing Washington of tightening sanctions in place for more than half a century.
U.S. President Barack Obama, who stated before taking office that he wanted to recast long-hostile U.S.-Cuba relations, has been a disappointment to the Cuban government, which expected him to do more to dismantle the embargo.
The embargo, fully in place since 1962, has done "astronomical" economic harm, Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno said during a news conference to present Cuba's annual report on the damage wrought on the Communist-run Caribbean island by U.S. sanctions.
Last year the vote at the U.N. General Assembly was overwhelming, with 188 nations - including most of Washington's closest allies - condemning the embargo. Only the United States, Israel and the tiny Pacific state of Palau supported it.
NPR
That means it's also time for previews of coming court activity (cases this session will involve prayer, contraception and campaign finance, among many other issues), fresh speculation about when and if Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might retire, and a typically garrulous interview with Justice Antonin Scalia.
Scalia tells Jennifer Senior of New York magazine that he believes in heaven and hell and that the devil is "a real person." He thinks his love of hunting may be "genetic" and claims to be a "damn good poker player," even though he admits he doesn't know what a "tell" is.
While he doesn't keep up with pop culture, Scalia thought Seinfeld was "hilarious."
"In fact, I got some CDs of Seinfeld," Scalia says. (Give him a break — my kid sometimes refers to DVDs as CDs.)
On more serious matters, Scalia says he's cheered that originalism — the belief that jurists should follow the original meaning or intent of the Framers, rather than interpreting the Constitution according to evolving standards — has gone from being marginalized to being an accepted judicial philosophy, even at Harvard, which he calls "the big ship."
He credits his more liberal colleague Elena Kagan, a former Harvard Law School dean, for hiring originalist professors.
NPR
More details are emerging after a pair of U.S. commando raids over the weekend that targeted alleged terrorists in Libya and Somalia.
In Libya, Abu Anas al-Libi, a top al-Qaida operative accused by Washington of involvement in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was snatched from a street in the capital, Tripoli, in an operation on Saturday.
Eyewitnesses say al-Libi was "taken peacefully in Tripoli," NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman tells Morning Edition.
"There was no real sign of struggle," Bowman says, adding that al-Libi's brother said "he was thrown into a car that sped away."
FBI and CIA officials are said to have been involved in the snatch of al-Libi.
"There are some indications that al-Libi moved about fairly openly," Bowman says.
LA Times
Is it possible for a major news organization to produce a story about the Social Security disability program without interviewing a single disabled person or disability advocate?
That's the experiment "60 Minutes" conducted Sunday. The result was predictably ghastly.
The news program's theme was that disability recipients are ripping off the taxpayer. Anchor Steve Kroft called the program "a secret welfare system... ravaged by waste and fraud." His chief source was Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican with a documented hostility to Social Security. Coburn has a report on the disability program's purported flaws due out Monday. Good of "60 Minutes" to give him some free publicity.
Together Kroft and Coburn displayed a rank ignorance about the disability program: how it works, who the beneficiaries are, why it has grown. This is especially shocking because after a similarly overwrought and inaccurate "investigation" of disability aired on National Public Radio in March, numerous experts came forth to set the record straight. They included eight former Social Security commissioners, experienced analysts of the program, even the Social Security Administration's chief actuary, Steve Goss.
"60 Minutes" apparently talked to none of them.
At the top of the segment, Kroft observed that disability now serves "nearly 12 million Americans," up by about 20% in the last six years. Coburn asked, "Where'd all those disabled people come from?"
To begin with, 12 million people aren't collecting disability payments. The number as of the end of 2012 was 10.9 million, comprising 8.8 million disabled workers and about 2 million of their family members, mostly children.
LA Times
The New York Police Department is investigating whether some of its police officers were present when a pack of motorcyclists confronted an SUV driver last week in a case of road rage gone viral, a department spokesman told the Los Angeles Times on Monday.
The spokesman would not confirm media reports that as many as three off-duty officers were present during the Sept. 29 attack, in which one motorcyclist was apparently run over and bikers pulled the driver out of his SUV and assaulted him until a bystander came to the driver's aid.
"What I can tell you is it's under investigation by internal affairs," said the spokesman, Sgt. Lee Jones, who declined to give any further details.
CBS News senior correspondent John Miller, a former New York deputy police commissioner, reported that one of the three off-duty officers thought to be accompanying the bikers was a detective working undercover who was possibly afraid to blow his cover to break up the attack.
Reuters
French magistrates abandoned a long-running party funding investigation against former president Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday, buoying his chances of a political comeback in 2017.
Sarkozy, whom most conservatives want to see lead the centre-right in the 2017 presidential race, was targeted with others in a judicial inquiry into his UMP party's ties with France's richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.
At issue were allegations that Sarkozy, 58, took advantage of the mental frailty of billionaire Bettencourt to obtain money for his 2007 presidential campaign. He has denied wrongdoing.
Sarkozy thanked supporters on his Facebook page after the decision by magistrates in the southwestern city of Bordeaux.
"Two and a half years of investigation. Three judges. Dozens of police. Twenty-two hours of interrogations and confrontations. Four searches," Sarkozy wrote. "This was the price to be paid so ensure the truth was finally established."
The two investigating magistrates in charge of the investigation decided to pursue their case against former French Budget Minister Eric Woerth, who at the time was treasurer for Sarkozy's UMP, and nine others in the case.
NPR
The author is a Syrian citizen in Damascus who is not being further identified for safety reasons.
The boy on the bicycle wasn't old enough to have facial hair. His feet barely reached the ground as he stopped and moved, circling the soldier manning the government checkpoint in east Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus.
"Please, just one bag of bread," the boy, lips quivering, said to the soldier. "Just one."
"I told you, no. No means no, young man," the soldier replied. "No food is allowed inside." He seemed somewhat pained at having to deprive a child of food.
A chemical weapons attack in east Ghouta on Aug. 21 killed an estimated 1,400 people and led to an international agreement for Syria to give up its chemical weapons. Now, more than six weeks later, the area remains hotly contested with the rebels still in control but troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad besieging east Ghouta.
Thousands of civilians still live inside, but government soldiers man checkpoints at the only two entrances to the area to prevent bread, baby milk, medicine, fuel and foodstuff from entering. This has left residents dependent on local food and assistance from aid groups. The state has cut off electricity, as well as landline and cellphone services. Rocket attacks and air raids continue.
Spiegel Online
As the civil war rages around them, Syrians in the capital of Damascus continue to support President Bashar Assad despite their fears. They simply want to maintain their way of life.
When the door opened as we arrived to interview Syrian President Bashar Assad last Wednesday, he was standing there with his arms outstretched and a smile on his face. He greeted us the way former US President Bill Clinton often greets his guests, extending his right hand and touching our shoulders or forearms with his left hand -- a cordial gesture of power.
"What a pleasure," he said. Blue-eyed, gaunt and about 1.90 meters (6'3") tall, the 48-year-old wore a dark blue suit, light-colored shirt, blue tie and comfortable black loafers.
We met at his guesthouse in Damascus, a building with marble floors, tasteful sculptures and paintings that he uses as his office. There was an Apple computer on his desk, books on the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul and "Palaces of Lebanon" on the bookshelf, and paintings by his children on the wall, depicting cows in pastures, chickens and chicks, and the sun rising over a green landscape.
"Shall we begin?" he asked.
Spiegel Online
Should Greece have a large part of its debt waived? Absolutely, says George Soros, otherwise the country will never recover. The billionaire investor also warns about the rise of extremist parties if Germany does not change its policies towards Europe.
Legendary US investor George Soros has called for comprehensive debt relief for Greece. "Everyone knows that it can never pay back its debt," he said in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE. Greece is close to a primary budget surplus after a lot of pain and suffering, says Soros, whose speculation against the pound forced the UK to withdraw from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.
"If the official sector could forgo repayment as long as Greece meets the conditions imposed by the troika [of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Central Bank (ECB) and European Commission]," Soros added, "private capital would return and Greece could rapidly recover. I can testify from personal experience that investors would flock to Greece once the debt overhang is removed."
The Guardian
The United States and Russia are "very pleased" with progress in destroying Syria's chemical weapons stocks, US secretary of state John Kerry said on Monday. He offered some rare, if qualified, US praise for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Kerry, speaking at a press conference with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, said the Assad regime deserved credit for its speedy compliance thus far with the UN security council resolution calling for the elimination of the weapons. But Kerry stressed Assad was not yet off the hook.
"Let me be crystal clear," Kerry said, "we're very pleased with the pace of what has happened with respect to chemical weapons."
He noted that experts had started the process of destroying the stockpiles on Sunday, just over a week after the United Nations security council and the international chemical weapons watchdog acted.
"I think that was a terrific example of global co-operation, of multilateral efforts to accomplish an accepted goal and they have moved with equal speed to get on the ground in Syria and begin the operations," he said.
"I think it is also credit to the Assad regime for complying rapidly as they are supposed to," Kerry said. "We hope that will continue. Now, I am not going to vouch today for what happens months down the road. But it is a good beginning and we should welcome a good beginning."
SCIENCE, HEALTH, ENVIRONMENT AND TECHNOLOGY
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Reuters
Three U.S.-based scientists won the Nobel medicine prize on Monday for plotting how vital materials such as hormones and brain chemicals are transported within cells and secreted to act on the body, giving insight into diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer's.
Americans James Rothman, 62, Randy Schekman, 64, and German-born Thomas Suedhof, 57, separately mapped out one of the body's critical networks that uses tiny bubbles known as vesicles to ferry chemicals such as insulin within cells.
The system, which also describes how vesicles transport molecules to the cell surface for secretion, is so critical and sensitive that errors and disruption in the mechanism can lead to serious illness or death.
"Without this wonderfully precise organization, the cell would lapse into chaos," the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said in a statement when awarding the prize of 8 million crowns ($1.2 million).
Al Jazeera America
In the past few weeks, First Nations groups in Canada have set up a blockade to stop shale-gas exploration in New Brunswick, marched outside the Ontario premier's house to protest high mercury levels and forced a coal-mining company in British Columbia to delay exploratory drilling.
The protests are part of a growing First Nations activism that took root in Canada last winter with the powerful movement known as Idle No More. The mass protests, which drew thousands to snow-lined streets across the country, have gone quiet in recent months, but activists insist the fight is far from over.
On Monday they will try to take that message to the wider public, with 50 events planned across Canada and the United States, along with an estimated 10 other countires, including England and India. That day marks the 250th anniversary of the British Royal Proclamation, which led to the founding of Canada.
"We must collectively send a clear message that our movement will not stop intervening in Canada’s attempts to conduct business as usual," says a statement from the group declaring Oct. 7 a Day of Action.
C/NET
While Samsung's pitching its latest product -- a high-tech watch -- the clock is ticking for a ban on some older devices in the US.
Come Tuesday, the presidential review period ends to overturn an August ruling by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) that found Samsung to infringe on two of Apple's patents.
That ban threatens just a "small" number of products, according to Samsung, but represents a notable win for Apple, which has engaged in a massive legal battle against the South Korean tech giant since early 2011.
There isn't a set list of banned products. Instead, the order affects gadgets defined as "electronic media devices."
C/NET
iPhone buyers yearning for a much bigger screen will get their wish next year, at least if a forecast from Jefferies analyst Peter Misek comes true.
After meeting last week with Apple suppliers in Asia, Misek issued a note to investors on Monday in which he said that the iPhone 6 would offer a 4.8-inch screen. If true, that would be a hefty increase over the 4-inch screen found in the current iPhone lineup.
Misek didn't reveal exactly what triggered his prediction, but he did note that the new screen size would drive a huge number of upgrades. Around 50 percent of smartphones shipped last quarter had screens larger than 4 inches, compared with just 20 percent a year prior.
"We think the 85M iPhones eligible for an upgrade when the iPhone 6 launches (we think Apple is targeting Sep 2014) could be boosted by another 5-10M from people who skipped the 5S/5C cycle," Misek wrote.
Bloomberg
It’s like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” -- for smartphones.
At wireless carriers such as AT&T Inc. (T) and South Africa’s Vodacom Group Ltd. (VOD), a new hacking threat has emerged involving the illicit swapping of SIM cards, the plastic chips that authenticate customers on mobile networks. Criminals call users and impersonate the companies to glean personal information, which they use to hijack the chips and customer accounts, paving the way for online banking fraud and international calling theft.
The scam represents a growing threat to the global telecommunications industry, which is projected to lose $46.3 billion to fraud in 2013, or about 2 percent of total revenue, according to the Communications Fraud Control Association. Account takeovers such as SIM-card switches are one of the most common types of fraud, and may rack up $3.6 billion in losses this year, almost triple the amount in 2011, the CFCA estimates.
Reuters
Hundreds of people in 18 states have become sick from a salmonella outbreak linked to raw chicken products made at three California plants owned by Foster Farms, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Monday.
"The outbreak is continuing," USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service said in a statement.
An estimated 278 illnesses, mostly in California, were caused by strains of Salmonella Heidelberg. The chicken products were distributed mostly to retail outlets in California, Oregon and Washington state, USDA said.
The illnesses were linked to Foster Farms brand chicken through epidemiologic, laboratory and traceback investigations conducted by local, state and federal officials.
In a statement, Livingston, California-based Foster Farms said it was working with authorities to reduce the incidence of Salmonella Heidelberg on raw chicken products.
No recall is in effect, the privately owned company added.
ScienceBlog
What makes some people more prone to wedded bliss or sorrow than others?
Researchers at UC Berkeley and Northwestern University have found a major clue in our DNA. A gene involved in the regulation of serotonin can predict how much our emotions affect our relationships, according to a new study that may be the first to link genetics, emotions, and marital satisfaction. The study was conducted at UC Berkeley.
“An enduring mystery is, what makes one spouse so attuned to the emotional climate in a marriage, and another so oblivious?” said UC Berkeley psychologist Robert W. Levenson, senior author of the study published online today (Oct. 7) in the journal Emotion. “With these new genetic findings, we now understand much more about what determines just how important emotions are for different people.”
The Guardian
A campaign to persuade investors to take their money out of the fossil fuel sector is growing faster than any previous divestment campaign and could cause significant damage to coal, oil and gas companies, according to a study from the University of Oxford.
The report compares the current fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has attracted 41 institutions since 2010, with those against tobacco, apartheid in South Africa, armaments, gambling and pornography. It concludes that the direct financial impact of such campaigns on share prices or the ability to raise funds is small but the reputational damage can still have major financial consequences.
"Stigmatisation poses a far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies – any direct impacts of divestment pale in comparison," said Ben Caldecott, a research fellow at the University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, and an author of the report. "In every case we reviewed, divestment campaigns were successful in lobbying for restrictive legislation."